Rama’s bridge is only 3,500 years old

The ongoing interest in this story never ceases to amaze me. Hardly a week goes by without receiving several hits via Google from people looking for information about this remarkable "find". So for all those people who continue to find this site by searching for "monkey + bridge + over + Palk + Straits + from + ramayana" (and then hopefully stick around for the other stuff), I have this update:

The Adam’s bridge over Palk Strait, said to be the remains of a bridge built by Lord Rama, dates back to only 3,500 years and not 1.7 million years as claimed earlier.

A team from the Centre for Remote Sensing (CRS) of Bharathidasan University, Tiruchi, has come up with startling facts about this ‘‘bridge’’. Led by Professor S.M. Ramasamy, the team is studying the geological changes that took place along the Tamil Nadu coastline in the past 40,000 years.

Speaking to The Indian Express, Ramasamy said the CRS findings will give a clearer picture of the bridge connecting Dhanushkodi in India to Talaimannar in Sri Lanka.

A NASA satellite picture had brought the land strip under focus and some reports had mentioned that this was only a coral reef dating back 1.7 million years. Historians also do not subscribe to the claim linking this stretch to Ramayana. Besides NASA pictures, those taken by Indian Remote Sensing satellites also showed the bridge clearly.

Ramasamy says the satellite pictures and carbon dating of some ancient beaches between Thiruthuraipoondi and Kodiyakarai show the Thiruthuraipoondi beach dates back to 6,000 years and the Kodiyakarai beach to 1,100 years. In other words, the sea was near Thiruthuraipoondi 6,000 years ago and reached Kodiyakarai around 1,100 years ago.

Ramasamy explains that the land/beaches were formed between Ramanathapuram and Pamban because of the long shore drifting currents which moved in an anti-clockwise direction in the north and clockwise direction in the south of Rameswaram and Talaimannar about 3,500 years ago.

The sand was dumped in a linear pattern along the current shadow zone between Dhanushkodi and Talaimannar. Later, corals may have accumulated over these linear sand bodies, Ramasamy adds.

Good, well I'm glad that's settled...but wait a second...if we re-jig the date of the Ramayana¹ maybe we can blow this whole thing open again!

But as the carbon dating of the beaches roughly matches the dates of Ramayana, its link to the epic needs to be explored, he adds. Declining to comment whether the bridge was indeed built by Rama, Ramasamy says he would leave that to the experts to answer.

Other references to the blessed bridge may be found here, here, here and especially here.

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¹ - originally reported to have occurred about 1.75 million years ago (!)  ¶ 11:48 pm

  STS-107

Crew of STS-107, the 113th Shuttle mission: Rick D. Husband (2nd mission) - Commander, William C. McCool - Pilot, Michael P. Anderson (2nd mission) - Payload Commander, Kalpana Chawla (2nd mission) - Mission Specialist, David M. Brown - Mission Specialist, Laurel B. Clark - Mission Specialist, Ilan Ramon - (ISA) Payload Specialist   ¶ 10:24 pm

  Monkey King (3)

In the cave were stone pots, bowls, beds and benches. On a stone pillar in the middle of the cave there was an inscription: "This Cave of the Water Curtain leads to heaven."

  ¶ 10:12 pm