Dig this: When land mafia meets science

Research into a pre-Indus Valley Civilisation settlement at Rakhigarhi in Haryana’s Hisar district has progressed rapidly and is now challenging the ‘Aryan Invasion’ theory, but an equally important prehistoric site in neighbouring Punjab — one that could change the way human evolution is looked at — is losing out to land mafia, red tape and political indifference.
The land mafia has plundered the hilly, forested periphery of Punjab’s capital, Chandigarh, for long: it has razed entire hillocks to make way for illegal constructions, encroached on streambeds and forest land, and even fudged revenue records to take control of panchayat land. One estimate says it has control over 25,000 acres, or nearly 10%, of neighbouring Mohali district’s 2.71-lakh-acre area.
Today, this well-oiled nexus of politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen, revenue officials, and locals wanting to make a quick buck, endangers something vital to science — fossils which could prove that the first intelligent ancestors of Homo sapiens roamed the Shivaliks nearly 2.8 million years ago. These relics are found on hilltops near a village called Masol and are spread across the revenue area of two villages in Mohali notorious for land grabbing, Karoran and Nadda.
The extent to which land has been sold illegally and the revenue records of these villages fudged, reflects in the slow pace at which the Archaelogical Survey of India (ASI) has been trying to preserve the 122 acres where the fossils are found. Though Prime Minister Narendra Modi ordered that the fossils and the sites be preserved more than three years ago, during a visit to Chandigarh in 2015, the ASI is yet to get past the first stage of this process — of identifying the owners of the land.
A senior officer of the ASI, who did not wish to be named as the ASI has been advising its staff against speaking to the media, said there was a lot of confusion over land. “We tried to sort it out at our end in the beginning, but the records have been tough for even the central office to understand. The file reached the ASI director-general’s office in Delhi sometime in 2018. Still, they have been seeking inputs on land records,” he says.
The officer said he had visited the sites and felt they were located on forest land, and not in areas which could be used for housing or farming and, thus, have so many owners. “Some parts are barren,” he adds.
According to the officer, the number of owners of the land runs into thousands. He, however, does not give an exact number, saying it was too tough for him to reach a figure because of the discrepancies in records. A previous estimate reached the figure of four lakh, but that turned out to be wrong.
An official in the revenue office of Karoran said they had only been asked to submit the entire revenue schedule for the village and not of any specific area, so the number could be more. “We did not earmark anything,” he said.
The loot of land in Nadda and Karoran has been underlined in two reports prepared by a Punjab and Haryana high court-constituted three-member special tribunal in 2012-14. Headed by a former Supreme Court judge, Justice Kuldip Singh, the tribunal said in its reports that nearly 2,870 acres, or nearly 80%, of Karoran’s 3,657-acre revenue area was in “illegal possession” (according to Census Handbook of Mohali District). By 2012, according to the report, up to 35,000 registered sale deeds had been transacted illegally in Karoran. “This is being multiplied even now,” said the report. “That is why you have so many owners for a chunk of land which would seem small,” said a person who was closely involved in the probe.
In Nadda, the situation was worse. This is what the tribunal wrote on it: “Nad(d)a is a classic case where huge Gram Panchayat deh (land) measuring 16,113 kanals (2014 acres) is being grabbed systemically with the active connivance of the gram panchayat and revenue officials.”
Since then and several high court hearings later, the Punjab government formed a cabinet cub-committee in 2018, headed by former local government minister Navjot Singh Sidhu, to maintain a record of government assets and lands. To check government land under illegal occupation in the two villages, this committee formed a panel to find out and free government land under illegal occupation. Comprising Punjab Revenue Commission chairperson Justice S S Saron (retd) and Punjab former DGP Chandra Shekhar, the panel submitted its report to Sidhu in March 2018. However, there is no clarity on who the report is with as Sidhu has since left the state cabinet.
This panel looked into the concerns raised by the Justice Kuldip Singh tribunal.
