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A History of Agriculture in India v1.c12.s5: Palaeolithic Hunters and Food-Gatherers

A History of Agriculture in India v1.c12.s5

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English

Contents

Palaeolithic Hunters and Food-Gatherers

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The notion of three Ages, viz. Stone, Bronze and Iron, was first set out by the Danish archaeologist Vedel-Simonsen in 1813. Following him, Christian Jurgensen Thomsen, the first curator of the National Museum of Danish Antiquities, Copenhagen, classified and arranged the collections into three groups, as they represented three chronologically successive ages.

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Interpreting the exact role of pre-historic archaeology, Sven Nilsson stated: ‘It demonstrated that notwithstanding apparent or partial retrogression, the human race was constantly undergoing a gradual and progressive development.’

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Subsequent scholars split up the Stone Age into Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic. Lord Avebury split up the Palaeolithic into three subdivisions—lower, middle and upper.

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The Palaeolithic of the archaeologists corresponds with the period from the middle to the upper Pleistocene. The most striking feature of the Palaeolithic industries is their immense duration from about 500,000 to

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Fig. 29. Skulls of : 1, modern chimpanzee; 2, modern man; 3, Neanderthal man; 4, Peking man; 5, *Australopithecus* (hominid); 6, *Proconsul africanus*; 7, *Adapis parisiensis*, an ancient lemur. An increase in the size of brain and its complexity and a reduction in brow-ridges in man as compared with hominids is noteworthy (Courtesy: UNESCO)

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10,000 years ago, the end of the last glaciation. During the middle Pleistocene, the Siwalik Hills were certainly inhabited (Fig. 22) by the early man resembling the *Homo erectus pekinensis*. No actual fossil remains have been recovered, but stone tools, choppers and crude scrapers, which are 500,000 to 300,000 years old, have been discovered. The surest way to distinguish the earliest men from fellow-animals was in the acquisition of intelligence and skill for making tools. With the capacity to manufacture stone tools, man stepped into a higher plane of concentration and manipulative skill.

Pre-Soan Culture

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In the topmost gravels of the Boulder Conglomerate, the first true prehistoric tools appear in 11 localities in the Siwaliks in the Punjab. This industry has been named Pre-Soān. The tools are made of crude split pebbles and large flakes of quartzite chipped on one side, mainly with large bulbs of percussion, small striking platforms and marginal flake scars. They resemble the Cromerian flake industry of the early Palaeolithic in East Anglia, England. Their age is assigned to the last phase of the second glaciation.

Soan Culture

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The Early Soān sites in Pakistan are found in the Valley of the Soān at Adiala, Khaslakalan, Chauntra and Trap near the junction of the Soān and the Indus rivers; also in the Indus Valley at Ghariala at the confluence of the Haro and the Indus, at Khushalgarh, Makhad and Injra.

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At the beginning of the Second Interglacial, in the then gravels of Soān terraces near Rawalpindi, characteristic pebble tools were discovered by de Terra (Fig. 24). They were possibly used for cutting chunks of meat and to scrape hides. They were also used for breaking nuts and for making notches in tree trunks as an aid to climbing. They resemble the palaeoliths associated with the Peking man, and the Oldowan pebble tools from east Africa.

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De Terra and Hawkes found palaeolithic pebble tools from Chitta, near Rawalpindi, in northern Punjab, at Rampore near Jammu, and at Kargil, beyond the main Himalayan range on the trade route over the Zojila Pass. From the presence of stone flakes in localities lying across the Great Himalayan range, the interesting conclusion arises that the Himalayan passes have become much higher now (the Zojila Pass being 3,445 metres now), and when the Kargil-man flourished, the passes were much lower and migration across the Himalayan mountains was easy. Geologists are of the opinion that the passes which have become inaccessible or difficult now were low and easy and mark some of the most ancient routes trodden by the early man. That the Himalayan mountains are still rising is a common belief among geologists. They have risen appreciably since the advent of Man in northern India, and now have become a serious barrier between China, Central Asia and India. Godwin-Austen was of the opinion that since the advent of Man, the Himalayas have been thrown up by 2,440 to 3,050 metres.

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Attributable to the second interglacial age as the early Soān is another industry of equal antiquity but of a different tradition, known as the hand-axe complex. Typologically, this is similar to the lower Palaeolithic Abbevillio-Acheulian series observable in the Peninsular India, with its primary focus at Madras. Section 15 at Chauntra in the Soān Valley is in many respects the most important locality from an archaeological point of view. This is the only site in Pakistan which shows a parallel development of the Madras (hand-axe) industry of the south with the Soān flake and pebble industries.

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Palaeolithic sites on the terraces of the right bank of the Sirsa below Nalagarh were discovered by Olaf Prufer in 1951. The tools were made of light-coloured quartzite and consist of pebble tools and flake tools. The pebble tools include choppers and scrapers.

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B. B. Lal (1955) discovered pebble tools, viz. unifacial and bifacial choppers, and a few hand-axes from the river terraces of the Banganga near Haripur Guler, on the Beas near Dehra Gopipur, and at Dhaliara and Kangra.

