Prehistory and Protohistory in India and Pakistan c6.s16: Hand-axe Man
Prehistory and Protohistory in India and Pakistan c6.s16
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Hand-axe Man
c6.s16.1
The distribution of hand-axe suggests that the hand-axe-maker lived on river banks in the open or on the edge of forests, avoiding the interior, upto an altitude of 2,000 feet or so. Higher, bare altitudes or heavily forested ones were avoided, because vegetables as well as animals and even raw material for making tools was scarce. So also water, which was the prime necessity. All these can be easily had in certain regions only. Likewise, lower reaches of the rivers near the delta or near its mouth would be unsuitable for habitation.
c6.s16.2
On these grounds alone we may explain the non-occurrence of hand-axes from Assam and Kerala. The first is heavily forested, the second is a coastal lagoon. One must, however, warn against facile generalizations. For it is equally true that these regions have not been systematically explored.
c6.s16.3
The same is true of Sind and Saurashtra. Both have given some data for the existence of Middle Palaeolithic Cultures; so unless Saurashtra was non-existent in Early Palaeolithic times, being under the sea, there is no reason for the non-occurrence of hand-axes there.145a For if it was there, whether as an island or as a peninsula, then it lay between Africa and India. Since the former is likely to have influenced the latter during the Early and Later Stone Ages, Saurashtra should provide some valuable evidence, because of its geographical position. Systematic exploration should provide an answer.
c6.s16.4
145a The writer noticed two promising sites on the Bhadar, viz. Rojadi and Jetpur, which need careful examination.
c6.s16.5
The story of Sind seems to be like that of Rajputana. If both these were under a sea, during the Middle Pleistocene times, then no relics of Early Stone Age can be expected. Otherwise, these appear to be hidden in the thick deposits of river silt and windborne sand.
c6.s16.6
Regarding the environment and the life of *Homo sapiens*¹⁴⁶ who might be the Hand-axe Man, we cannot say much, because we know so little about him personally. No skeletal remains are so far found from India proper, but once again the distribution of his stone tools and great affinity with those from the East and South Africa suggest that the Early Man in India was related physically and culturally to the Early African Man. In the last, not only we have the earliest tools, but its makers called "Zinjanthropus" and pre-Zinj man dated to 1,75,0000 years.¹⁴⁷ That like him he witnessed several wet and dry phases, his first arrival coinciding with a wet phase; we may say practically all over Peninsular India, from Northern Rajputana¹⁴⁸ to Madras in the south and from Bombay in the west to Orissa in the east.
c6.s16.7
¹⁴⁶ There is no surety; the evidence is based on one skeleton from Swanscombe in England. ZEUNER, therefore, would not generalise on this slender data. He thinks that the *Homo sapiens* was undoubtedly connected with Upper Palaeolithic cultures. See ZEUNER, *op. cit.*, p. 305.
c6.s16.8
¹⁴⁷ *National Geographic*, October 1961, p. 568.
c6.s16.9
¹⁴⁸ In fact, it extends upto the Potwar Plateau in the Panjab where his tools occur in the deposits of the 2nd Interglacial deposits, and then later at Chauntra.