PAMA

25/08/2026

Who is Malayali?

PAMA, Q&A Session – 5

Question from +91 85279 48575

When merchants and sailors from Arabia, Greece, Rome and other regions stayed at Pattanam between seasonal monsoon voyages, how and where might they have lived and socialised with the local communities?

PAMA Team’s Reflection

Before answering this question, we need to recognise a difficulty that applies to almost every attempt to understand the human past.

We are twenty-first-century Homo sapiens looking back at people who lived around two thousand years ago. We know what happened during those two thousand years. They did not.

A person living at Pattanam around 300 BCE–300 CE could not possibly have known what the next two thousand years would bring. Nor can we assume that the identities, institutions, political systems, religions, economic structures, technologies or cultural categories that we know today existed in anything like their present form.

Yet we unconsciously carry those intervening two thousand years with us whenever we try to imagine them.

This creates a peculiar predicament. We are trying to understand people of the past while looking at them through the fragmented and highly individualised condition of the present.

An AUPP-balanced approach therefore requires us, as far as possible, to suspend our later assumptions and allow the evidence to speak first.

This is only a thought experiment: what might the people of Pattanam have looked like if we could temporarily remove the last two thousand years from our imagination?

So, where and how might these people have lived?

The most honest answer is that archaeology cannot yet tell us exactly where every visiting sailor or merchant slept, with whom they lived, or how long they stayed.

But archaeology can establish the wider conditions in which such admixture took place.

The Pattanam evidence belongs broadly to the Sangam Age, approximately 300 BCE–300 CE. This was a period of the Mature Iron Age, when communities in the region possessed sophisticated metallurgical knowledge involving iron as well as copper, silver, gold, lead and other materials.

The archaeological evidence also points to developed craft production, maritime technology, navigation, exchange networks and forms of organised settlement, supported by agricultural and medicinal resources. The ecological landscape between the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea—with its rivers, wetlands, forests and access to the sea—provided a rich setting for human interaction and economic activity, spread across what the ongoing KFRI–PAMA investigation suggests may once have been nearly 52,000 rainforest islands.

The people arriving at Pattanam were therefore not entering an empty or technologically backward landscape.

Nor were the people living at Pattanam simply passive recipients waiting for outsiders to arrive.

They were already participants in a maritime world.

The evidence suggests that Pattanam became connected with regions extending across the Indian Ocean and beyond. People, commodities, technologies and ideas moved in multiple directions.

A visiting merchant or sailor did not necessarily need a separate “foreign quarter”. They could have stayed with people involved in trade, maritime activities or craft production, in temporary accommodation, in a household, near a workshop, or close to the waterfront. Archaeology has not yet allowed us to identify such arrangements with certainty.

We should therefore resist imposing a modern hotel, hostel or ethnic-quarter model on ancient Pattanam.

What we can reasonably propose is that seasonal maritime mobility created repeated opportunities for face-to-face interaction.

What happened when people met?

Shared spaces such as workshops, production areas, waterfront facilities, habitation areas and storage spaces could have brought people together. The archaeological assemblage can sometimes reveal such interaction even when it cannot identify the individual people involved.

The most significant interactions may not have been spectacular events. Eating, working, repairing boats, making objects, exchanging goods, learning techniques, negotiating prices and sharing information could all have created sustained human relationships.

Nor should we assume that these relationships were purely commercial. There could have been cooperation, competition, friendship, affection, conflict, marriage and cultural negotiation. Archaeology can sometimes suggest such possibilities, but it cannot automatically distinguish one from another.

People who stayed for weeks, months or perhaps longer would inevitably have encountered local food, technologies, languages, environmental conditions and social practices. Local communities, in turn, would have encountered new materials, technologies, ideas and habits.

Can we glimpse something of their minds?

Here we would like to place one small food for thought on the table—not as a conclusion, but as a hypothesis worth testing.

Could the people participating in this remarkably interconnected world have possessed, or been encouraged towards, a cognitive orientation that balanced humility, inner truth, cosmic awareness and critical thinking—what we refer to as AUPP?

