Prehistoric Period in Ancient India

Man is said to have appeared on the earth in the early Pleistocene i.e. between 2,000,000 and 10,000 years before the present. In India, earliest human presence is indicated by stone tools obtained from the deposits ascribable to the second glaciations, which could be dated around 250,000 B.C. Recent reported artifacts from Bori in Maharashtra may take the appearance of man in India as early as 1.4 million years ago, though further research is needed in this direction. The early man used tools of stone roughly dressed by crude chipping, which have been discovered throughout the country except the alluvial plains of Indus, Ganga and Yamuna rivers. Animal remains found in the Belan Valley in Mirzapur district in Ut;tar Pradesh show that goats, sheep and cattle were exploited in Paleolithic age.

Paleolithic Age

Paleolithic Culture of India developed in the Pleistocene period of the ice-age. Paleolithic age in India is divided into 3 phases according to the nature _of stone stools used by the people and also according to the nature of change in the climate.

First Phase: Lower Paleolithic or the early Stone Age (between 500,000 B.C. and 50,000 B.C) Its characteristic features – use of hand axes, cleavers and choppers. Stone tools were used mainly for chopping, digging and skinning. Early Stone Age sites are found in the valley of river, Soan or Sohan in Punjab, now in Pakistan. Several sites have been found in Kashmir and the Thar Desert. These tools have also been found in the Belan Valley in Mirzapur district in Uttar Pradesh. The early Stone Age tools found in the desert area of  Didwana in Rajasthan, in the valleys of the Belan and the Narmada and in the caves and rock shelters of Bhimbetka near Bhopal roughly belong to 100,000B.C. Bruce Foote discovered the prehistoric hand axe in 1963 at Attirampakkam near Chennai.

Second Phase: Middle Paleolithic age (between 50,000 B.C. to 40,000 B.C.) characteristic features are industries mainly based on flakes. These flakes are found in different parts of India and show regional variations. The principal tools are varieties of blades, points, borers and blade-like tools. The artifacts of this age are also found at several places on the river Narmada and south of the Tungabhadra River.

Third Phase: The upper Paleolithic phase (between 40,000 B.C to 10,000 B.C} is characterised by use of blades and burins. These tools have been found in Andhra Pfadesh, Karnataka, Central Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Southern Uttar Pradesh, South Bihar plateau and the adjoining areas. Caves and rock shelters for use by human beings in this phase have been discovered at Bhimbetka, 45 kms south of Bhopal. It appears that Paleolithic sites are found in many hill slopes and river valleys of the country while they are absent in the alluvial plains of the Indus and the Ganga.

Mesolithic Age

Paleolithic age came to an end with the end of the Ice age around 9000 B.C. In 9000 B.C. began an intermediate stage in Stone Age culture, called Mesolithic age. Mesolithic people lived on hunting, fishing and food gathering, while at a later stage they also domesticated animals. The.-first three occupations continued the Paleolithic practice, while the last one was inter-related with the Neolithic culture. The characteristic tools of Mesolithic Age are Microliths. Bagor in Rajasthan is the type site of rnicrolith excavations. Bagor along with Adamgarh in Madhya Pradesh provide the earliest evidence for the domestication of animals, which could be around 5000 B.C. Bhimbetka near Bhopal presents the art of painting practiced by Paleolithic and Mesolithic people. It contains more then 500 painted rock shelters, distributed in an area of 10 sq. km. Bhimbetka was discovered by V S Wakanket of the Viram University, U.ijain in 1957. Artists during the pre-historic age used white and red pigments for depicting things. The rock paintings extend from the Pdeolithic to the Mesolithic period and in some series even up to recent times. But a good many rock shelters are associated with Mesolithic occupation.

