Prehistory and Protohistory in India and Pakistan c4.s18: Prehistory
Prehistory and Protohistory in India and Pakistan c4.s18
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Prehistory
c4.s18.1
Prehistory means the history of a region, a country or a nation, people or race, before it took to or knew writing. This, like ordinary history, is not based on accounts of contemporary or later writers. Hence prehistory is also defined as an account of illiterate or preliterate people.
c4.s18.2
How is then the history of such an illiterate people or country known? What are or can be its sources? In brief, anything that tells us its past history: language, place-names and study of the people's physical features, customs and manners, legends and traditions, their monuments; even a study of landforms, soil and vegetation and the animals may help to illustrate this story. Of all these several sources—language and linguistics, ethnography and ethnology, geography, geology, physical anthropology, flora and fauna, we are here concerned with archaeology alone.