We certainly cannot claim that every person at Pattanam lived according to such a balance. The more interesting question is whether this balancing of priorities may have been a predominant tendency among some of the communities participating in this world.

This is only a hypothesis, and it needs to be tested repeatedly against evidence.

Some features of the archaeological record nevertheless invite us to ask the question.

For example, so far, Pattanam has not produced prominent idols or extensive weapon assemblages of the kind found at some other ancient settlements. This does not prove that religious images or weapons were absent. Absence of evidence cannot automatically be treated as evidence of absence.

Yet the pattern is intriguing.

Could it, together with Sangam literary traditions and other archaeological and scientific evidence, eventually help us test the possibility that a balancing of Sramana priorities—Anbu, Unmai, Patru and Pakutharivu—was a significant tendency among some of the communities participating in this maritime world?

Another intriguing piece of evidence is a single pottery fragment bearing the inscription “Amana” in Brahmi script, dated to around the 2nd century CE, identified among approximately 4.5 million pottery sherds recovered so far from 67 trenches by the Pattanam archaeological research team led by PJ Cherian. Most of these cultural deposits belong to the Sangam Age and occur approximately one to three metres below the present ground level.

The term Amana, with its etymological connections through Pali, Sanskrit and Tamil, invites further investigation. One isolated inscription cannot establish a cultural or philosophical orientation for an entire community. But precisely because it is so rare within such a vast assemblage, it is worth asking whether it represents one small clue to intellectual and cultural currents that deserve further examination.

Could such evidence point towards a Sramana orientation?

We do not know.

But this is precisely where AUPP should function as a question rather than an answer.

And if such a tendency can eventually be demonstrated, another question follows: was it confined to Pattanam, or might comparable evidence be identified at other ancient Asian port-sites where similar patterns of social and cultural interaction occurred?

We would need to test this repeatedly through archaeology, literature, anthropology, environmental evidence, technology, genetics and other available sources.

AUPP should not be imposed upon the evidence; it should be offered as a question to the evidence.

What can archaeology actually tell us about the human side?

A piece of pottery can tell us that something travelled.

A coin can tell us about economic connections.

A bead can tell us about technology and exchange.

Stratigraphy can tell us when these things entered a particular context.

But how did the person who carried that object think, eat, work, negotiate, make friends, disagree or adapt?

Archaeology rarely gives us a direct answer.

What it can do is establish the conditions within which such human experiences became possible.

This is why archaeology needs to be read together with genetics, environmental evidence, metallurgical studies, ancient texts, anthropology and comparative studies. Each provides a different window, and none should be allowed to speak beyond what its evidence permits.

The human remains from Pattanam add another dimension. Of the twelve human skeletal remains studied so far, eleven have yielded usable genetic information. The currently reported ancestry signals indicate connections involving South Asia, eastern Africa–West Asia and Europe. One sample did not yield the necessary genetic material. The available evidence does not yet allow us to establish the s*x or complete biography of all the individuals concerned.

These findings do not provide the complete biographies of these people. But they add another line of evidence for human mobility and interaction.

So we may never be able to identify the particular house in which a sailor from the Arabian world slept, the local family with whom a merchant from the Mediterranean ate, or the person who helped a visiting craftsman adapt to an unfamiliar landscape.

But the archaeological evidence allows us to say something important:

Pattanam was a place where people from different parts of the world could meet, stay, work, exchange and interact within a highly connected maritime environment.

And perhaps the deeper challenge is not merely to find more objects.

It is to learn how to read those objects without making the people who produced and used them carry the identities and assumptions of the last two thousand years.

Perhaps that is one of the most difficult requirements of an AUPP-balanced archaeology:

To meet the people of the past without making them carry the baggage of our present.

PAMA Team
24/08/2026

Please post your questions or comments on Muziris/Pattanam through WhatsApp: +91 90748 52914, or email [email protected].

