Posted on March 7th, 2021 By P. K. Balachandran/Ceylon Today Colombo, March 8: India-Sri Lanka trade goes far into the past, to the Early Historic Era in fact. The island had also played the additional role of being a transit point, a hub, in the trade between the Eastern and Western worlds. The story of India-Sri Lanka trade in ancient times is told by Prof. K. Rajan of Pondicherry University in his book: Churning the Indian Ocean: Maritime Trade of Early Historic Peninsular India.” Rajan says that if the similarities between South India and Sri Lanka are striking it is partly because they were part of a single land mass in the Pleistocene Epoch. India and Sri Lanka were connected by a natural land bridge across the Palk Strait. The Pleistocene Epoch is defined as the time period till about 11,700 years ago.Stone artefacts found in Lanka which are identical to Indian artifacts have been dated between 45,000 to 80,000 BP (BP is ‘Before Present’ with the year 1950 being considered the ‘present’).