A state in the north-east gives our Age its name
In the long history of the earth’s 4.6 billion years, the sliver of time in which we currently exist is called the Meghalayan Age. It’s an age that is said to have begun about 4,200 years ago, with the early years marked by a global megadrought that lasted 200 years and devastated ancient civilisations in Greece, Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, China and our Indus Valley.
Evidence of the megadrought is most clearly observed in a stalagmite formation found at the Mawmluh cave in Cherrapunji, Meghalaya. It is this state that gives this Age its name.
Meghalaya is home to some of the longest and deepest caves in the world. Mineral deposits accumulated in the form of stalactites and stalagmites have sat undisturbed inside the caves for thousands of years, and preserved in their layers, are clues to the mysteries of the earth’s past.
The Mawmluh stalagmite first began to be studied in 2003. Shillong-based cave explorer Brian Daly led Ashish Sinha, a paeleoclimate researcher and a geologist at California State University, about 2.5 km into the Mawmluh cave, and they pried one of the bigger active stalagmites from its base and carried it out. “We took it to a marble slab cutter in Shillong and sliced it to reveal the layers that had formed within, not dissimilar to the rings on a tree,” says Daly, 74.
This stalagmite, estimated to be 40,000 years old, became an important subject of study in the field of stratigraphy, the branch of geology that correlates rock layers with geological timescale. A 2012 paper first proposed the idea of the Meghalayan Age based on evidence found in the stalagmite of how a particular oxygen atom changed, indicating, essentially, changes in precipitation.
In 2018, after widespread deliberation, the International Commission for Stratigraphy (ICS) named the period the Meghalayan Age.
The history-making stalagmite is housed at the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences, Lucknow. But there are plenty more like it in the caves of Meghalaya, some of which, incredibly, are open to the public. The best time to visit is between November and April, but go with an experienced guide. You don’t want to be lost and wandering in 7 km of identical-looking passageways.