23/08/2026

A Discussion about the Depth of Thamizh Antiquity in the Light of New Genetic Studies

I have no idea yet whether all the new genetic studies being circulated are adequately balanced through AUPP—whether their interpretations arise from the evidence itself or whether some of them may carry the burden of preconceived narratives. That, to me, is precisely why they deserve an open and critical discussion.

Vaidehi Herbert has scolded me several times for using the Anglicised word “Tamil” instead of Thamizh. She even blames—or perhaps laments—the Keralites for being so innocent of their own myopia.

This particular memory goes back to November or December 2010, at the Oxford home where Nicole Boivin, my host, lived with Michael Petraglia and their three- or four-year-old daughter, Eva. I had been invited for tea. I had already had a dinner there with Michael as the cook; Nicole had said that it was his turn to cook and hers to wash the dishes. I was also supposed to have another dinner when Nicky was the cook.

My other hosts were Chris Gosden and Mark Pollard. I really do not have the words to describe how affectionate they were towards this Thamizhan.

On the day I went there for tea—or perhaps beer—Nicky had not yet arrived. It gave me a wonderful opportunity to share with Michael some of my doubts about whether the Western Ghats could have been one of the world’s oldest human habitats.

I had hardly any material evidence. What I had was mostly the experience of trekking and participating in a couple of wildlife surveys in different parts of the Western Ghats, together with the almost magical impact of being in the Kurinji region—the ecological and cultural landscape that produced what I consider one of the most sophisticated Thamizh civilisations.

I also remembered that Sardar K. M. Panikkar had, somewhat speculatively, suggested that in some remote prehistoric past there may have been migratory movements from Sri Lanka towards southern India, or something to that effect, pointing to connections between South Indian and Sri Lankan populations.

So I asked Michael about the possibility of prehistoric settlement on the western side of the Western Ghats. My argument was partly based on the extraordinary geography of the region—the rainforests, rivers and what later KFRI researchers, led by Dr T. V. Sajeev, counted as 51,858 rainforest islands.

I also wondered whether the familiar “push and pull” theory of migration really worked here. If a community had entered this narrow strip between the Arabian Sea and the Western Ghats at some point in its long prehistory, what exactly would have pushed it out—or pulled it elsewhere? Could this have been a place where people simply remained, contentedly adapted, and developed over very long periods?

And could Muziris, with its global connectivity, have been the flowering of the region’s deep Thamizh past?

Michael smiled and said, in effect, “Cherian, there should be material evidence.”

Then he told me about his journey to the house of Dr P. Rajendran, probably one of the earliest archaeologists from modern Kerala—and, in my deliberately provocative description, one of those who somehow got trapped in the Malludom, innocent of the depth of their own past.

Michael described what seemed to have been an almost unforgettable and rather sad moment for him: seeing a lump of laterite that had been presented as a “laterite baby”, supposedly belonging to a prehistoric period from the Idukki district.

I know Dr P. Rajendran a little more closely, and I would put it differently. To me, he was a sensitive archaeological mind whose possibilities were constrained by the extraordinary apathy of Kerala Thamizhans towards their own deep past.

Michael’s smile and his simple insistence—“there should be material evidence”—stayed with me.

In 2022–23, PAMA obtained permission from the Archaeological Survey of India to undertake archaeological exploration in the Idukki district without a terminal date. The permission was granted during the tenure of Dr Alok Tripathi, then Additional Director General of the ASI, and the necessary orders were issued. It came in the wider context of the difficulties PAMA faced in obtaining continued permission for its proposed excavations at Pattanam.

We were nevertheless able to undertake one phase of exploration in Nedumkunnam Panchayat of Idukki district with an all-India team, despite what seemed at times to be almost insurmountable difficulties arising from the Kerala mindset towards its ancestral legacy. The District Collector, as allegedly, under pressure from all political parties, subsequently banned the exploration.

Perhaps the time has come to return to the question—not with a predetermined conclusion, but with AUPP balance.

Could the Western Ghats and the narrow ecological world between the mountains and the Arabian Sea preserve archaeological evidence of a much deeper human history than we presently recognise?

And, more specifically, what can archaeology contribute to the new questions being raised by population genetics?