The state government, on orders of the high court on May 5, 2018, also appointed IAS officer Tanu Kashyap as a commissioner-cum-appellate authority under Punjab Common Village Lands Act, to hear land disputes between private entities and gram panchayats of villages in Mohali and Ropar. Two more officers were appointed as collectors to hear such cases. Up to August 2019, the officers had resolved 146 cases.
However, there is no clarity on how the government plans to free its own land.
Hailed abroad, ignored at home
Indifference and sheer ignorance is, perhaps, one of the reasons behind the near non-existent government effort in protecting the fossil sites in Masol.
The acclaimed Pontifical Academia of Sciences, in a note on its annual gathering this year, described the findings in Masol as “very important” and called for further research. The Vatican City-headquartered scientific academy has had Nobel Prize-winning members like Sir Alexander Flemming and Har Gobind Khorana. Its present members include C N R Rao, head of the Scientific Advisory Council to Prime Minister Modi. Still, in the Punjab government’s directorate of archaeology and museums, all that the mention of Masol does is draw ridicule from staff. “Ki karna hadiya da (what will we do with bones)?” was the common refrain from staff at the directorate’s Chandigarh office, when this correspondent had gone there to enquire if the Punjab government had proactively thought of protecting the area.
Later, Punjab director (archaeology and museums) Malwinder Singh Jaggi told this correspondent that the government had not taken any such step. “The ASI is looking at it and we have no role to play in it,” he said, just after he recollected what Masol was.
Another officer at ASI, with no background in paleo-anthropology (human palentology), called the findings in Masol “doubtful”.
Also, there has never been any mention of Masol by any politician in Punjab, irrespective of the party. “While some question the findings scientific credibility, the fact remains an experienced team from the French National Museum of Natural History collaborated with our NGO, Society for Archaeological and Anthropological Research, and the findings were published in a respected peer-reviewed journal (Comptes rendus) and well-received internationally,” said Mukesh Singh, the man behind the research in Masol.
This preservation of land is, however, not Mukesh’s only worry. His research has come to a standstill for the past two years due to lack of funds. Hoping that the PM’s push to Masol would open the government’s purse strings for research, he did not apply for funds from independent bodies since 2016. However, when his request for funds from the Centre was finally cleared, he was told that the ASI had no such policy. When contacted, ASI Chandigarh circle superintendent archaeologist Zulfiqar Ali confirmed that no such policy existed where ASI funds could be used to fund an NGO. “The Punjab government said our NGO is not registered in Chandigarh, so they cannot give us funds,” said Mukesh.
On the other hand, a top official in Punjab government’s archaeology and museums directorate said the state did not have funds for such research.
Land still on sale
This correspondent rang up one of the cellphone numbers which have been scribbled on boards by the roadside on the way to Masol. The man on the other end later met this correspondent and showed him a piece of land, which had obvious signs of a choe (stream) passing through. Though, according to the Punjab Common Village Lands Act, any land around a streambed cannot be owned privately, the man offered the property for Rs 10 lakh a bigha. He even promised to get the land levelled for Rs 1 lakh. When returning from Masol, he pointed to a farmhouse which had a nearly 20-foot-high archway for a gate and told him that it was owned by a man who owns a nearby golf resort. According to the tribunal’s report, the same man owns more than 500 acres of land under Karoran. “All these properties are owned by IAS officers and influential people. Your investment here won’t go waste,” he said, when this correspondent asked him if it would be safe to invest in land in the area.
French Natural History Museum paleoanthropologist Anne Dambricourt Malasse, in an emailed interview with this correspondent, described the Masol site as “World Heritage of Humanity”. “It is essential to protect it against road laying, house buildingand looting,” she said. Asked about its veracity, she pointed to Yves Coopens, an anthropologist who is a member of the Pontifical Academia of Sciences and co-discoverer of the fossil known as ‘Lucy’. “He thinks that Hominid who had lived in the border land of Himalaya belonged to genus Homo (who later evolved into Homo sapiens),” she said.
