Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c6.s1.30

c6.s1.30

In 1863, R. Bruce Foote, of the Geological Survey of India, picked up a palaeolithic implement in a gravel-pit at Pallavaram, near Madras. From this early start began the intermittent study of the Old Stone Age of India, though it is a fair comment to add that that study is still in a rudimentary stage. Foote's own work was of fundamental value, but only in the last quarter-century has the subject received any further sustained attention from trained enquirers.¹¹ Here no complete survey or even summary can be attempted, but a few of the more notable palaeolithic sites in northern, central and southern India are selected to illustrate the current state of enquiry. If the result displays a somewhat sombre monotony, it is at least a sympathetic reflection of millennia of mental and social stagnation modified by reluctant technical variation and occasional slight advancement. In India, not less than in other parts of the world, the human race got off to a slow start.