Palaeolithic Age in India: Old Stone Age Tools, Phases and Sites

What Is Stone Age? Prehistoric Period in India and Its Three Ages

Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic: Meaning and Time Period

The prehistoric period is the time before writing: there were no books or written documents, so everything known about it comes from things people made and left behind. The names of its ages come from Greek: palaeo means old and lithos means stone, and the names point to the importance of stone tools in what archaeologists find.

The Palaeolithic Age is by far the longest. It stretches from about two million years ago to about 12,000 years ago and covers 99 per cent of human history. It is divided into the Lower, Middle and Upper Palaeolithic. The ages are broad stages of technology, not sharp breaks: older kinds of tools went on being used after new ones appeared.

How Historians Study the Prehistoric Past: Tools and Sites

People of the Old Stone Age made tools of stone, wood and bone, but only the stone tools have survived well, so they are the main evidence. Archaeologists study them at sites, the places where the remains of things people made and used are found, on the surface, buried under the earth or even under water.

• Habitation sites: Places where people lived, such as caves and rock shelters; natural shelters gave protection from rain, heat and wind.
• Factory sites: Places where good stone was found and tools were made, recognised by blocks of stone, discarded tools and chips of waste stone.
• Habitation-cum-factory sites: Places where people both made tools and lived for long spells.

Dating such old material needs special methods. At Attirampakkam near Chennai, tools were dated by cosmic ray exposure dating, the first use of the method at an Indian site, and by luminescence dating; at the Siwalik site of Masol, the fossil layer was dated by palaeomagnetism. Such dates keep changing the picture: the oldest Acheulian tools of India are now known to be as old as those of Africa and Central Asia.

Palaeolithic Age: The Old Stone Age in India

Lower Palaeolithic Age: Hand Axes, Cleavers and Choppers

The Lower Palaeolithic Age is the earliest and longest phase. Its tools belong to two traditions: the Acheulian, with bifacial hand axes and cleavers, and the Soanian, with choppers and other tools made on quartzite pebbles, named after the Soan river, a tributary of the Indus.

• Masol, Siwalik hills: Near Chandigarh, fossil bones about 2.6 million years old carry cut marks that researchers have read as the work of early humans using quartzite edges.
• Attirampakkam, Tamil Nadu: First found by Robert Bruce Foote in 1863, it has yielded Acheulian hand axes and cleavers about 1.5 million years old, among the oldest in the world; it is the type site of the Madrasian culture.
• Isampur, Karnataka: A quarry in the Hunsgi and Baichbal valleys, about 1.27 million years old, where over 15,000 artefacts show every step of tool-making from limestone slabs.
• Didwana, Rajasthan: Hand axes dated to the Middle Pleistocene, about 400,000 years ago.

Who made these tools is not known from fossils. The makers of Acheulian tools elsewhere in Asia were Homo erectus, so their presence in India is inferred from the tools; Acheulian sites spread from the Kortallayar valley in Tamil Nadu to Didwana and the Bhimbetka hills.

Some tools are older than the Acheulian. At Riwat on the Pothohar plateau in Pakistan, tools are dated to about 2.5 million years, and the Pabbi Hills have yielded simple end-choppers of 2.2 to 0.9 million years, a distinct technology separate from both the Acheulian and the Soanian traditions.

Middle Palaeolithic: Flake Tools and the Levallois Technique

In the Middle Palaeolithic the emphasis shifted from large bifaces to tools made on flakes, which needed more planning. Toolmakers prepared a core first, so that the shape of the flake struck from it was decided in advance; this prepared-core method, more elaborate than the Acheulian, is called the Levallois technique.

• Attirampakkam: Over 7,000 artefacts show Levallois technology dated to about 385,000 years, among the earliest outside Africa; who made them, early modern humans or an older species, remains unresolved.
• Jwalapuram, Andhra Pradesh: Middle Palaeolithic tools lie both below and above the ash of the Toba super-eruption of about 74,000 years ago; people survived that event in the region.
• Narmada valley: India’s oldest human fossil, a skull cup found near Hathnora in 1982 by Arun Sonakia, now called the Narmada Human.