Land of Homo sapiens’ ancestors?
EVIDENCE SO FAR | Researchers have found stone tools and “intelligent” cut marks on 2.8-million-year-old bovid fossils near Masol. This means scientists have found fossilized bones of a bovid eaten by an intelligent being. A bovid could be any cloven-hoofed mammal, from a deer to a buffalo. The intelligent being, scientists believe, could be first specie of the genus Homo. This genus is the one to which we, Homo sapiens, belong to
‘INTELLIGENT’ CUT MARKS | Researchers have concluded that cut marks have been made by intelligent beings using stone tools, as they are straight and not made by the teeth of an animal
In the evolution chain
7mn-4.4mn years ago | Three earliest Hominids found include 7-million-year-old Sahelanthropus from Chad, 6-million-year-old Orrorin from Kenya, and 4.4-million to 5.8-million-year-old Ardipithecus from Ethiopia. Scientists believe they were standing, walking and climbing beings, eating fruits off trees and roots in the ground, living in tropical and African environment, and were equipped with what was still a small brain and living in some sort of open forest, bushy savannah and grasslands. They did not belong to the genus Homo, of which humans are a part of
4mn-3mn years ago | Prehumans known as Australopithecus and Kenyanthropus roamed the African forests in this time. Their fossils have been found from Chad to South Africa, and whole of Eastern Africa. They do not belong to the genus Homo, have double locomotion and a small brain, but have started to make tools
3-million-yr-old adaptation| A change in climate, a real drought, happened around three million years ago, and all living species had to adapt to this new environment to survive, believe scientists. This will be the reason for the emergence of the genus Paranthropus — robust, still vegetarian and with a small brain — in Eastern Africa and, maybe later, in Southern Africa. A new specie, called Australopithecines, also emerged in Southern Africa. It walked and ran better, but still had a small brain. During this time, the genus homo emerged in Eastern and Southern Africa. It was small, omnivorous (also eating meat), and with a clearly bigger brain.
Home genus and Masol | The genus Homo moved “quickly” (in geological terms), and reached the Mediterranean Sea (stone tools, 2.4 million years old, have been found in Algeria), the Middle East, and in Masol (2.7 million years old), where fossils with intelligent cut marks on animal bones have been found. The Masol discovery is very important, but has to be confirmed, say scientists
LATER PERIODS | In Asia, stone tools (over 2 million years old) have been collected in China; Hominid remains and stone tools (1.8 million years old) in Georgia; Hominids (1.6 million years old) in Indonesia
Chain of Genus Homo
Several species of the genus have been proposed as the direct ancestor of the Homo lineage. These species have morphological features that align them with Homo, but there is no consensus as to which gave rise to Homo.
Australopithecus | The advent of Homo has been taken to coincide with the first use of stone tools (the Oldowan industry), and thus by definition with the stone tools to Australopithecus afarensis around 3.3 million years ago, close to a million years before the first appearance of Homo.
Homo habilis | Homo habilis emerged about 2.1 Mya. Already before 2010, there were suggestions that habilis should not be placed in genus Homo, but in Australopithecus. The main reason to include habilis in Homo, its tool use, had become obsolete with the discovery of Australopithecus tool use at least a million years
Homo erectus | Homo erectus has often been assumed to have developed anagenetically from Homo habilis from about 2 million years ago. This scenario was strengthened with the discovery of Homo erectus georgicus, early specimens found in the Caucasus, which seemed to exhibit transitional traits with habilis. As the earliest evidence for erectus was found outside of Africa, it was considered plausible that erectus developed in Eurasia and then migrated back to Africa
Masol finding | The Masol findings, being 2.8 million years old, are a vital cog in placing together the evolution of this chain (read Land of Homo sapiens’ ancestors for details)