Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c7.37

c7.37

A similar vagueness often attaches to sherds found elsewhere with microlithic industries, and the only value which can be derived from the association is the implication that no very remote age is ascribable to the industries in question: be it repeated that most of them are probably not earlier than the 1st millennium B.C. True, in East Africa crude pottery, or something very like it (above, p. 73), occurs in the Upper Kenya Capsian which is basically Upper Palaeolithic but includes an appreciable microlithic element, particularly lunates from ½ to 1 inch in length. This industry has not yet been closely dated, though a North African analogy of about 6500-5000 B.C. has already been cited (p. 69). The Capsian is followed in Africa south of the Sahara by more whole-heartedly microlithic groups, of which the earlier Wilton has been compared with the latest of the four Cammiade-Burkitt series from South India—a profuse surface-mélange of pigmy tools including lunates, backed knife-blades, triangles, and core-scrapers. Similar microlithic assemblages, equally undated have been collected widely in the Mahi and Godāvarī valleys, the Vindhya Hills and elsewhere in the centre and the south, but only in two instances have they, at the time of writing, been associated with an informative stratigraphy devoid of pottery.