This is not an argument for replacing archaeology with genetics, or genetics with archaeology. It is an invitation to bring archaeology, genetics, geology, ecology, palaeoanthropology, linguistics and the historical traditions of the region into the same conversation.

I would therefore like to ask a simple question:

Would the Union and State Governments consider extending the necessary facilities and support for PAMA to undertake a systematic five-year archaeological exploration programme in Idukki District?

The proposed field study could be undertaken under the leadership or guidance of two great scholars and friends of PAMA, Dr Ravi Korisettar and Dr Dorian Fuller, together with Dr Michael Petraglia, who may perhaps even remember where the “laterite baby” was encountered.

I would also welcome the participation of PAMA Friends—including our friends in the media—not as advocates for a conclusion, but as witnesses to and participants in an open archaeological enquiry.

The purpose should be very simple:

not to prove an ancient Thamizh homeland, but to find out what the evidence actually says about the people who lived in the Upper Periyar basin, which may have acted as a resource pool for the legendary port at its delta, and about how the landscapes between the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea became part of the extraordinary human story of the Indian subcontinent and Sri Lanka.

Perhaps Michael was right.

There should be material evidence.

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21/08/2026

പ്രതികരിച്ച എല്ലാവർക്കും നന്ദി. നിങ്ങളുടെ പ്രതികരണങ്ങൾ ഞങ്ങൾ വളരെ വിലമതിക്കുന്നു. എന്നാൽ നിങ്ങളുടെ AUPP സന്തുലനത്തിൽ പാകപ്പെടുത്തിയ ചിന്തകളും അറിയാൻ ഞങ്ങൾ ആഗ്രഹിക്കുന്നു.

ഒരു ചെറിയ ചിന്താപരീക്ഷണം നടത്താമോ? നിങ്ങൾ Gen Z ആണെന്ന് കരുതി, Asianet Science Talk വീഡിയോ ആ കാഴ്ചപ്പാടിൽ നിന്ന് വീണ്ടും കേൾക്കുക. കേട്ടുകഴിഞ്ഞാൽ എന്താണ് ചോദിക്കാൻ തോന്നുക? എന്തെല്ലാം ചിന്തകളോ ചോദ്യങ്ങളോ മനസ്സിൽ വരും?

അത്തരം നിഷ്കളങ്കമായ, അറിയാനുള്ള ആകാംക്ഷയിൽ നിന്നുള്ള ചോദ്യങ്ങളും അഭിപ്രായങ്ങളും ഞങ്ങൾക്ക് അയയ്ക്കുക. നിങ്ങളുടെ അടുത്തുള്ള ബന്ധുക്കൾ, സഹപ്രവർത്തകർ, വിവിധ തലമുറകളിലുള്ള സുഹൃത്തുക്കൾ എന്നിവരിൽ ചിലരെയും വീഡിയോ കേൾക്കാനും പ്രതികരിക്കാനും ക്ഷണിക്കാം. പ്രത്യേകിച്ച്, ശരിക്കും കൗതുകമുള്ള ചില Gen Z-ക്കാരും ഉണ്ടാകുന്നത് നല്ലതാണ് (ഏകദേശം 30 വയസ്സിൽ താഴെയുള്ളവർ).

വിശ്വസനീയമായ തെളിവുകളുടെ അടിസ്ഥാനത്തിൽ, നാം ഇപ്പോൾ കുറച്ചെങ്കിലും മനസ്സിലാക്കിത്തുടങ്ങിയിരിക്കുന്നു എന്ന് കരുതുന്ന ആ പഴയകാലത്തെക്കുറിച്ച് അവർക്ക് ചോദ്യങ്ങൾ ചോദിക്കാം. ഇവിടെ പ്രത്യേകിച്ച് ഒരു അജണ്ടയുമില്ല—ഏതെങ്കിലും പാർട്ടിയിൽ ചേരാനോ, തമാശ പറയാനോ, സ്വത്ത് വിൽക്കാനോ, ഇനി ജീവിതകാലം മുഴുവൻ പട്ടണത്ത് വന്ന് കിട്ടാനിടയുള്ള സ്ഥലം വാങ്ങി താമസിക്കാനോ ഒന്നുമല്ല! 😊

