Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c6.s2.15

c6.s2.15

The next region towards the south where serious study of the Old Stone Age has been undertaken lies along the three main rivers which empty into the Gulf of Cambay—the Sabarmati, the Mahi and the Narbadā (or Narmadā)—and about the upper reaches of the Godāvarī, which nearly bisects the peninsula.¹⁶ Eastward the area of investigation has been extended to the valleys of the Kaimūr Range south of Banaras. The whole of this transcontinental region shows an interesting overlap between the flake-and-pebble industries on the one hand and the handaxe-cleaver series on the other, with an emergent hint of later Palaeolithic groups of which the full significance is not yet adequately understood. Here too, if anywhere, is it likely that an equation or compromise between the plurials of the tropics and the glaciations of the Himālayas may eventually be postulated;¹⁶ but much further fieldwork, geological and archaeological, must precede this happy result. Indian research is already busy in the matter.