Hire Benakal
Topic: Prehistory: Human Origins and Stone Age Cultures · NCERT: Beyond NCERT
Meaning
Hire Benakal is a megalithic site in Koppal district, Karnataka. Megalithic means burial monuments built of big stones. It has several hundred stone monuments, mostly dolmens. A dolmen is a box-like chamber made of upright slabs with a flat stone on top. It is one of the largest megalithic burial grounds, or necropolises ("cities of the dead"), in India. It belongs to the iron-using megalithic culture of the Deccan and south India.
Example
At Hire Benakal, hundreds of dolmens, many with port-holes cut into one side slab, stand on a rocky hillside. Local people call the place Moriyara Gudda, meaning "hill of the Moriyas".
Don't confuse with
- Brahmagiri (Chitradurga): also a Karnataka site with megaliths. But it has Neolithic and early historic layers too, plus an Ashokan edict. Hire Benakal is mainly a megalithic burial ground.