പട്ടണത്ത് ജീവിക്കുകയും സ്നേഹിക്കുകയും ജോലി ചെയ്യുകയും മരിക്കുകയും ചെയ്ത മനുഷ്യരെ—അവരുടെ ഓർമ്മയെയും, പട്ടണത്തിൽ ഇന്നും അവശേഷിക്കുന്ന അവരുടെ അടയാളങ്ങളെയും—മനസ്സിലാക്കാനും ഒരുപക്ഷേ അതിനെ സംരക്ഷിക്കാനും ഉള്ള ഒരു ചെറിയ ശ്രമം മാത്രമാണിത്.

അതിൽ കൂടുതൽ സങ്കീർണ്ണമായ ഒന്നുമില്ല. ആരിലും AUPP അടിച്ചേൽപ്പിക്കാനുമില്ല.

സ്വന്തം ജീവിതത്തിലും തലച്ചോറിലും നാം കൊണ്ടുനടക്കുന്ന എളിമ, ഉള്ളിലെ നേര്, പ്രപഞ്ച ബോധം / വാത്സല്യം, വകതിരിവ് എന്നിവയുടെ സന്തുലനം കഴിയുന്നത്ര ഉറപ്പാക്കി, സ്വാഭാവികമായി ഉയരുന്ന ചോദ്യങ്ങളും ചിന്തകളും ഞങ്ങൾക്ക് അയച്ചുതരുക.

നിഷ്കളങ്കമായ ആ ചോദ്യങ്ങൾ ചിലപ്പോൾ PAMA Team തയ്യാറാക്കിയ ഉത്തരങ്ങളേക്കാൾ കൂടുതൽ കാര്യങ്ങൾ നമ്മെ പഠിപ്പിച്ചേക്കാം.

അല്ലെങ്കിൽ ഏറ്റവും ചെലവുകുറഞ്ഞ യാത്രാമാർഗം കണ്ടെത്തി PAMA-യിൽ എത്തിക്കോളൂ. നിങ്ങളെയും നിങ്ങളുടെ സംഘത്തെയും പാട്ടണത്തേക്ക് കൂടുതൽ അർത്ഥവത്തായ ഒരു യാത്രയ്ക്ക് ഞങ്ങൾ കൊണ്ടുപോകാം. ഇത്തരം തീർഥാടനങ്ങളുടെ പ്രതീകാത്മകതയുടെ മൂല്യം മനസ്സിലാക്കുന്നവർക്ക് സ്വാഗതം. 😊🙏🏿

Textual messages അയയ്ക്കുന്നതായിരിക്കും കൂടുതൽ സൗകര്യം.

WhatsApp: +91 90748 52914 / +91 9847449495
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.pama.org.in

PAMA TEAM

21/08/2026
RTKN Centre, Periyar Gardens, GCDA Road, Aluva – 683108

21/08/2026

If you have watched, commented on, or considered responding to the Asianet “Science Talk” video, “Who is a Malayali?”, and would like to learn more, ask questions, or continue the conversation, you are warmly invited to visit PAMA’s Romila Thappar–K. N. Panikkar Centre in Aluva and Bappukudu in Pattanam. Come, visit, explore, and engage with us.
Facilities for a short stay of a couple of days are also available—particularly for those who see themselves as pilgrims on a journey to walk in the footsteps of their ancestors from Sangam Age Kerala (c. 300 BCE–300 CE). Come, pause, explore, and connect with the balance of AUPP and the priorities of the Sramana tradition, as well as the deep histories, landscapes, and lives that shaped this land.

For more information, please visit pama.org.in, email us at [email protected], or contact us via WhatsApp/Phone: +91 90748 52914.

