WRITING ON THE WALL

The wall space of the Edakkal caves provides a vast canvas on which both images and words have intermingled. Here the images are themselves the source for a narrative that words also articulate. Some of the epigraphic material that has been deciphered on the rock surface has been etched in at a date later than the earlier pictographs. But the earliest inscriptions seem to indicate that this space had a cultic significance, related perhaps to a tiger spirit, which could have been linked to a Mother goddess. Certainly there are indications of very early animal forms, which might have also been associated with hero hunters as we find represented in later hero stones.