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In an exciting find, a young archaeologist has found two caves with stunning rock art belonging to the prehistoric and early historic era. The caves, ‘Vanapechialai’ and the ‘Vanaraparai’ abound with red and white ochre paintings and are located in the Udumalaipettai forest range in Tirupur district. Sharing his discovery with Express, C Vijayakumar says Vanapechialai has a large number of faded red-ochre paintings. “There are six red hand marks and certain unidentifiable images. However, there are six bright parallel lines in a zig zag fashion in red ochre resembling flickering of flames.” In the same cave, there is also a white-ochre painting, which portrays a man seated on an elephant (22 cm long, 18 cm wide). Vijayakumar says the white-ochre drawing has been done over red-ochre.The Vanaraparai cave has the famed ‘hand’ mark, which is early man’s first effort in documenting his identity. “It is imprinted twice in pure red-ochre. In the right hand, the ring finger is missing, suggesting that the imprint is that of the village chieftain or Moopan. In primitive societies during pre-historic period, the Moopan’s ring finger was always cut.”The cave - big enough to house 150 cows - has paintings ranging between 5 cm and 32 cm. There are altogether 28 sketches of early man, besides images of animals, which include a couple of elephants, men on deer with a primitive hunting weapon, monkeys, the sun and a faded moon. T Sathyamurthi, former Superintendent of the ASI, Chennai Circle after studying the images describes the discovery as a landmark. The Vanaraparai paintings are datable to the prehistoric period of 1000 BCE (3,000 years ago) and the red ochre painting belongs to the early historic period corresponding to the beginning of the Common Era (2,000 years ago). “The discoverer deserves our compliments,” he adds. Recalling his arduous efforts in locating the caves, Vijaykumar says he had to trek for several months to discover the site. “It is an elephant corridor. I have encountered elephants, leopard, bear and Indian gaur.” He had to abandon his research twice due to encounters with animals. The caves were difficult to access and he says, “During daytime, one cannot enter the caves. Bats and huge beehives are the biggest threat.” In an effort to scientifically document his find, Vijayakumar has also recorded the exact geographical location through GPS coordinates. Vanaraparai: Lat 10.35752'N, Long 077.17010'E, 857 metres asl. Vanapechialai: Lat  10.36663'N, Long 077.17559'E, 956 metres asl.The 31-year-old Vijayakumar is currently pursuing a PhD in Landscape Archaeology of Anamalai region in Thanjavur Tamil University.