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Miscreants have caused damage to the rock art paintings at the Pathimalai cave at Kumittipathi, a village near Coimbatore,Tamil Nadu by scribbling their names in the cave and tracing the paintings with chalks
The Pathimalai cave paintings believed to be around 3,000 years old, are among the important rock arts in the Kongu region.
Drawn with white pigments, the paintings depict an elephant, ther (chariot, some say it is a peacock), and the lives of early dwellers of the region
While most of the rock painting sites in Tamil Nadu are found on rock shelters, those at Kumittipathi are drawn inside a cave.
Paintings inside such perfect caves are very few in the State
There is a Murugan temple atop the hillock and it could mean that the early dwellers worshipped the deity
Kumittipathi falls in the Palakkad Gap of the Western Ghats, a significant break in the mountain range, which has acted as a corridor between the Tamil land and Kerala since ancient times.
There were ancient trade routes (Peruvazhi) in the Palakkad Gap between Anamalai and Ayyasamy Malai.
Three such routes passed through Anamalai, Vellalore, and Avinashi during the Sangam period
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