Prehistory and Protohistory in India and Pakistan c8.s3: Environment
Prehistory and Protohistory in India and Pakistan c8.s3
- Language
- English
Environment
c8.s3.1
The *milieu* in which this culture was found has been studied in very great detail by a number of European scholars among whom J. G. D. CLARK of England is the most prominent. His two works *The Mesolithic Age in Britain* and *The Mesolithic Settlements in North-West Europe* have shown that the conditions under which man lived in Europe as well as England were far different from those that obtained when the Upper Palaeolithic man lived in the caves and rock shelters of France, England, Germany, Czechoslovakia etc. The cold had gone and with that the large animals—mammoth, reindeer, cave bear and others. A more temperate, genial climate had come over during which the country had become comparatively barren and open. Of course, there were wide regional differences; for instance what one may find in the swampy areas in Denmark or Holland and the dry areas in France. But the one characteristic that ties all these areas and the cultures unearthed from them is a tiny stone implement, generally called "microlith." These microliths, as pointed out elsewhere, have various subdivisions and groups. Of late, inferences are even made from the types of tools regarding the character of the microlithic culture—such as Hunting, Fishing and Incipient Agriculture, or a combination of the first two or all. Thus these microliths which bridge the gulf stratigraphically between the Palaeolithic and the Neolithic are not only different technologically from the earlier and the later stone tools, but once again show the economic stage in which man lived as well as his environment. In one sense it was a retrogression. For, as far as Western Europe was concerned, no longer do we find the beautiful tools and the art in ivory, soft stone etc. of which France, Italy, Germany, Czechoslovakia and Southern Russia have given us beautiful specimens. Nevertheless, the tools when studied scientifically show that man had now devised a compound tool. It means only this: that small tiny implements were hafted and not used singly, but a series of them were employed to prepare an arrow-head or spear-head or a sickle. It is this invention of a highly advanced principle which is to be emphasized while judging the Mesolithic culture in India or elsewhere.
c8.s3.2
It is however true and cannot be too much emphasized that all microliths, wherever found, do not suggest or stand for a mesolithic stage of culture. Microliths have been found in India from the last century and the distribution will show that there is no corner of India where they have not been found.⁴ But it does not mean as some people think that the Fergusson College Hill or the Pandharpur region was the home of the mesolithic culture, because some microliths have been found at these places. It is the context, the stratigraphy, that is the most important criterion for judging whether a microlith belongs to the mesolithic stage or not.
c8.s3.3
⁴ Barring the exceptions mentioned below.
c8.s3.4
Applying this criterion to discoveries in India, one has to admit that in spite of the work that has been done during the last 20 years, there are no ideal sections like that of Mas d'Azil. Nowhere in India microliths immediately overlie the Palaeolithic and underlie the Neolithic. It is therefore not true to say that we have got definitely mesolithic cultures comparable to those in Europe or Africa, either in time or content or stratigraphy.
c8.s3.5
This being the case what can be done at present is to describe a few typical sites, where microliths have been collected very carefully from excavations or otherwise and studied scientifically and then to arrive at the age and nature of the culture from other associated data.