Are we losing Mangar Bani, India's oldest archaeological site?

When we see megalopolises like Delhi and Gurgaon, pristine forest is the last thing that comes to mind. The busy cityscape doesn’t leave even the smallest of hopes in our minds that we might still have forest around us. When we say forest, our minds directly go to the national parks and other reserved forests. It's never Mangar Bani. Here's why this needs to change.

Also read: What makes Delhi-NCR a birding hotspot?


Mangar Bani, on the Delhi-Haryana border, within NCR, is a patch of natural forest next to the Mangar village in Faridabad, Haryana. Located in the Aravalli Hills, the area of Mangar is thousands of acres of rough terrain with rocky outcrops and scrub. Declared as uncultivable land but not untouched by illegal encroachment, deforestation and construction of fencing and walls. A slow but definite demise of a natural patch, all before getting the tag of a registered forest.


Did you know that Mangar Bani is a paleolithic archaeological site and a sacred grove? The Indian subcontinent’s largest neolithic site might just be India's oldest archaeological site. The site and the stone tools found from this area date back to 100,000 years ago, and the cave paintings some 20,000-40,000 years ago.



The Aravalli Hills is one of the oldest mountain ranges in the world, and the area is home to so many small villages. There are villages like Shilakheri, Mangar, Dhauj and Kot where rock shelters were discovered. These rock shelters have some of the oldest rock paintings known to mankind, and also evidence of some of the earliest stone tools in the Indian subcontinent. Is the region going to dethrone the rock caves of Bhimbetka earliest evidence of human life in India? Only time will tell.



What we can tell right now with utmost certainty is that Mangar Bani is an important biodiversity area with crucial wildlife corridors. Mangar Bani is contiguous to Asola Bhatti Wildlife Sanctuary in Delhi, and is a crucial part of the Northern Aravalli leopard corridor. The landscape may be rocky but there are several wetlands and open forested areas where animals like Leopards, hyenas, porcupines, four-horned antelope, civets, jungle cats, nilgai and jackals can be found. Mangar Bani also has a very rich bird population.



We can’t say that the Mangar landscape is untouched. As long as there is delay in declaring this big patch of native forest land as a protected forest area, walls will continue to be built, city’s refuse will continue to pile up and the forest line will continue to recede.