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Y. D. Sharma (1955) discovered quartzitic palaeoliths, mainly choppers, scrapers and flakes, from Dher Majra, Dhang, Dadhi and Merhanwala along the Sirsa River, which joins the Satluj above Rupar. Similar implements were also found about 1.5 kilometres north of Daulatpur on the Beas branch of the Soān River and also showed affinity with the late Soān tradition. The existence of such artefacts in the Sirsa and the Soān valleys considerably enlarges the area of the Soān industry.

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Pebble tools were reported by Sahni and Khan (1964) from a terrace of the Ghaggar River near Chandigarh, and by Joshi and Khanna (1974) from a terrace of the Markanda in the Sirmur District, Himachal Pradesh. Recently, B. C. Verma (1975) discovered pebble tools and hand-axes in the Kheri area in the Siwaliks along the southern bank of the Sirsa River, five kilometres south of Nalagarh, in Himachal Pradesh. Associated with the stone tools were fossils of *Equus sivalensis*.

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It seems that the Paleolithic hunters roamed along the river valleys in the hilly areas of India and Pakistan. Here, apart from game, they had plenty of pebbles from which they could fashion their stone tools.

Central India

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Acheulian hand-axes and Soān-type choppers and scrapers have also been discovered from Pleistocene formations along the Narmada, at Bheraghat near Jabalpur, in Madhya Pradesh. They are found associated with the mid-Pleistocene *Elephas namadicus*, *Bos namadicus*, *Equus namadicus*, *Hippopotamas*, *Bubalus*, *Sus* and *Cervus*. The Soān-type tools have also been discovered in Kurnool, in Andhra Pradesh, and in Orissa, Maharashtra, northern Gujarat and southern Rajasthan. In Fig. 27 are shown the sites from which Palaeolithic tools have been discovered in India.

The Madras Hand-Axe Industry (or Madras-Acheul)

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The Soān industry with its primary focus in the north produced pebble choppers and flakes and cores of Clacto-Levalloisean types, and evolved on its own lines. The other tradition is the core-tool or the hand-axe tradition with its primary focus in the peninsular portion, especially around Madras. The terrace at Attirampakkam in the Kortalayar Valley in the Chingleput District, Tamil Nadu, shows the stratigraphic evolution of the Acheulian culture. The tools are prolific. According to Krishnaswamy, ‘the hand-axes are reminiscent of very late Acheul types of Eur-Africa and even simulate Micoque forms, being thin, flat and elongated and made on flakes. Cleavers are abundant and of varied forms. Both show the Vaal technique of South Africa. Along with the dominant bifaces, there are cores and flakes exhibiting Soān technique.’²

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² Krishnaswamy, V.D. Stone Age in India, Ancient India, Jan. 1947

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The tool type of the Madras industry is pear-shaped or oval, flaked on both faces in such a way as to produce a continuous cutting edge (Fig. 25). The pointed heavy-butted hand-axes were used for digging roots and rhizomes. Some of them may have been used as lance-heads, or even thrown as bolts. The tools of the Madras Industry have been found as far south as the Cauveri and Vaigai rivers, in the west at Kandivili near Bombay and north of the Narmada, and north-east as far as the upper reaches of the Son, a tributary of the Ganges (Fig. 30). This technique of tool-making covered a vast area—India, South Africa, and western Europe.

Maharashtra

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Lately, Palaeolithic Acheulian hand-axe tools have been discovered at a number of sites in Maharashtra. Fossils of hippopotamus, rhinoceros, elephant, gaur (wild cattle), horse, deer and buffalo have been found at Patne. Fragments of an ostrich egg were discovered in association with the upper Palaeolithic tools at Patne. The eggshell had engravings of criss-cross lines. This is the earliest evidence of the upper Palaeolithic art discovered in India and has been dated to 25,000 B.P.

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The lower Palaeolithic sites in Maharashtra are Gangapur, Nandur, Madhmeshwar and Kalegaon on the Godavari River, Sakri at the Kan River, and Nevasa at the Pravara River. Besides, a number of middle Palaeolithic sites have been discovered at Godavari, Tapti, Wainganga, Krishna, Pravara, Ghod and Zarpad rivers.

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A striking feature of the distribution of Palaeolithic hand-tools in India is the predominance of chopper-type pebble tools in northern India, and of Acheulian hand-axes in southern India. Outside India, the Anyathian culture of Burma, the Choukoutienian culture of China, the Tampanian culture of Malaya and the Patjitanian culture of Java are dominated by chopper-chopping-tools. Pebble tools also occur in the pre-Stellenbosch, early Olduvan and Kafuan stages in South and East Africa. This distribution tends to suggest that even on a world-wide basis the chopper-chopping-tools on the one hand and hand-axes and cleavers on the other represent two different cultures. The chopper-type is more primitive and older than the Acheulian hand-axes.

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Sites from where Palaeolithic tools have been discovered are near rivers, small streams or lakes. Wild animals that the stone-age man hunted lived in jungles along the rivers and lakes. When they came for drinking water, Palaeolithic hunters had an opportunity to kill or trap them. Apart from wild animals, fish from lakes and rivers were also a source of food for them. These men moved in small bands and apart from hunting collected fruits, leaves of edible herbs and the roots and tubers of wild plants. For digging roots and tubers, pointed sticks and hand-axes of the Acheulian type were used.

Cites (7)