Neolithic Age

In the world context, Neolithic (New Stone) Age began in 9000 B.C. The only Neolithic settlement in the Indian subcontinent attributed to 7000 B.C. lies in Mehrgarh, which is situated in Baluchistan, a province of Pakistan. Some Neolithic sites foundonthe northern spurs of the Vindhyas are considered as old as 5000 B.C., but generally Neolithic settlements found in south India are not older then 2500 B.C., while in some parts of southern and eastern India, they are as late as 1000 B.C. People of this age used tools and implements of polished stone. They particularly used stone axes. Based on the types of axes used by Neolithic settlers, we notice three important areas of Neolithic settlements: north-western, north-eastern and southern. North-western group of Neolithic tools represents rectangular axes with curved cutting edge. The north-eastern group shows polished stone axes with rectangular butt and has occasional shouldered hoes. The southern group is distinguished by axes with oval sides and pointed butt. In north-west, the Kashmiri Neolithic culture was distinguished by its dwelling pits, the range of ceramics, variety of stone and bore tools, and the complete absence of the rnicroliths. Here, an important site is that ofBurzahom, which is situated 16 km north-west of Srinagar. The Neolithic people lived there on a lake-side  in pits and probably had hunting and fishing economy. The people of Gufkral, a Neolithic site 41 km south-west of Srinagar, practised both agriculture and domestication of animals. The Neolithic people also used numerous tools and weapons made of bone in Kashmir. The only other place which has yielded considerable bone implements in India is Chirand, which is located 40 km west of Patna on the northern side of the Ganga. These are made of antlers (horns of deer). It is interesting that the Burzahom domestic dogs were buried with their masters in their graves. The placing of domestic dogs in the graves of the masters  do not seem to be the practice with Neolithic people in any other part of India. Some of the important Neolithic sites include Maski, Brahmagiri, Hallur, Kodekal, Sangana Kallu, T. Narsipur, Piklihal and Takkala Kota in Kamatak:a, and Paiyampalli in Tamil Nadu. Uthur is an important Neolithic site in Andhra Pradesh. The Neolithic settlers in Piklihal were cattle herders. They setup seasonal camps surrounded by cowpens. In these enclosures they accumulated dung. Then the entire camping ground was put to fire and cleared for camping in the next season. Both ash mounds and habitation sites have been found in Piklahal. The Neolithic settlers were the earliest farming communities. They broke the ground with stone hoes and digging sticks. Besides polished tools of stone, they used microlithic blades. They produced ragi and horse gram (Kulathi). Neolithic people of Mehrgarh were more advanced. They produced wheat, cotton and lived in mud-brick houses. With cultivation being started, the Neolithic people needed pots to store their food-grains, as well as for cooking eating and drinking. Hence pottery first appears in this phase. The people of Stone Age suffered from one great limitation. Since they had to depend almost entirely on tools and weapons made of stone, they could not find settlements for away from the hilly areas.

Chalcolithic  Farming Cultures

End of Neolithic period saw the use of metals. First metal to be used was copper and culture based on the use of stone and copper implements was called chalcolithic (i.e. copper stone). The chalcolitiic people mostly used stone and copper objects, but they also occasionally used low-grade bronze. They were primarily rural communities spread over a wide area in those parts of the country where hilly lands and rivers were available. In India, settlements belonging to the chalcolithic phase are found in south­ eastern Rajasthan, western part of Madhya Pradesh, western Maharashtra and in southern and eastern India. In south-eastern Rajasthan, two sites, one at Ahar and the other at Gilund, have been excavated . They lie in the zones of the Banas valley. In western Madhya Pradesh, Malwa, Kayatha and Eran have been exposed. Thel,falwa ware – typical of the Malwa chalcotithic culture of central and western India – is considered the richest among the chalcolithic ceramics. Some of its pottery and other cultural elements are also found in Maharashtra. Most extensive excavations have taken place in western Maha rashtra. Several chalcolithic sites, such as Jorwe, Nevasa, Daimabad in Ahmadnagar district; Chandoli, Scngaon and Inamgaon in Pune district, Prakash and Nasik have been excavated. They all belong to the Jorwe culture named after Jorwe, the type-site situated on the left-back of the Pravara river, a tributary of Godavari, in Ahmadnagar District. The Jorwe culture owed much to the Malwa c ult ure . However it also contained elements of the southern Neolithic culture. The Jorwe culture, 1400 to 700 B.C. covered modem Maharashtra except parts of Vidarbha and coastal region of Konkan. Although the Jorwe culture was rural, some of its settlemnts such as Daimabad and Inamgaon had almost reached the urban stage. Several chalcolithic sites have been found in the Vindhyan region of Allahabad District. In eastern India, besides Chirand on the Ganga, mention may be made of Pandu Rajar Dhibu in Burdwan district and Mahishadal in Birdhum district in West Bengal. Other sites excavated recently are Senuar, Sonpur and Taradih in Bihar and Khairadih and Narhan in east Uttar Pradesh. Of the 200 Jorwe sites discovered so far, the largest is Diamabad in Godavari valley. It also seems to have been fortified with a mud wall having stone, rubble bastions. Daimabad is famous for the recovery of a large number of bronze goods, some of which were influenced by the Harappan culture.

