Ancient India- Indus Pre-History (Stone Age)

Source of history in India

Ancient India- Indus Pre-History

The areas of present-day India, Pakistan, and Nepal have provided archaeologists and scholars with the richest sites of the most ancient pedigree. The species Homo heidelbergensis (a proto human who was an ancestor of modern Homo sapiens) inhabited the sub-continent of India centuries before humans migrated into the region known as Europe. Evidence of the existence of Homo heidelbergensis was first discovered in Germany in 1907 and, since, further discoveries have established fairly clear migration patterns of this species out of Africa.

Western excavations in India did not begin in earnest until the 1920’s. Though the ancient city of Harappa was known to exist as early as 1842, its archaeological significance was ignored; and the later excavations corresponded to an interest in locating the probable sites referred to in the great Indian epics Mahabharata and Ramayana (both of the 5th or 4th centuries BCE) while ignoring the possibility of a much more ancient past for the region.

The village of Balathal (near Udaipur in Rajasthan), to cite only one example, illustrates the antiquity of India’s history as it dates to 4000 BCE. Balathal was not discovered until 1962 CE and excavations were not begun there until the 1990’s CE.

Skeletons from one of the world’s oldest civilizations—the Indus Valley or Harappan Civilization—have been unearthed in India. Scientists hope to be able to examine their genetic makeup to learn more about these ancient people.

The Indus Valley Civilization of India, Afghanistan and Pakistan covered about 2 million square miles (5.2 million square km) at its height and was extant from about 4500 to 1800 BC.

The skeletons found at the sites of the Indus Valley Civilisation were dated to about 5,000 years old and were unearthed in a cemetery in Rakhigarhi, a city of the ancient civilization.

Rakhigarhi, in the present-day state of Haryana, is the biggest Harappan or Indus Valley Civilization site, bigger even than the famed Mohenjo-daro.

Archaeologists have found various structures and many different types of artifacts at Rakhigarhi, including, toys, tools, fish hooks, copper tools, bone hairpins, beads of minerals and ivory, pottery with various designs, chert weights for trade or taxation, and jewelry from outside the vicinity. They also found seals with tigers inscribed on them.

The excavation carried out in the Narmada valley at Mehtakhedi village under Khargone district has led to the discovery of 350 archaeological remains which the experts claim to be 50,000 years old. Around 350 antiquities were found during excavation.

Ancient India- Palaeolithic Age in India

The Palaeolithic Age in India is divided into three phases in accordance with the type of stone tools used by the people and also according to the nature of climatic change.

The first phase is called Early or Lower Palaeolithic, the second Middle Palaeolithic, and the third Upper Palaeolithic.

The first phase may be placed broadly between 600,000 and 150,000 BC, the second between 150,000 and 35,000 BC, and the third between 35,000 and 10,000 BC.

However, between 35,000 and 1500 BC, tools relating to both Middle and Upper Palaeolithic ages have been found in the Deccan Plateau.

The Lower Palaeolithic or the Early Old Stone Age covers the greater part of the ice age. The Early Old Stone Age may have begun in Africa around two million years ago, but in India it is not older than 600,000 years.

This date is given to Bori in Maharashtra, and this site is considered to be the earliest Lower Palaeolithic site. People use hand axes, cleavers, and choppers. The axes found in India are more or less similar to those of western Asia, Europe, and Africa. Stone tools were used largely for chopping, digging, and skinning.

1. Early Old Stone Age sites have been found in the valley of river Son or Sohan in Punjab, now in Pakistan. Several sites have been found in Kashmir and the Thar desert.
2. Lower Palaeolithic tools have also been found in the Belan valley in UP and in the desert area of Didwana in Rajasthan.
3. Didwana yielded not only Lower Palaeolithic stone tools but also those of the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic ages.
4. Chirki-Nevasa in Maharashtra has yielded as many as 2000 tools, and those have also been found at several places in the south.
5. Nagarjunakonda in Andhra Pradesh is an important site, and the caves and rock shelters of Bhimbetka near Bhopal also show features of the Lower Palaeolithic age. The rock shelters may have served as seasonal camps for human beings.
6. Hand axes have been found in a deposit of the time of the second Himalayan inter-glaciation, when the climate became less humid.

The people of the Lower Stone Age seem to have principally been food gatherers. They took to small game hunting and lived also on fish and birds. The Early or Lower Stone Age in India may be associated with the people of the Homo sapiens group.

The Middle Palaeolithic industries were largely based upon flakes or small pieces of stone which have been found in different parts of India with regional variations. The principal tools comprise blades, points, borers, and scrapers, all made of flakes.

The geographical horizon of the Middle Palaeolithic sites coincides roughly with that of the Lower Palaeolithic sites. The artefacts of this age are found at several places on the river Narmada, and also at several places, south of the Tungabhadra river.

