Three teachers on an expedition to Silanaiyakkanur forest discovered a 4,000-year-old neolithic petroglyph of a bull engraved on the surface of a boulder.
     Archaeologist R Parthiban said, "Six months ago, three teachers - A. Anbalagan, D. Thiruppathi and M. Muruga - found a painting on a boulder while exploring Silanaiyakkanur forest, which is 1.5 km away from Thallapallam village. Recently, it was identified to be a 4000-year-old petroglyph that had a few similarities with the one found in a neolithic settlement site at Bellary in Karnataka". Asked what he inferred from the discovery, the archaeologist said, "Finding petroglyphs in Tamil Nadu is a rarity. In this case, two bull images were identified - on a hillside and another engraved atop a boulder. This shows that the people, who lived in Thallapallam during the neolithic age, had used the lands for cattle grazing".

Edited from The New Indian Express (1 September 2019)