Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin laid the foundation for ‘Porunai Museum’ project in Tirunelveli district through videoconferencing.
Key points
- The museum will be located in the scenic Reddiyarpatti hillock on the outskirts of Palayamkottai.
- The ‘Porunai Archaeological Museum’ would showcase the artefacts collected at Aditchanallur and Pandya kingdom’s port town of Korkai and Sivakalai, all in Thoothukudi district, as the entire Tamirabharani watercourse is known as ‘Cradle of Civilization of South India’.
- Besides an administrative block, the museum will have three separate sections for exhibiting the artefacts recovered from Korkai, Sivakalai and Aditchanallur excavations.
- At Korkai, the excavators have recovered 812 artefacts such as glass beads, glass bangles, conch bangles, terracotta beads, stone beads ect. The excavations also proved categorically that Korkai had been the harbour of the Pandiya Kings in 8th century B.C..
- In Sivakalai, the excavations have so far yielded 160 burial urns, more than 70 iron materials, 787 offering bowls, 163 marked pots and other 582 artefacts, while 27 burial urns have been recovered at Aditchanallur, besides 463 earthenware and 1,085 artefacts. The high quality tin-mixed bronze materials and gold ornaments recovered from Aditchanallur and Sivakalai bear testimony to the quality of life of the ancient Tamils of the region.
- When the carbon dating was conducted on the rice recovered from one of the burial urns in Sivakalai hillock, it was found that the food grain belonged to 1155 BC and, hence, the Tamirabharani civilisation is 3,200 years old, the archaeologists say.
Thamiraparani river
- The Thamiraparani river is unique in many respects. It is the only perennial river in Tamil Nadu. It originates in the Pothigai Hills of the Western Ghats in Tirunelveli district.
- The river flows through Tirunelveli and then neighbouring Thoothukudi and ends in the Gulf of Mannar at Punakayil. It thus originates and ends in the same state.