Chronologically there are several series of chalcolithic settlements in India. Some are pre-Harap pan, others are contemporaries of the Harappan cµlture and still others are post-Harappan. Pre­ Harappen strata on some sites in the Harappan zone are also called early Harappan in order to distinguish them from the nature Urban Indus civilization. Thus the pre-Harappan phase at Kalibangan in Rajasthan and Banawali in Haryana is distinctly chalcolithic. So is the case with Kot Diji in Sindh in Pakistan. Although most chelcolithic cultures of India were younger than the Indus valley civilization, they did not derive any substantial benefit from the advanced technological knowledge of the Indus people. The copper hoards of chalcolithic cultures are interesting objects of study. The largest hoard comes from Gungeria in Madhya Pradesh; it contains 424 copper tools and weapons and 102 thin sheets of silver objects. But nearly half of the copper hoards are concentrated in the Ganga­ Yamuna doad. The period covered by the OCP culture may roughly be placed between 2000 and 1500 B.C. on the basis of a series of eight scientific datings. In the upper portion of the Doab, settlement begins with the advent of the ochre-coloured pottery people. In the chalcolithic cult ures, the more northern settlements of the Gandhra Grave culture in the swat valley were familiar with the horse by the late second millennium B.C. and show evidence of the use of iron weapons in the early first millennium. The painted grey ware (PGW) culture, of which some sites are located in the Hakra plain in a post-Harappan context, was predominant in the western Ganga plains in the first millennium B.C., spreading from the Indo-Gangetic watershed to the confluence of the Ganga and Yamuna. Important settlements of the PGW include Roper (Punjab), Bhagwanpura (Haryana) and Atranji Kheda, Hastinapur, Ahichhatra and Jakhera (Uttar Pradesh). The Northern black polished ware , characteristic of the urban centres of the Ganga plain, is thought to have developed from high temperature firing techniques used in smelting iron and from the use of local hematite soil. Its extensive distribution as a luxury ware helps the tracking of exchange and trade in various parts of the sub-continent.

A wide distribution in Gujarat, Rajasthan, the fringes of the Doab and the middle Ganga valley, extending to parts of Bengal is recorded for a pottery technique that resulted in double colours of black and red which has been labeled as Black-and­ Red ware. This was not the pottery of a single, uniform culture, nor was it the sole pottery at these sites, although it often predominated. The earliest dates for this pottery range, according to region, from the second to the first millennium B.C. Megalithic Burials: The style of burial changed dramatically rn the first millennium. Burials moved out of the habitation huts to be located in specially demarcated sanctuaries. These are the megalithic sites with a large variety of megalithic markers, and are most commonly located in the peninsula providing it with a distinctive burial style. The forms and styles ofmegalithic burials are diverse and range from the single standing stone to rock cut chambers. The dolmen consisted of a number of large stones placed in formation. Or there could be a capstone balancing over up-right stones, marking a pit. Pits of ten have what is referred to a cist burial. This was frequently a circle demarcated with stones, enclosing a pit within which was constructed a cist, i.e. a rectangular box made of stone slabs to contain bones and grave goods. Some times there is a circular hole in one of the side slabs, referred to as a porthole. This would suggest that burial chamber was used more than once.