Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c9.31

c9.31

In Europe and North and East Africa, and again in Palestine, it has been shown that in immediately post-glacial times, when the ice was making its final retreat to within its present bounds, various regional industries or cultures grew up, based on Upper Palaeolithic traditions of blade-tools but showing a marked tendency to reduce these blades to often absurdly small dimensions, presumably as the armament of composite tools made largely of wood or bone. In a large number of regions in South or Central India, south of a line joining the Upper Ganges to the Rann of Cutch, and sporadically elsewhere (in Sind and in North-West Punjab) there occur stone industries consisting of such diminutive implements, which are comparable to the Capsian group of post-glacial, Mesolithic industries of Europe and North Africa. The Capsian industry is represented in Kenya, and it has been claimed that certain skeletons from Gujerat, allegedly of the same date as a local microlithic industry, show Hamitic or Negroid characteristics. Whatever weight we give to this evidence, there is nevertheless a likelihood that the Indian microlithic industries are not unconnected with those moves from North Africa eastwards which can be traced in other regions.