People come here for fresh air, shade, and a brief escape from traffic. Joggers pass by without slowing down. Children climb, couples sit, photographers frame sunsets. Almost no one stops to ask a strange
question hiding in plain sight: how old is the ground beneath our feet?
It looks ordinary enough. A rocky rise, worn smooth by time, sturdy and quiet. Nothing about it announces its age. And yet, this unassuming patch of stone has existed long before mountains rose, oceans shifted, or even life began to resemble what we know today.
Why age matters in geology
When we talk about “old” landscapes, most minds jump straight to the Himalayas. Snow, scale, drama. They feel ancient because they look ancient. But geology does not work on appearances. Age is not about height or grandeur. It is about when the rock first formed deep inside the Earth’s crust.
The Himalayas, for all their size, are actually young by planetary standards. They began forming around 40 to 50 million years ago when the Indian tectonic plate collided with Eurasia. They are still rising. Still restless. Still unfinished.
Now imagine rock that was already ancient when that collision happened.
A fragment from Earth’s earliest chapters
The rock in question are estimated to be around 3 billion years old. That places it among the oldest exposed rocks anywhere on Earth. Geologists have long told that it formed when the planet itself was still stabilising, when continents were assembling, breaking apart, and reassembling in slow motion over hundreds of millions of years.
At that time, there were no forests, no animals, no birds. Oxygen was only beginning to accumulate in the atmosphere. Life, if present at all, was microscopic. These rocks have survived pressures, heat, erosion, and tectonic shifts that wiped out entire mountain ranges elsewhere.
Hidden in the middle of a modern city
What makes this geological fact even more remarkable is not just the age of the rock, but its location. You do not need to trek into remote terrain or scale frozen peaks to see it. It sits quietly inside a vast botanical garden, surrounded by roads, buildings, and everyday life.
Urban development grew around the rock hill, not over it. Rulers and planners of the past recognised the rocky mound as a natural high point and left it intact. Later generations built gardens, pathways, and watchtowers, unknowingly preserving a window into deep time.
The reveal
The city is Bengaluru. The rock is found inside Lalbagh Botanical Garden. The rocky hill within Lalbagh, crowned by a historic watchtower, is part of the Peninsular Gneiss formation. Geologists date it to nearly 3 billion years old. That means these rocks existed billions of years before the Himalayas even began forming.
In simple terms, when the Himalayas were still ocean floor, Lalbagh’s rocks were already old.
Why this rarely comes up
Bengaluru is known for tech, traffic, weather, and gardens. Its geological importance rarely makes headlines. There are no loud signboards announcing the age of the stones. Most visitors walk past without realising they are touching some of Earth’s earliest crust.
Yet scientists across the world study similar formations in southern India to understand how continents formed and stabilised.
Standing on deep time
The next time you walk through Lalbagh, pause at the rocky rise. That stone has watched continents drift, mountains rise and erode, climates change, and civilizations come and go.
In a city obsessed with the future, Bengaluru quietly carries one of the oldest stories the planet has to tell, right under our feet.
