Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c6.s3.39

c6.s3.39

Nor need the answer, when found, be a simple one. It is more than likely that, in the Middle Pleistocene, India was populated by human or sub-human beings of very various types, perhaps both more and less advanced than the *pithecanthropi* or ape-men, of doubtful speech and diverse aspect, who have been recognized elsewhere in Asia. It is not impossible that these heterogeneous types, partially contemporary with one another, shared in the industries which we have described. Meanwhile, in fairness to our proto-Indians of the Old Stone Age, let it be said again that we know almost nothing about them. Their brains, many of them, were probably no less ample than ours, and their thoughts may have been only a little more inconsequential. We like to imagine them as squatting along the river-banks in the neighbourhood of suitable outcrops, shaping, with prodigal expenditure of material, endless masses of stone with which to slay and dismember endless processions of animals in the unwary moment of the morning or evening draught. But in sooth we do not even know the intent which lay behind this industrious manipulation of flakes and pebbles. What, for example, was the real function of those weighty handaxes, sometimes a foot in length, which were so skilfully sharpened on both sides alike by carefully controlled blows? It has been suggested that the handaxe was 'an excellent instrument for digging up roots, grubs, and other food from the ground': truffles with a handaxe. On the other hand, at that astonishing site at Olorgesailie, near Nairobi in Kenya, tens of thousands of handaxes are associated with animal-bones split to extract the marrow and skulls smashed to extract the brains. Handaxe man was certainly an indifferent vegetarian; and the answer doubtless is that this tool, made by the million, was in fact an all-purposes tool, whether actually held in some vast encompassing handgrip or mounted for use in some fashion lost to us. We do not even know whether the abstract creature whom we have called 'Handaxe man' had articulate speech.