When the settlement at Keeladi in Tamil Nadu first revealed its buried urban world, the conversation was about bricks, scripts, and the architecture of civilization. Now, just weeks later, that conversation has taken a strikingly human turn. From the urns of Kondagai, only a few kilometres away, archaeologists have reconstructed the faces of two men who lived and died 2,500 years ago. For the first time, the past looks back at us not as shards or symbols, but as people.

The significance of this step cannot be overstated. Artefacts tell us about structures and systems; faces tell us about identity. To see the contours of cheekbones, the line of a jaw, or the imagined shade of skin is to be reminded that these were not abstractions but individuals who lived, traded, toiled and thought in a society far more sophisticated than once assumed. To look into these reconstructed faces is to confront continuity........

© The Statesman