The Narmada Human is still debated. It was first classed as Homo erectus narmadensis; later studies have placed it closer to archaic Homo sapiens, and its age is put between about 50,000 and 160,000 years. It remains the oldest human fossil found in India. Collarbones from the same valley point to a second, short and stocky population that lived alongside a larger-bodied one.

Upper Palaeolithic: Blades, Burins and Modern Humans

The Upper Palaeolithic is the last phase of the Old Stone Age and the age of modern humans, Homo sapiens, who reached the subcontinent between 75,000 and 50,000 years ago on the evidence of mitochondrial DNA. Tools were made on long, thin blades, and burins were used to work bone and antler.

• Early microliths: Tiny tools at Mahadebbera and Kana in West Bengal date from 42,000 to 25,000 years ago; that is earlier than once thought.
• Belan valley, Uttar Pradesh: Radiocarbon dates of 18,000 to 17,000 years.
• Patne, Maharashtra: Large quantities of ostrich egg shells, some engraved with designs, and beads made from them; ostriches then lived in India.
• Hunsgi: A late Old Stone Age site with long blades of reddish-brown chert.

The time spans are broad and vary by region. In South Asia the Middle Palaeolithic began early, about 385,000 years ago at Attirampakkam, and the use of tools of an older phase carried on after a newer one appeared, so a site is placed by its whole tool kit rather than by one tool.

Palaeolithic Age Tools: How Stone Tools Were Made and Used

Stone Tool Techniques, Raw Materials and Uses

Palaeolithic age tools changed slowly over almost two million years. The general trend was from large, heavy tools shaped on both faces to smaller, thinner and more specialised flakes and blades. Good stone mattered so much that people chose places where it was easily available.

1. Stone on stone: The core, the pebble to be shaped, was held in one hand and struck with a hammer stone held in the other, knocking off flakes until the shape was right.
2. Pressure flaking: The core was placed on a firm surface and the hammer stone struck a piece of bone or stone placed on it, removing flakes that could be shaped into tools.

The uses of these tools can be read from their shapes. Some cut meat and bone, scraped bark and animal hides, or chopped fruit and roots; some were fixed to handles of bone or wood to make spears and arrows; others chopped wood for fuel, huts and more tools, dug up edible roots or stitched clothes of skin.

Palaeolithic Sites in India

Palaeolithic Sites in South India: Attirampakkam, Hunsgi and Kurnool

South India holds some of the oldest and best-studied sites. Attirampakkam, a village near the Kortallayar river about 60 kilometres from Chennai, has a record of tool-making that runs from the early Acheulian to the Middle Palaeolithic, with over 7,000 artefacts dated by luminescence.

• Hunsgi, Karnataka: A number of early Palaeolithic sites; the large ones, with tools for all sorts of work, were habitation-cum-factory sites, some smaller ones only places where tools were made; several lay close to springs, and most tools were of local limestone.
• Kurnool caves, Andhra Pradesh: Traces of ash show that people knew the use of fire, which gave light, cooked meat and scared away animals.
• Jwalapuram: Tools sealed above and below volcanic ash from Toba in Sumatra, a marker for dating Indian prehistory.

Palaeolithic Sites in Central and North India: Bhimbetka, Narmada, Soan

Central India's hills were a natural home for Stone Age people. Bhimbetka, in the Raisen district of Madhya Pradesh, about 45 kilometres from Bhopal, sits in the foothills of the Vindhyas; some of its shelters were lived in more than 100,000 years ago; it shows human life from Acheulian times onwards.

• Bhimbetka: Declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003; its shelters show a tradition continuing from the Palaeolithic to the medieval period.
• Adamgarh hills, Narmadapuram: Rock shelters with Lower Palaeolithic and Mesolithic tools.
• Didwana, Rajasthan: Hand axes whose shapes and sizes trace the Acheulian from early to late.
• Soan valley and the Siwaliks: Soanian choppers, discoids and scrapers on quartzite pebbles, and at Masol the oldest cut-marked bones.

The complex at Bhimbetka is large: seven hills and over 750 rock shelters spread over about 10 kilometres. Small cup-like depressions, or cupules, at the end of its Auditorium rock shelter are dated to nearly 100,000 years. The Soanian, by contrast, is hard to date because its tools are mostly found on the surface: one view places it in the Middle Pleistocene, another much later.