The Belan valley (UP), which lies at the foothills of the Vindhyas, is rich in stone tools and animal fossils including cattle and deer. These remains relate to both the Lower and Middle Stone ages.

In the Upper Palaeolithic phase we find 566 sites in India. This may be due to the general presence of grassland dotted with few trees. The climate was less humid, coinciding with the last phase of the ice age when the climate became comparatively warm. In the world context, it marks the appearance of new flint industries and men of the modern type (Homo sapiens).

The use of blades and burins has been noticed, which have been found in AP, Karnataka, Maharashtra, central MP, southern UP, Jharkhand and adjoining areas.

Caves and rock shelters for use by human beings in the Upper Palaeolithic phase have been discovered at Bhimbetka, 45 km south of Bhopal. An Upper Palaeolithic assemblage, characterized by comparatively large flakes, blades, burins, and scrapers has also been found in the upper levels of the Gujarat sand dunes.

Ancient India- Mesolithic Age in India

It was the transitional between Palaeolithic and Neolithic ages. Its characteristic tools are microliths, all made of stone.

Microliths were first discovered by Carlyle in 1867 from Vindhyan Rock Shelters.

This age is also known by various names like Late Stone Age or Microlithic Age.

The Mesolithic people lived on hunting, fishing and food-gathering. Earliest domestication of animals has alo been witnessed from Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.

Tools are characterised by parallel-sided blades taken out from prepared cores of fine-materials as chert, crystal, chalcedony, jasper, carnelian, agate etc. and were generally one to five centimeters long.

Paintings have been discovered at various sites in Bhimbetka, Adamgarh, etc. In these paintings, various subjects including animals and human scenes have been found. Animals are the most frequently depicted subjects either alone or in large and small groups and shown in various poses. Depiction of human figures in rock paintings is quite common. Dancing, running, hunting, playing games and quarrelling were commonly depicted scenes. Colours like deep red, gree, white and yellow were used in making these paintings.

The Mesolithic culture in India corresponds to the second cultural phase of Pleistocene.

Early scholars considered the Mesolithic industries as ‘Proto-­Neolithic’.

Most of the deposits have been discovered from stratified sites formed by the second phase of aggradation as found in Maharashtra, specially on Godavari river valley and its tributaries.

The middle Stone Age in India bears the following characteristics;

1. Microlithism is totally absent in north India.
2. There was a sudden disappearance of pebble tools, which were conspicuous in the preceding cultures.
3. Heavier tools were not be discovered in the microlithic assemblages, excepting a few sites in Western and Central India.
4. Microliths contain scrapers, points, scraper-cum-borers, and scraper-cum-points in common.
5. Hand-axes, choppers, discoid have also been discovered.

Important Sites

1. Langhnaj

This important microlithic site is situated on the eastern bank of the Sabarmati River. Three distinct phases could be recognized:

1. The first phase contained microliths, pot-sherds, graves and fossilized bones of animals.
2. In the second phase, a larger number of such findings could be discovered along with some polished Celts and ring-stones and fragments of pots.
3. The third phase is composed of numerous pot-sherds, stone arrow heads, and fragments of corn-grinders.

2. Tinnevalley 

The Tinnevalley site, located at Madras, was first discovered and studied by Zeuner and Allchin in the year 1956.

Many different types of arrow heads, scrapers, curved arrow heads and borers were found. Explorers linked these with the Middle Stone Age tools of central Sri Lanka where the same type of Tens stratum has been found, which dates approximately 4000 B.C.

3. Birbhanpur

Birbhanpur is in the district of Burdwan in West Bengal. Microliths of different geometric designs, points, scrapers, borers of very small size are common in this site.

Aspects of the Mesolithic way of life

Climate

Reconstructing the story of climate at the end of the Pleistocene and the beginning of the Holocene reveals a picture that is far from uniform for the subcontinent. While soil samples from the site of Birbhanpur in West Bengal suggested a trend towards comparative dryness and semi-aridity, the study of pollens in Rajasthan and the study of sites in eastern Madhya Pradesh indicated an increase in rainfall in these regions.

Palaeoclimatic research, though limited, aids a few general conclusions. From the cold and arid conditions of the Pleistocene, the climate moved towards becoming warm and wet due to the gradual recession of glaciers. The melting of snow and formation of rivers resulted in dense forests and vegetation that could now provide shelter to a new range of fauna.

The giant animals of the Pleistocene, gradually made way for smaller species like cattle, sheep, goat, various species of deer, etc.

With the formation of water bodies, marine resources also became available for exploitation.

Regional distribution and settlement patterns

The geographical spread of the Mesolithic sites clearly indicates that mesolithic sites cover almost the entire country, with the exception of a few areas like most of the Indo-Ganga plains, the northeast and most of the western coast.

