Sudharshan Seneviratne Professor of Archaeology University of Peradeniya Sri Lank *Orginally published in LANKA GUARDIAN. Vol. 6 (1983) For nearly two and a half millennia the Vedda withstood the ravages of cultural and technological encroachments of ‘civilization’.  Today they do not possess any magic or charm powerful enough to stem the tide of ‘modernization’ that is literary bulldozing its way though the once serene forest and ejecting its inhabitants from their natural habitat. The Vedda are facing the ‘final solution’ or total obliteration though a process of assimilation as peripheral elements of   the cosmopolitan civilization.  They have finally come up against a techno-cultural contender capable of destroying the material basis sustaining them as a separate entity, which in itself is the antithesis to ‘civilization through modernization’.