Prehistory and Protohistory in India and Pakistan c8.s2: Stratigraphical Position

c8.s2.1

It was formerly believed that there was a hiatus between the Palaeolithic and the Neolithic. No body seemed to know what happened to the Old Stone Age man and how he passed into the New Stone Age. A great gulf appeared to divide these two periods. Then the excavation at Mas d'Azil in France in 1895 showed that there was no real hiatus between the palaeolithic and the neolithic. The discovery of this famous section made scholars look for similar evidence elsewhere. Till now very few places in Europe as well as in Africa have given such ideal data in which the Upper Palaeolithic culture is found in a lower stratum and the Neolithic culture is found lying above a stratum in which Mesolithic culture is still preserved.