The Personality of India: Pre- and Proto-historic Foundation of India and Pakistan c5.2

c5.2

One of the most basic features of India's cultural history is the diversity, at any point of time, in the cultural strata, technological attainments and other aspects of material culture in different parts of the country; and sometimes within the same region. Going back into history, we find, for example, the highly developed urban civilization of the Indus valley, comparable in stature and time to those of Western Asia. On the other hand, we have Stone Age communities right into the Early Historic period; and indeed into our own times, if we take the economic life of some of the tribes—the so called aboriginals of India. This differential development can, to a great extent, be explained by the ecology and geography of the various cultural regions of India. In the following pages an attempt is made to study and correlate the physical and the cultural regions from the point of view of Archaeology. This provisional zoning has to be followed by more intensive and systematic field studies.