BRIDGING THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE with Anbu (Humility), Unmai (Inside truth), Patru (Affection), and Pakutharivu (Critical thinking) These four qualities are discerned as the predominant Sangam age ethos. They reflect in the written sources and material remains of Pattanam archaeological site (3...

19/08/2026

Who is Malayali?

PAMA, Q&A Session – 4

Question 3 from +1(905)-924-4803

“Around 300 BCE, is it really possible to believe that Romans and Jews travelled by ship through the Mediterranean Sea, crossed the Strait of Gibraltar, and eventually reached Kodungallur/Muziris? It is very difficult to believe that this could have happened.”

PAMA Team’s Reflection

Thank you for raising this question. It gives us an opportunity to clarify something important: we should not begin the story of Pattanam/Muziris by imagining that Romans or Jews simply sailed from the Mediterranean to ancient Kerala around 300 BCE.

That is not what the evidence suggests.

First, 300 BCE does not mean the beginning of Roman maritime activity in the Indian Ocean. The Roman Empire and the Roman maritime presence that we associate with the Mediterranean–Indian Ocean trade belong to a later historical context. When we refer to Pattanam during the Sangam Age, approximately 300 BCE–300 CE, we are describing a long period of transformation rather than a single event.

From the perspective of Pattanam, around 300 BCE we should instead imagine something much more interesting.

The ancient Kerala coast was becoming increasingly connected to a maritime world that was already interconnected.

This means that movement did not necessarily begin with people coming from the Mediterranean towards India. People, goods, technologies and ideas could move in both directions. Communities along the Indian coast could themselves travel towards the north, west and east, joining networks that already extended far beyond the subcontinent.

The evidence from Pattanam suggests that one important route towards the Arabian regions may have developed through the ancient Gujarat coast. Maritime movement did not always require vessels to cross the open ocean directly. Coastal navigation—sometimes described as “hugging the coast”—allowed sailors to remain relatively close to land, using familiar coastal points and intermediate ports.

In this way, communities from the Malabar Coast could have reached the ancient Gujarat region and interacted with the sailors and merchants associated with ports such as Barygaza, before continuing towards the Arabian regions.

The archaeological evidence at Pattanam is particularly interesting in this regard. Fragments of vessels and containers associated with Arabian regions—including turquoise, torpedo-shaped and ovoid jars, some of which are dated to around or before the third century BCE—suggest that connections with the western Indian Ocean were already developing before the major appearance of Mediterranean material at the site.

This changes the question completely.

Instead of asking:

“How could Romans have travelled all the way from Rome to Muziris around 300 BCE?”

we might ask:

“How did the people of the Kerala coast gradually enter and participate in maritime networks that were already connecting India with the Arabian regions and beyond?”

That is a much more historically plausible question.

The major transformation around 100 BCE

At Pattanam, another important change becomes visible around 100 BCE.

For the first time, we begin to find evidence pointing more clearly towards connections with the Red Sea region. These connections appear to have subsequently expanded towards ancient Egypt, the Greek world and, later, the wider Mediterranean and Roman maritime networks.

In other words, the archaeological sequence does not require us to imagine a single dramatic voyage:

Rome → Gibraltar → Red Sea → Muziris.

Instead, it suggests the gradual joining and expansion of already existing maritime networks.

Different communities could participate at different points. Ships could change hands. Cargoes could move through intermediate ports. Sailors with different geographical knowledge could carry goods and people from one maritime zone to another.

This is how long-distance exchange works.

Muziris and the wider Indian Ocean

There is another point that deserves attention.

The ancient Indian Ocean was not a collection of isolated maritime regions separated by political boundaries. There was no modern system of fences, passports or territorial lines controlling the movement of people and goods across the sea.

The communities of the Indian coast were therefore not merely interacting with a single “Western world”.

They were participating in a much larger transoceanic network.

During its peak phase, the evidence associated with Pattanam/Muziris points towards connections extending from the Red Sea and eastern African regions through Arabia and the Indian subcontinent, across the Bay of Bengal and towards Southeast Asia and southern China.

