# The painted shelters of Bhimbetka
**भीमबेटका के चित्रित शैलाश्रय**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/bhimbetka/
- Chapter: [Indus and Veda](https://indianepics.online/chapter/indus-vedic.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 100000 BCE – 1000 CE (± 50000 years)
- Where: Bhimbetka, Raisen district, Madhya Pradesh (22.938, 77.613)
- Tags: art

## Summary

Rock shelters in the Vindhyan foothills hold Late Acheulian stone tools and paintings from the Mesolithic on, but none of it is firmly dated.

विंध्य की तलहटी के शैलाश्रयों में उत्तर ऐश्यूलियन काल के पत्थर के औज़ार और मध्यपाषाण काल से आगे के चित्र हैं, पर इनमें से किसी की तारीख़ पक्की नहीं है।

## Account

Bhimbetka is a spread of more than 700 rock shelters on a sandstone ridge south of Bhopal, and about 400 of them are painted. V. S. Wakankar reported the site in 1957, and excavations by Wakankar, V. N. Misra, Susanne Haas and others followed from 1971 to 1977. Misra's trench in shelter III F-23 gave a continuous run of stone industries from the Late Acheulian to the Late Mesolithic, and the UNESCO nomination traces occupation there from about 100,000 BCE to 1000 CE.

The site opens the evidence track of this atlas: people lived and painted here long before any village, city or text on the map. Later paintings bring in horses, riders and script, and UNESCO notes that the traditions of the 21 villages around the site still resemble what is on the walls.

Both dates are soft, which is why the margin shown here is so wide. The 100,000 BCE figure comes from the type of the tools, not from a laboratory date. The paintings have not been directly dated either: their age is inferred from style, from one painting overlying another, and from pigment found in excavated layers. UNESCO's list says only that they "appear to date from the Mesolithic Period right through to the historical period".

## Sources

- UNESCO World Heritage List: Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka, inscribed 2003 — https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/925/
- India, nomination dossier for the Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka (UNESCO) — https://whc.unesco.org/document/154601 [second-hand] (Occupation from the Late Acheulian to about 1000 CE; rock art not directly dated)
- Sahapedia, A Deeper Look at Prominent Acheulian Sites of Central India — https://www.sahapedia.org/deeper-look-prominent-acheulian-sites-of-central-india (Wakankar, Misra and Haas excavations; III F-23 sequence; no absolute dates)
- Mathpal, Prehistoric Painting of Bhimbetka (1984) [second-hand] (Not read directly; cited as a standard reference or through another work.)


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