A cave in India's rainiest state names the age we live in
Meghalaya, the abode of clouds, soaks up around 12,000 mm of rain a year in its wettest hills. It also lends its name to geological time: since 2018 the latest slice of the Holocene has been the Meghalayan age, pinned to a cave formation that records a global climate jolt around 2250 BCE.
The name joins two Sanskrit words, megha for cloud and alaya for abode, and was coined in 1936 by the Calcutta geographer Shiba P. Chatterjee. The state sits in India's northeast, bordered by Bangladesh on the south and west and by Assam on the other sides, and covers roughly 22,429 square kilometres with Shillong as its capital. British officials nicknamed it the Scotland of the East.
Rain is its defining fact. Moist air hitting the southern Khasi Hills produces extraordinary totals: Cherrapunji, also called Sohra, holds the world record for the most rain in a calendar month, and nearby Mawsynram holds the record for a single year. In July 2018 the International Commission on Stratigraphy split the Holocene into three, choosing a stalactite-type deposit in Mawmluh cave as the marker for the youngest stage.
Roughly 70 percent of the state is forest, and some patches are sacred groves protected by local communities for centuries for religious reasons, sheltering rare plants and animals. Nearly 325 orchid varieties grow here, along with India's only insect-eating pitcher plant, Nepenthes khasiana. Hoolock gibbons live in every district, and limestone caves such as Siju shelter some of the country's rarest bats.
Society is distinctive too. The Khasi, Garo and Jaintia peoples had their own kingdoms before British rule, and inheritance has traditionally passed through women, with the youngest daughter receiving the family wealth and caring for her parents. After independence the hills were part of Assam; a campaign for a separate state began in 1960, autonomy came in 1970 and full statehood on 21 January 1972. English, Khasi and Garo are the official languages.
Source: Meghalaya
