Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c10.20

c10.20

But, before turning to the prehistoric and early historic sequence after the time of the first occupations of Hassuna and Sialk, there is an important point to be touched upon. We have said that these earliest agricultural settlements were in a ‘stone age’, implying by this that the people who lived in these settlements, and tilled the adjacent fields, knew nothing of any metal for making tools or other objects. The sequence Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages, originally worked out for Northern Europe, is, as it happens, relatively valid in many other regions, especially in so far as the use of chipped or ground stone invariably seems to have come before the use of any metal. But people may move straight out of a ‘stone age’ into an ‘iron age’ when this new substance is suddenly introduced to them from outside, or the addition of the knowledge of metal may have no effect on their general economy. The Chenchu tribes of Hyderabad at the present day live a food-gathering, nomadic existence to which iron has contributed nothing but a spike to go on the end of the digging stick with which they dig up the edible roots on which they mainly live.