Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c9.17

c9.17

The earliest indication of tool-making men in Pleistocene India appears to be in the last phase of the Second Glaciation or at the beginning of the Second (Great) Interglacial. In deposits of this geological age in Northern India, in the Potwar (Rawalpindi) region, and perhaps again in Central India, in the Upper Narbada valley (Hoshangabad, Jubbulpore, district) large rough flake-tools have been found, and should belong to the very end of the Lower Pleistocene phase and be contemporary with the earlier Pithecanthropoids in Java. In West and Central Europe at this time both core and flake industries are recognizable in distinctive forms. The Indian flake-industry is known as the *Pre-Soan* industry, to indicate its chronological position before the main series of Lower Palaeolithic cultures in the valley of the Soan River, a tributary of the Indus in the Potwar region of the Punjab. These early flake-tools have no close relatives in other Asiatic industries, as far as these are known at present.