Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c9.29

c9.29

For the present there is not enough material to form a basis for discussion, and the most hopeful line of research would seem to be the excavation of caves and rock-shelters in India such as were so often inhabited as winter retreats by Upper Palaeolithic man in Europe and West Asia. Bone implements, described as similar to the Upper Palaeolithic Magdalenian forms, were found in 1884 in a cave near Kurnool with bones of extinct mammals, but they have been lost and nothing further is known about them; it is incidently most improbable that they were Magdalenian in type, since this culture is one restricted almost entirely to France. It will be seen however (p.237 below) that certain metal harpoons from the Ganges Valley, of mid second millennium B.C. date, are copies of barbed bone or antler points in the Upper Palaeolithic or Mesolithic tradition.