Their absence over much of the Gangrtic Plains is attributed to the remoteness of the region from the sources of the primary raw material – stones, for making tools. Similarly, the heavy rainfall resulting in dense vegetation is likely to have discouraged human habitation, accounting for the absence of sites in northeast India and their sparseness in the Western Ghats and along the west coast.

Regions like the north Gujarat plains, Marwar and Mewar in Rajasthan, and the alluvial plain of the Ganga in the south-central U.P.-Allahabad-Mirzapur area have a denser concentration of sites than others.

A significant development of the Indian mesolithic phase was the extension of settlements into new ecological zones and virgin areas like the Ganga plains and the peninsula, south of the Kaveri river. Archaeological investigations also reveal an intensification of habitation in previously colonised areas like Marwar, Mewar, central India and the Deccan plateau. This is generally attributed to an increase in population due to the new landscape and favourable environmental conditions, as well as technological innovations.

The distribution of sites suggests the principal environments favoured by the mesolithic people and the range of ecological zones and food resources they exploited.

In Gujarat, Marwar and to some extent Mewar, they settled on sand dunes. In the densely wooded and hilly country of central India and the Eastern Ghats, caves and rock shelters were the chosen habitat. The forests provided plant and animal foods in plenty. They also settled on tops of low hills and rocky outcrops near the sea-shore. Near the tip of the peninsula they occupied coastal dunes. Marine foods must have been the mainstay of the diet in both these regions. Settlements in the Ganga Plain were centred around the horse-shoe lakes formed by meandering rivers. Living close to lakes as well as to the dense forests of the alluvial plains enabled them to exploit both terrestrialand aquatic fauna.

Elsewhere, people lived in the open, on tops of low hills, in the valleys and along the banks of perennial as well as seasonal streams. In the Deccan plateau, microliths are found atop almost every hill and rocky outcrop. Habitation in areas with limited rainfall suggests settlements of a seasonal nature.

Mesolithic sites reflect different levels of sedentariness. There were camps that were seasonal but in areas where water and food was available all the year round, it seems probable that people would have settled permanently or at least inhabited for long periods of time. Thick habitation deposits as well as the continuity of technological tradition, for instance at Bagor and Bhimbetka, certainly indicates the return of people to the same campsite over long periods of time.

Ancient India- Neolithic Age and Culture In India

The word ‘Neolithic’ was first coined by Sir John Lubbock in 1865. Miles Burkit enumerated four characteristics of the Neolithic culture:

1. Animal domestication
2. Agricultural practice
3. Grained and Polished stone tools
4. Pottery manufacture

The discovery of the tools and implements of the Neolithic age was first made in India by Mesurier in Uttar Pradesh in 1860. Later on, Frasher discovered such objects in Bellary in South India. The people of this age used tools and implements of polished stone.

People

The civilisation and culture of the Neolithic age shows distinct traces of progress.

The Neolithic men had a settled life. They practised agriculture and grew fruits and corn. Animals, such as the cow, dog, ox, goat etc. were domesticated. The art of producing fire by the friction of bamboos or pieces of stones was known to them. Instead of eating the uncooked flesh of various animals, they now started roasting it.

Rude drawings in red pigment are found in cave walls in the Bellary and Wynad Districts and other localities.

Besides this, bows and arrows were invented and were used for the purpose of hunting. They also learnt pottery, at first by hand and then with the potter’s wheel. They painted and decorated their pots.

The people started living in caves, the walls of which were polished and painted with the scenes of hunting and dancing. They also learnt the art of spinning and weaving clothes. They used to bury their dead and construct tombs over them, which were known as Dolmens, Menhirs etc.

Tools

The stone tools of the Neolithic age bear unmistakeable signs of polish either all over the tools or at the working-end. They fashioned their tools out of fine-grained dark-green trap, though there are examples of the use of diorite, basalt, slate, chlorite, schist, indurate shale, gneiss, sand stone and quartzite.

Occupation

Neolithic settlers were cattle-herders and agriculturists. They produced ragi, wheat, barley, rice, masoor, moong, kulthi etc.

Hand-made pottery is also found in the early stage. Elephant, rhino, buffalo, ox, stag remains are also found in plenty. But there is no specification of these domesticated. The pottery were well made but were coarse in nature, not that much polished.

The evidences of domestication of plants and animals are altogether lacking in India. The useful Neolithic art of spinning and weaving could not be traced in the Indian Neolithic sites.

Fire was made by friction. People constructed boats and spun and wove cotton and wool.

Arms/Weapons

At Gungeria in Madhya Pradesh, a hoard of over four hundred objects was discovered, including shouldered axes, harpoons, barbed spears and swords and silver laminae.