The Bhimbetka Rock Shelters in Madhya Pradesh are a glimpse into a Paleolithic civilisation.Humans have been hunters and gatherers for more than 98 per cent of our evolutionary history. Our adoption of agriculture and the concomitant ‘civilisation’ dates back barely 10,000. Therefore, historians’ obsession with this tiny sliver of our past, often at the expense of over 7 million years of cave living, is astounding.What is more remarkable is the view increasingly held by important biologists that we were probably more successful as hunters and gatherers. Biologist Jared Diamond, author of The Third Chimpanzee, famously called our adoption of agriculture, “the worst mistake in the history of human race”.Our trajectory from stone-age to science, the view goes, has not necessarily been a boon. With our sophisticated weapons, exploding population and environmental destruction, we could spell doom for ourselves and the 33 million species we share the planet with.The visit to Bhimbetka Rock Shelters is therefore, a humbling tryst with history. It is here that humans lived as hunters and gatherers stretching from the Paleolithic period (over 40,000 years ago) to Medieval times - the longest habitation of humans in the Indian subcontinent. But, the Bhimbetka Rock Shelters perhaps best exemplify our unwillingness to engage with this large chunk of our past. It’s a past we are happy to have emerged from and today, in common parlance, cavemen or Neanderthals are words used only pejoratively.Therefore, it did not come as a surprise when on both my visits - set apart by a few years - to these remarkable caves in central Madhya Pradesh, I was the only morning visitor. The caves officially open at 6 am, but both times, I had to go looking for the gatekeeper. Not that there is a problem getting in. One can walk right past the barricade without any hindrance and vandalise, if one wishes, the prehistoric paintings preserved on these rocks over millennia.On both visits, the gatekeeper had to be summoned and they looked surprised and irritated at having to issue a ticket to someone that early. early.There are no pesky guides here and, though these art galleries are barricaded, the rock shelters aren’t fenced in. They remain open to the jungle that surrounds them.Bhimbetka has over 750 caves with only 15 open to visitors. Etched on the walls are paintings, most of them depicting simple sketches of animals, both, domestic and wild, including bison, tiger, rhinoceros, elephant, wild bore, monkey, antelope and peacock. There is the depiction of hunting scenes and battles. The more recent paintings depict dance resembling the formations of the Gond tribes that inhabit the region today.Because Bhimbetka saw a wide swathe of human habitation, it has layers upon layers of human history.The oldest painting here goes back to over 30,000 years, making it the oldest art gallery in India. However, UNESCO deigned to grant Bhimbetka a World Heritage Site status as late as 2003, decades after bestowing the honour on monuments it thought more important. But then it was only in 1957 that Indian archeologist V S Wakankar discovered these caves. Until then, perhaps because of their close proximity to the Sanchi Stupa and other Buddhist monasteries, they existed in archaeological records only as Buddhist sites. Until then we thought that the oldest record of human existence in the Indian subcontinent harked back to the Indus Valley Civilisation.The name Bhimbetka comes from the Hindu epic Mahabharata. The Pandav, Bhim, legend goes, had rested here during his travels.Bhimbetka Rocks Shelters are a sandy outcrop, jutting out from the foothills of the Vidhyanchal hills in Raisen District of Madhya Pradesh, 46 kilometres from modern Bhopal. They lie hidden deep in a forest, one reason for their late discovery and preservation. It is easy to see why our ancestors chose to inhabit them. Concealed in the forests with vaulted wide tunnels, deep enclaves, the shelters provided excellent protection from wild animals, the weather and other marauding tribes.All pre-historic paintings including the ones at Bhimbetka invalidate the view that we always had it rough as cavemen and that leisure time; a prerequisite of art , came with agriculture. In fact, the paintings are testimony to the fact that cavemen had a lot of down time.Archeologists believe that the earliest art-work would have been in wood, clay and other perishables that did not survive for our scrutiny.A mixture of vegetable dyes, animal fat, manganese, coat and red stone was used for the Bhimbetka paintings. The simple etchings reveal an intimate relationship humans had with their environment.Bhimbetka is 45 km from Bhopal. Hire a taxi. Bhopal is well connected both by air and rail to all major cities in India, including Mumbai.