Adam's Bridge, known in India as Rama's Bridge or Rama Setu, is a chain of limestone shoals, between the islands of Mannar, near northwestern Sri Lanka, and Rameswaram, off the southeastern coast of India. The bridge is 30 miles (48 km) long and separates the Gulf of Mannar (southwest) from the Palk Strait (northeast). Some of the sandbanks are dry and the sea in the area is very shallow, being only 3 ft to 30 ft (1 m to 10 m) deep. This seriously hinders navigation. It was reportedly passable on foot up to the 15th century until storms deepened the channel: temple records seem to say that Rama’s Bridge was complete above sea level until it broke in a cyclone in 1480 AD.[citation needed] This landbridge once connected Sri Lanka to South India during the Wisconsin glaciation
Space images taken by NASA reveal a mysterious ancient bridge in the Palk Strait between India and Sri Lanka. The recently discovered bridge currently named as Adam´s Bridge is made of chain of shoals, c.18 mi (30 km) long.
The bridge´s unique curvature and composition by age reveals that it is man made. The legends as well as Archeological studies reveal that the first signs of human inhabitants in Sri Lanka date back to the a primitive age, about 1,750,000 years ago
According to the legend of Ramayana, the land bridge was constructed by large numbers of monkey like beings under the supervision of Rama, who according to Hindus is a personalized almighty incarnation. The purpose of the construction was to reach Srilanka (across the sea) from the Indian mainland to rescue Rama's wife from the demon king Ravana. Ramayana, according to the Hindu time calendar, is supposed to have taken place in Tredha Yuga (The ancient scriptures in Hinduism discuss about events in terms of Yugas (Time phases of evolution) numerically four namely Sathya (17,28,000 years), Tredha (12,96,000 years), Dwapara (8,64,000 years) and Kali (4,32,000 years)). The current phase according to the calendar is kali, out of which 5000 years are supposed to have passed by. This means that Ramayana, to have relevance with the bridge, should have taken place between 8,69,000 to 21,65,000 years back (between the time period 0.869 - 2.165 million years).
The controversial Sethusamudram project
The route under the project,which involves dredging over a width of 300 metres and depth of 12 metres on Adam's Bridge, though inaugurated by Prime Minister on July 2, 2005, was approved as far back as October 2002 during the NDA regime.
"In fact, the project was vetted and endorsed by no less than 4 ministers of the previous NDA government - Arun Jaitley on March 9, 2001, V P Goyal on October 29, 2002, S Thirunavukkarasar on October 25, 2002, and Shatrughan Sinha - hence objections to the project are completely baseless," the Centre said.
It also rejected another contention of the petitioner that Adam's Bridge could qualify as an ancient monument and said there was no scientific basis to this contention. It was only a ruse to stop the project that would generate revenue from fees obtained from traffic passing through the channel. It said Taylor's proposal in 1860 was followed by similar proposals from Townsend (1861), Parliamentary Committee (1862),William Deninson (1863), Stoddart (1871), Robertson (1872), Sir John Code (1884), South Indian Railway Engineers (1903) and Robert Bristow (1922).
