![](https://samatva.co/wp-content/uploads/Baghor-Kenoyer-1-300x195.png)
Baghor is within 100 kms of Ganga and very close to Prayagraj. In 1982, a team of archaeologists found a heap of discarded stones on a circular rubble platform. In the middle of the rubble was a bright stone with concentric triangles, but broken. They found most of the broken pieces near the rubble itself. When the workers saw the unusual stone they dropped the tools and stopped digging. “This is our Devi!” they said. The excavating team did not take them seriously. But the local people too immediately recognised the rubble and the stone as their Devi. One was upset that the digging team had broken the stone. When they told him that they had actually dug this out and it is ancient, he immediately fell on the ground and did a pranam to the stone.
The site watchman took the team to his house. He had built a small shrine for Devi near his house which looked exactly like the one they had discovered. A sandstone rubble; a bright stone with concentric triangular pattern in the middle. Then the team also saw a temple called Kerai ki Devi which had a similar form of worship. As they looked around, they saw more and more of similar forms of worship in the area.
The team then recognised the significance of what they had found. They had known that the Baghor site is very ancient. It belonged to a period between two other layers which had been dated. This gave a time period of 9000 BC to 8000 BC to the Devi shrine. A practice of worship that was prevalent 11,000 years ago and which continues till date.
The picture that you see here, with the answer, is the present day shrine, which looks remarkably similar to what was unearthed.
Source: Archaeology and World Religion-Routledge (2001) DK Chakrabarti.
Interview with Prof Jagannath Pal, Ex Allahabad University
Antiquity. An Upper Paleolithic Shrine in India? J.M. Kenoyer, J.D. Clark, J.N.Pal, G.R. Sharma
Picture Credit: J.M. Kenoyer
![](https://samatva.co/wp-content/uploads/Baghor-Kenoyer-1-300x195.png)
Baghor is within 100 kms of Ganga and very close to Prayagraj. In 1982, a team of archaeologists found a heap of discarded stones on a circular rubble platform. In the middle of the rubble was a bright stone with concentric triangles, but broken. They found most of the broken pieces near the rubble itself. When the workers saw the unusual stone they dropped the tools and stopped digging. “This is our Devi!” they said. The excavating team did not take them seriously. But the local people too immediately recognised the rubble and the stone as their Devi. One was upset that the digging team had broken the stone. When they told him that they had actually dug this out and it is ancient, he immediately fell on the ground and did a pranam to the stone.
The site watchman took the team to his house. He had built a small shrine for Devi near his house which looked exactly like the one they had discovered. A sandstone rubble; a bright stone with concentric triangular pattern in the middle. Then the team also saw a temple called Kerai ki Devi which had a similar form of worship. As they looked around, they saw more and more of similar forms of worship in the area.
The team then recognised the significance of what they had found. They had known that the Baghor site is very ancient. It belonged to a period between two other layers which had been dated. This gave a time period of 9000 BC to 8000 BC to the Devi shrine. A practice of worship that was prevalent 11,000 years ago and which continues till date.
The picture that you see here, with the answer, is the present day shrine, which looks remarkably similar to what was unearthed.
Source: Archaeology and World Religion-Routledge (2001) DK Chakrabarti.
Interview with Prof Jagannath Pal, Ex Allahabad University
Antiquity. An Upper Paleolithic Shrine in India? J.M. Kenoyer, J.D. Clark, J.N.Pal, G.R. Sharma
Picture Credit: J.M. Kenoyer