Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c13.55

c13.55

Associated with these axe types in several hoards, confined to the valleys of the Jumna and Ganges, is a remarkable series of copper harpoons, which can be arranged in a typological series evolving from primitive types which clearly copy prototypes in bone or horn. These harpoons must represent a local development among river-side communities whose economy centred round fish-spearing and whose primitive equipment was transformed into metal when the knowledge of metallurgy spread among them. The implied existence of harpoons of forms similar to those known in many mesolithic cultures of Europe and Western Asia is of some interest, and has been commented on in Chapter II.