The Personality of India: Pre- and Proto-historic Foundation of India and Pakistan c11.23

c11.23

Then after these four phases of stone age, we have naturally transitional communities, who were acquainted with the metals, but not yet sufficiently to alter the economic character of their societies. The stone still dominates their raw materials for tools. These may be called ‘Chalcolithic’ for convenience. In India in particular, till the advent of Iron, it is very interesting to note that the distribution of the Chalcolithic cultures has a definite relation to the proximity to the regions where copper is available in large quantities. For example, since the ‘Grey Ware’ folk succeeded the ‘Copper Hoard’ cultures (Vide Hastinapur)⁴ Gangetic valley Proto-historic cultures were technically in a Copper-bronze Age. In Malwa and Deccan, we have a very highly developed stone Blade industry⁵ to supplement their scanty supply of copper tools. In view of the technological and cultural divergences in the Proto-historic period of Indian history and archaeology, we may use the safer term ‘Proto-historic period’ to cover the entire range of cultures between the Pre-Harappan, Harappan and Post-Harappan and the succeeding Early Historic cultures of about 500 B.C. A rough sequence, within this whole range of Proto-historic, can be derived from the three 'cycles' of cultures described in Chapter VI.