Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c7.21

c7.21

In the south of India a partially equivalent Upper Palaeolithic seems to emerge as Series 3 of the Cammiade-Burkitt succession. In the Nandikanama Pass north of Madras (p. 48), on the surface of a red alluvial clay which is in turn sealed by red sandy soil—both layers which should be subsequent to the gravels containing the handaxe and flake-industries of Series 1 and 2—have been found a number of knife-blades of black (Lydian?) stone showing fine blunting down the backs, together with core-scrapers and burins mostly of the gouge type. Small crescents or 'lunates', however, of a normal microlithic type also occur in the Series, and, if in place, suggest that the industry may be too late to constitute an immediate follow-up of the Mid-Pleistocene Series, 1 and 2. On the other hand, Series 3 has an affinity with the so-called Capsian of Kenya, where lunates also occur with backed-blades, burins and end-scrapers. Incidentally, two radiocarbon dates for the partially comparable Upper Capsian of North Africa give c. 6500 and 5000 B.C.,²² and, if the Indian dating should prove to be of the same order or even somewhat earlier, an appreciable gap between Series 2 and 3 becomes virtually certain.