Hominid Species and Neanderthal Man in Ramayana?

Indian Monk
Published on Mar 2, 2018

Vanaras are one of the significant characters in Ramayana. As per described in Ramayana, Vanaras are special species of humans that looked like monkeys. Ramayana Never mentioned Vanaras as monkeys. This species was dominant in southern part of India and ruled south India including Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia, Indonesia etc. What does Vanaras mean? Vanaras is a Sanskrit word having 2 parts- Van means Forest and nara means human. So the literally meaning - humans who lived in forests. Vanaras were definitely not Monkeys since monkey is called as vanakapi or kapi or markata in Sanskrit. Why finding evidences of Neanderthal man is difficult in India? Archaeological and scientific evolutionary studies says, Neanderthal was a species that inhabited Europe, Africa and western Asia, starting some 2,30,000 years ago. Neanderthal man had a hyoid bone which enabled them to speak and look like humans very closely. Though some evidences of Neanderthal man were found in Indus valley civilization. As Indians follows a very long cultural tradition of burning bodies after death no matter if they were animals, finding any solid evidences of ancient times is not so easy. Besides, bones in Indian peninsula decay in few thousands of years. This makes it even more difficult to find traces of Neanderthals man in India