Prehistory and Protohistory in India and Pakistan c5.s12: Chronological Table
Prehistory and Protohistory in India and Pakistan c5.s12
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Chronological Table
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The following table will at a glance show the *present* position of pre- and proto-historic archaeology in India.
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PROTO-HISTORY
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| 2,500 B.C.- 2,000 B.C. | Bronze Age | Sind Panjab Rajputana Saurashtra |
| C. 18,00 B.C.- 1,000 B.C. | Chalcolithic | Rajputana Central India Saurashtra Deccan |
| c. 2000 B.C. | Neolithic | Andhra Karnatak Kashmir |
| c. 3,500 B.C. ? | Neolithic | Baluchistan |
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PRE-HISTORY
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| c. 5,000 B.C. | Mesolithic or Late Stone Age | Langhnaj Mysore Tinnevelly Birbhanpur |
| | Upper Palaeolithic | ? ? Kurnool Kandivli |
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| c. 25,000 B.C. | Middle Palaeolithic or Stone Age | Late Sohan Nevasian and its other manifestations | Panjab Peninsular India, barring Assam, Nepal, Kerala and perhaps extreme S. India. |
| 1,50,000 B.C.³⁰ | Early Stone Age or Early Palaeolithic | Sohanian or Chopper-chopping tool culture | } Panjab |
| | | Hand-axe culture | Panjab and Peninsular India barring Assam, Nepal, Kerala, Sind, W. Rajputana and extreme S. India. |
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³⁰ This is a very conservative estimate, based on the palaeontological and other methods of dating the Middle Pleistocene and the associated Abbevillian and Acheulian industries in India. Since, however, the Chellean (Abbevillian) at Olduvai in East Africa can now be dated to about 1,750,000 years by the argon potassium method (LEAKEY, L. S. B. and CURTIS, G. H., in National Geographic, October, 1961, p. 564), it is to be seen how this affects the dating of these industries elsewhere. Some backward dating of our industries is inevitable, if the claims of this new method are universally accepted.
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The above chart is presented here with a view to facilitate understanding of the complicated and still very much immature state of the subject³¹. It can best be done for the general reader with the help of the Three Age system of THOMSEN, as modified during the last 100 years. Even its most brilliant critic,³² Dr. GLYN DANIEL, has had recourse to it when he describes the Indus Civilization as Chalcolithic in one of his later publications.³³ This state of things will remain until a more suitable terminology, a "vocabulary" which is more objective than the present is "discovered". For many scholars in the field have criticized, but few have come forward with a really constructive suggestion which is universally acclaimed.
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³¹ The arrangement of the Chronology on the basis of the Three Age system at once shows its merits and demerits. First it is not of universal application in India, much less for the whole world. Secondly, one has to provide for periods of retrogression, as in Sind and Saurashtra.
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³² DANIEL, GLYN, E., The Three Ages, Cambridge, 1943.
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³³ DANIEL, A Hundred Years of Archaeology, p. 250.