Meghalayan
Youngest Holocene age (4.2 ka to present), named for Meghalaya, India, where its boundary speleothem was obtained.
Language and route: Indian state name Meghalaya, from Sanskrit मेघ (megha) “cloud” + आलय (ālaya) “abode”. Indian state name Meghalaya, from Sanskrit मेघ (megha) “cloud” + आलय (ālaya) “abode”. Sanskrit-derived Indian place-name, adopted as English scientific adjective.
Literal gloss: of Meghalaya
The name and its history
Holocene subdivision working group (Walker et al.) · 14 June 2018 IUGS ratification
- What does the word literally mean?
- of Meghalaya
- What did the original author mean?
- The name refers to Meghalaya state and the Mawmluh Cave speleothem, not directly to a drought or to an epoch supposedly commencing everywhere in human history on the same date.
- Why was the name needed?
- An internationally usable Late Holocene boundary was required to regularise widely differing archaeological and climate-based usages of “Late Holocene”.
- What evidence supported the original concept?
- The boundary is in the isotopic record of a Mawmluh Cave speleothem; the approximately 4.2 ka aridity event supported long-distance correlation, with heterogeneous regional consequences.
- How has geology changed the concept?
- IUGS ratification in 2018 formalised a stage and its corresponding Late Holocene subepoch; scholarly debate about global expression of the 4.2 ka event does not make the place-name a universal palaeoclimatic description.
Further historical context
The name refers to Meghalaya state and the Mawmluh Cave speleothem, not directly to a drought or to an epoch supposedly commencing everywhere in human history on the same date.
An internationally usable Late Holocene boundary was required to regularise widely differing archaeological and climate-based usages of “Late Holocene”.
The boundary is in the isotopic record of a Mawmluh Cave speleothem; the approximately 4.2 ka aridity event supported long-distance correlation, with heterogeneous regional consequences.
IUGS ratification in 2018 formalised a stage and its corresponding Late Holocene subepoch; scholarly debate about global expression of the 4.2 ka event does not make the place-name a universal palaeoclimatic description.
Editorial qualification
The state name can be analysed as Sanskrit “abode of clouds”, but that is the deeper toponymic etymology, NOT the stage proposer’s geological naming rationale.
Related names
Sources
- ICS, International Chronostratigraphic Chart v2026/06 — Governing classification, chronological sequence and numerical reference ages; not naming priority
- Walker et al. (2012), Formal subdivision of the Holocene: discussion paper — Contemporaneous proposal to replace variable informal tripartition by worldwide divisions
- Walker et al. (2018), Formal ratification of the subdivision of the Holocene, Episodes — Official naming, locations, proxy markers and ratification on 14 June 2018
- Walker et al. (2019), Subdividing the Holocene: GSSPs and auxiliary stratotypes — Detailed explanation of the Holocene stage names and definitions
- ICS Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy, Major divisions — Institutional history of Quaternary stages, GSSPs, and reassignment of the Gelasian
- ICS, International Stratigraphic Guide: Chronostratigraphic Units — Stage/age, series/epoch and subseries/subepoch distinctions