Classical writers such as Pliny the Elder, Ptolemy and the anonymous author of the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, Strabo’s writings etc provide valuable literary evidence for the importance of Muziris within this wider maritime world. Archaeological evidence from the eastern coast of India and sites extending towards Southeast Asia and the South China Sea adds another dimension to this picture.

The connection with Hepu in present-day southern China is particularly significant because Hepu is associated with the early maritime routes that later became part of what we might call the maritime Silk Road.

This raises a remarkable possibility.

During its peak, Pattanam/Muziris may have stood within one of the longest continuously connected maritime corridors of the ancient world—perhaps extending from the western & Eastern Indian Oceans to the South China Sea.

We should, however, distinguish between what the evidence demonstrates and what it allows us to hypothesise. It would be premature to claim that Pattanam definitively controlled or “presided over” the entire route. What we can say is that the evidence places Pattanam/Muziris within an extraordinarily extensive maritime network.

The period roughly between 100 BCE and 200 CE appears particularly important in this regard.

So, who was moving?

This brings us back to the larger question: Who is Malayali?

Perhaps the most important correction is that we should not imagine the ancient people of this coast merely as passive recipients of people and things arriving from the West.

They were also travellers, navigators, producers, traders and participants in a maritime world that connected many regions.

The movement was not simply:

West → India.

It was:

India ↔ Arabia ↔ Red Sea ↔ Mediterranean

and simultaneously:

India ↔ Bay of Bengal ↔ Southeast Asia ↔ South China.

The sea did not function as a wall separating communities. It functioned as a medium connecting them.

Pattanam therefore gives us another opportunity to reconsider the mental image of our own past.

The people who lived on this coast around 300 BCE were not waiting for the Romans, Jews or any other “foreigners” to introduce them to the wider world.

They were already entering that world.

And perhaps the deeper question is not:

“How did the Romans reach Muziris?”

but:

“How did the people of Muziris become participants in a maritime world that was already reaching in many directions?”

That is where the archaeological evidence becomes truly exciting.

PAMA Team
19/08/2026

Please post your questions or comments on the Muziris/ Pattanam in WhatsApp number- +91 90748 52914. Or email [email protected]

17/08/2026

Who is Malayali?

PAMA, Q&A Session – 3

Question 2 from +1(905)-924-4803

If people travelled by sea from the Arabian Gulf towards the Malabar Coast, would the prevailing ocean currents have carried them first towards the coastal regions of Gujarat? If so, how could people and ships have reached the Malabar Coast and Pattanam/Muziris?

PAMA Team’s Reflection

This is a very interesting question because it takes us from history into the actual physical world of the Indian Ocean—its winds, currents, coastlines and seasons.

The short answer is: not necessarily.

Ocean currents are not like a single road running in one direction. The circulation of the Arabian Sea is strongly influenced by the seasonal monsoon system, and its direction and strength change with the seasons. Ancient sailors were not simply passive passengers carried by currents. They possessed practical knowledge of winds, currents, coastlines, seasons and navigation, and could plan their voyages accordingly. Coastal sailing, intermediate ports and changing monsoon conditions could all influence the routes they took.

Therefore, the fact that Gujarat lies to the east of the Arabian Gulf does not mean that every vessel travelling from the Gulf necessarily had to reach Gujarat before reaching the Malabar Coast.

But there is another possibility that is worth considering.

Why should we always imagine the movement of people as being from the west towards India? Why not also consider movement in the other direction—from the Indian coast towards the Arabian Gulf and beyond?

The indigenous communities of what is today Gujarat could themselves have travelled westward. Maritime interaction does not necessarily mean that people from one side simply arrived on the other. Coastal communities could have moved in both directions, and people living along the coastline from Gujarat towards the Arabian Sea and the southern Arabian regions could have participated in these networks.

We know that the ancient littoral regions of present-day Gujarat, Pakistan and Afghanistan had extensive connections with Mesopotamia and the Arabian regions during the Bronze Age. Archaeological evidence indicates long-distance exchange extending across these regions as early as the third millennium BCE.

But let us not confuse different periods.

