Prehistory and Protohistory in India and Pakistan c7.s6.5

c7.s6.5

It has been urged¹⁰ that the term "Middle Palaeolithic"¹¹ should not be used for this industry, for it immediately makes one compare it with its namesake in Europe, and the term "Middle Stone Age" be used instead. In the first place, the term "Middle Palaeolithic" may by usage remind one of the European, but these are most simple, common terms, and not like the words "Acheulian" or "Aurignacian," after a particular French site which connote a particular type of culture, that their use should be confined to Europe. The alternative suggestion "Middle Stone Age" is also in imitation of an African practice, and thus not free from similar objection. Moreover, the African analogy does not help, because there the term "connotes a large group of cultures, differing from region to region and with different names, but all having a great deal in common with regard to technique and typology...."¹² Secondly, there is a "lack of sufficient stratigraphical evidence," whereas in India, the stratigraphical position restricts it to the "middle gravels," which succeed the Middle Pleistocene, almost everywhere, and on the present palaeontological evidence can be dated to the Middle Pleistocene, but may be placed in the early Late Pleistocene. According to one suggestion,¹³ the industry might be regarded as a "Flake Culture" of the Lower Palaeolithic. This suggestion satisfies the palaeontological evidence, but not the stratigraphical and typo-technological. Until better, more positive, evidence is available to place the culture later (or earlier?), this new Stone Age Culture should be called "Indian Middle Palaeolithic" or "Nevasian." It falls in the early Late Pleistocene period, when under a wet phase, practically all over the the Peninsular India, the rivers deposited over or against the older gravel or silt, a comparatively finer gravel. This formation occurs as a low Terrace (T2) at Maheshwar, Nevasa, Mehenduri, Nandur Madhmeshwar, and Tandrepadu, opposite Kurnool. In the last region, there are other sites, where too this second deposit occurs banked up against the older, but not as a distinct broad terrace. *(Figs 36-37.)*