Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c6.7

c6.7

Nor, in relation to the earliest stone industries of India, has geology yet produced that measure of precision which, in Europe, is gradually emerging from modern geochronological method: for example, by equating ancient climatic fluctuations, deduced from the examination of loess-deposits and the analysis of river-gravels, with fluctuations of the intensity of solar radiation calculated on an astronomical basis; or by computing the rates of weathering, denudation and sedimentation in the light of such evidence as that provided by varved clays or radiocarbon analysis.³ A cross-reference of some of the European to some of the Indian evidence might be attempted if we could with any confidence equate the Himālayan glaciations with those of the Alps. But such equations as have in fact been postulated, however likely, remain guesswork; and even within the subcontinent itself the relation of the pluvials of the tropics to the glaciations of the north is still full of speculation. We are still adrift in time.