Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c9.48

c9.48

Our evidence, therefore, shows that Lower Palaeolithic cultures within the core and flake (or chopper) groups were both present in India at the beginning of Middle Pleistocene times and that they survived in archaic forms long after the close of the last Glacial Period in a way rather comparable to that of the Palaeolithic industries of Burma. The microlithic flint industries may be contemporary with those of fairly early post-glacial date in Europe and the Near East, or they may be later; in any event they seem likely, in the absence of the Upper Palaeolithic blade industries which might be considered ancestral to them in India, to represent a new cultural, and perhaps ethnic, element. These microlithic cultures again had a long survival, side by side with communities making pottery and ground stone axes in the Neolithic tradition. The origin of these Neolithic cultures is unknown, though they are more likely to be the result of folk-movements from the west than of independent invention within India. Neither in Central India nor in Kashmir can such cultures be dated satisfactorily much before 500 B.C. on the evidence at present available.