For the present discussion, it is more useful to concentrate on the Early Historic period, approximately 500 BCE–500 CE, while recognising that the particular Muziris phase represented at Pattanam belongs broadly to the Sangam Age, approximately 300 BCE–300 CE.

The earlier networks did not suddenly disappear when the Muziris phase emerged. Rather, they formed part of a much longer history of maritime interaction. Before we come specifically to the Muziris phase, therefore, we need to ask a larger question:

Were the people of the Indian coast only receiving people, goods and ideas from elsewhere—or were they also active participants travelling, exchanging and contributing to the wider maritime world?

This question becomes particularly important because of the way many of us have unconsciously learned to imagine our own past.

For generations, our school histories have often made 1498, when Vasco da Gama reached the Malabar Coast at Kappad near present-day Kozhikode, appear almost like the moment when the wider world discovered Kerala.

The problem is not that Vasco da Gama arrived in 1498. He certainly did.

The problem arises when that event becomes a mental starting point for imagining Kerala’s relationship with the wider world—as though history always began with someone coming here.

What about us going there?

This is where we need to examine the assumptions embedded in our historical imagination.

Colonial and later narratives have often encouraged a hierarchy in which technological initiative, long-distance navigation and organised commerce are imagined as capacities that arrived from elsewhere, while the people of this coast are imagined primarily as recipients.

That is a deeply limiting way of looking at the past.

It is also difficult to reconcile with the archaeological evidence.

If we begin our story with 1498, it becomes easy to imagine that the people of Kerala before Vasco da Gama were largely isolated, technologically simple communities living in forests and dependent mainly on hunting, gathering and local resources, and that organised political systems, long-distance commerce, technologies and organised religions subsequently transformed them.

The archaeological evidence from Pattanam invites us to reconsider this picture very seriously.

Pattanam is not evidence of a society that was waiting to be “discovered” or introduced to the wider world.

The archaeological assemblage reveals participation in a complex maritime network during the Sangam Age, approximately 300 BCE–300 CE. The evidence includes large quantities of ceramics, beads, metal objects, architectural remains, industrial and craft-related evidence and other materials that demonstrate connections extending across the Indian Ocean and beyond.

The significance lies not in any single exotic object.

It lies in the assemblage.

An assemblage allows us to see relationships between objects, technologies, people, places and activities. At Pattanam, these relationships point towards sustained interaction within a maritime network connecting more than forty cultural regions and communities across Africa, Arabia, the Mediterranean, South Asia and East Asia.

This means that we need to think differently about the people who lived on this coast.

They were not simply isolated inhabitants of a tropical landscape waiting for the arrival of Europeans. They were participants in a world of maritime movement, production, exchange, technology and cultural interaction many centuries before Vasco da Gama.

There is another important point here.

We should be careful not to replace one simplistic narrative with another. Pattanam does not tell us that everyone living in ancient Kerala was a merchant, sailor or urban resident. Nor does it mean that the entire region had one uniform culture.

Rather, the evidence reveals multiple communities and ways of life connected through an extraordinarily active landscape.

This is why the Pattanam evidence matters to the question “Who is Malayali?”

It asks us to reconsider not only what our ancestors did, but also the mental categories through which we imagine them.

Perhaps the modern Malayali has inherited a somewhat fragmented image of the past—fragmented by modern identities, institutions and narratives. Pattanam offers a much longer view.

It suggests that the ancestors of the people who later became Malayalis were already living within a world of movement and interaction, long before the categories through which we understand ourselves today had taken their present form.

So perhaps the question is not simply:

“How did foreigners reach Kerala?”

It may be more useful to ask:

“How did the people of this coast participate in a world that was already interconnected?”

And perhaps an even more fundamental question is:

“Were we only receiving the world, or were we also helping to connect it?”

Pattanam gives us the opportunity to look at ourselves differently.

We may have to seriously consider that we are not quite what we have been taught to think we were.

That is not a conclusion to be imposed on the past.

It is an invitation to examine the evidence—and to remain curious about what it may reveal.

PAMA Team
09/08/2026