Natural caves and rock shelters are common in the Vindhyas and the Deccan plateau, and many lie close to the Narmada valley. People chose them because they sheltered them from rain, heat and wind and lay near water and good stone, which is why prehistoric sites cluster along rivers and hills.

Life in the Palaeolithic Age: Hunter-Gatherers, Fire and Climate

Palaeolithic Art: Engraved Shells, Cupules and the First Paintings

Painting appears late in the Old Stone Age. The earliest paintings in India are reported from Upper Palaeolithic times, and at Bhimbetka the oldest group, Period I, shows huge bison, elephants, tigers, rhinos and boars in green and dark red, with stick-like human figures; the green paintings are of dancers and the red ones of hunters.

• Engraved ostrich shells: At Patne in Maharashtra, designs were engraved on pieces of ostrich egg shell, and beads were made from them.
• Cupules: The cup-like hollows at Bhimbetka’s Auditorium rock shelter, nearly 100,000 years old.
• First discovery: Rock paintings were first found in India in 1867-68 by the archaeologist Archibold Carlleyle, twelve years before the discovery of the Altamira cave in Spain.

The same age saw cave painting elsewhere. In France, paintings made between 20,000 and 10,000 years ago show wild horses, bison, reindeer and bear in colours made from minerals such as ochre or iron ore, and charcoal, perhaps for ceremonies or rituals before a hunt. The fuller story of Indian rock painting belongs to the next age, in the Mesolithic Age in India.

Why Palaeolithic Hunter-Gatherers Moved From Place to Place

Palaeolithic people did not stay in one place for long. Hunting animals that are faster and stronger than humans needed alertness and skill, and gathering needed knowledge of which plants were edible and when fruits ripened. In a tropical land with an immense variety of plants, gathering was an extremely important source of food.

1. Food ran out: Staying long in one place would use up the plants and animals nearby.
2. Animals moved: Deer and wild cattle moved in search of grass and leaves, and their hunters followed.
3. Seasons changed: Different plants bear fruit in different seasons.
4. Water: Many rivers and lakes are seasonal, so people moved in the dry months.

Who did which work is not known. Men and women may have done many tasks together, or some tasks may have been done only by women and others only by men, and practice may have differed from region to region. They also travelled to meet friends and relatives, always on foot.

End of the Palaeolithic Age: A Warmer Climate 12,000 Years Ago

The Palaeolithic Age ended with a change in the world's climate. Around 12,000 years ago conditions became relatively warm, and in many areas grasslands spread. Deer, antelope, goat, sheep and cattle, animals that live on grass, increased in number.

• Hunters who followed these herds learned their food habits and breeding seasons, which may have led them to think of herding and rearing animals.
• Fishing became important.
• Wheat, barley and rice grew wild in different parts of the subcontinent, and people who collected the grain learned where it grew and when it ripened, which may have led them to grow plants themselves.

These changes open the Mesolithic Age, covered in Part 2: the Mesolithic Age in India. The first farming villages, which grew into the Harappan cities, are traced in the Indus Valley Civilisation.

Sources

• NCERT: Our Pasts I (Class VI), On the Trail of the Earliest People
• NCERT: An Introduction to Indian Art, Part I (Class XI), Prehistoric Rock Paintings
• PIB: Bhimbetka Rock Shelters in Madhya Pradesh declared World Heritage (4 July 2003)
• PIB: India, World Heritage Properties (list)
• Ministry of Culture: Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka
• IGNCA (Ministry of Culture): The Art on Rocks
• Wikipedia: South Asian Stone Age
• Wikipedia: Paleolithic
• Wikipedia: Lower Paleolithic
• Wikipedia: Upper Paleolithic
• Wikipedia: Acheulean
• Wikipedia: Soanian
• Wikipedia: Madrasian culture
• Wikipedia: Attirampakkam
• Wikipedia: Hunsgi
• Wikipedia: Bhimbetka rock shelters
• Wikipedia: Narmada Human
• Wikipedia: Jwalapuram
• Wikipedia: Didwana
• Wikipedia: Adamgarh Hills
• Wikipedia: Belan River
• Wikipedia: Hand axe
• Wikipedia: Middle Paleolithic
• Wikipedia: Hunter-gatherer
• UPSC: Civil Services Examination question papers