Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c8.11

c8.11

Three years after Cunningham’s visit to Harappā, in 1859, Darwin’s *Origin of Species* was published, and in the same year Sir John Evans, with Falconer and Prestwich the geologists, made the famous visit to Abbeville where they were convinced of the geological antiquity of man-made flint implements associated with extinct species of mammals. In 1863 Lyell published his *Geological Evidence of the Antiquity of Man*: in Europe at least Palaeolithic Man was being recognized. But in this same year the geologist Bruce Foote found the first Indian palaeolithic implement near Madras, and the first step in the conception of the essential unity of the earlier Stone Age cultures throughout the Old World had been taken. Further discoveries were soon to be made, and recognized for what they were within the limits of the geological and archaeological knowledge of the day. Today we can with some show of probability refer these earliest stone tools from India to a date somewhere around four hundred thousand years ago.