Prehistory and Protohistory in India and Pakistan c8.s3.1

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.