Context: The recent floods in Telangana's Mulugu district have unveiled a significant discovery of Paleolithic quartzite tools, specifically hand axes. The find, dating back approximately 30 lakh years to the Lower Paleolithic period, challenges existing knowledge about human habitation in Telangana and central India.
Findings at Mulugu district of Telangana
- The identified tools were characterized by their chipping style, material, and size, consistent with the methods of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers.
- These stone tools belong to the Lower Palaeolithic period about 30 lakh years ago. The Lower Palaeolithic Age is also known as the Old Stone Age or Early Stone Age. The Lower Palaeolithic Age lasted about 10,000 years.
- The tools have been identified with the Lower Palaeolithic Age based on their chipping style, material and size of tools. Palaeolithic hunter gatherers used heavy quartzite and large tools. These tools were used cutting wood and killing animals for food. These tools are similar to the tools discovered at other Lower Palaeolithic Period sites across the world.
- The historical context includes the 1863 discovery by the East India Company's Geological Survey team at Attirampakkam near Madras (present-day Chennai), revealing bifacial hand-axes dating back 15 lakh years. This Paleolithic culture has been termed the Madras Hand-Axe Industry or Madrasian Culture, contributing to our understanding of early human activities.
Stone tools:
- Stone tools serve as the primary archaeological evidence that allows us to gain insights into the lifeways of prehistoric peoples.
- When a sizable rock is intentionally fractured into two or more pieces, the largest fragment is termed the core, and the resulting tool is referred to as a core tool.
- The smaller fragments detached from the original rock are known as flakes, and tools crafted from these flakes are termed flake tools.
Prehistory:
- In 1859, primitive stone implements were discovered alongside fossilized bones of extinct wild cattle and other large mammals in northern Europe.
- This revelation indicated that humans had inhabited northern Europe long before its landscape assumed its current configuration, leading to an extended period preceding recorded human history.
- Sir John Lubbock, in his 1865 book ‘Prehistoric Times,’ formally announced the birth of a new scientific discipline known as Prehistory. He categorized the Stone Age into the Palaeolithic (Old Stone Age) and Neolithic (New Stone Age).
- By the late 19th century, an intermediate stage, Mesolithic, was introduced between the Palaeolithic and the Neolithic.
- Additionally, the cultural sequence derived from cave and open-air sites in France led to the recognition of three phases within the Palaeolithic phase: Lower, Middle, and Upper.
Geographical settings in Indian subcontinent:
- The Indian landscape possessed all the essential conditions for a successful hunting-gathering lifestyle:
- diverse landforms facilitating the movement of such groups,
- Presence of various basic rocks and siliceous stones suitable for toolmaking,
- Perennial water bodies in the form of streams and springs, and a rich variety of wild plant and animal foods.
- Except for the Himalayan tract and the Indo-Gangetic alluvial tracts, Stone Age groups occupied the entire Indian landmass.
Paleolithic phase in India:
- Indian Paleolithic is categorized into three distinct developmental stages:
- Lower Paleolithic: 600,000 years BP to 150,000 years BP
- Middle Paleolithic: 165,000 BP to 31,000 years BP
- Upper Paleolithic: 40,000 years BP to 12,000 years BP
- Lower Paleolithic practices involve the utilization of large pebbles or flakes for crafting tools such as choppers, chopping tools, hand-axes, cleavers, knives, and more.
- Middle Paleolithic: the focus shifted to the use of a diverse range of flakes struck from cores to create tools like scrapers, points, borers, and others.
- Upper Paleolithic stage introduced further advancements, with implement types like blunted and pen knife blades, blades featuring serrated edges, and arrow points crafted on long parallel-sided blades struck in a series from cylindrical cores using the punch technique.
Lower Paleolithic phase
Comprises two primary tool-making or cultural traditions
1. Soanian tradition:
- Part of the East and Southeast Asian chopper-chopping tool tradition.
- Through field studies, they identified a series of five terraces on the Soan River, part of the Indus drainage system.
- Tools from this tradition include pebbles with working edges on their sides or ends, obtained by flaking from one or both surfaces, producing choppers or chopping tools.
- Pebble tool assemblages were found on the Indian side of the border in Sirsa and Ghaggar valleys of Haryana, Beas and Banganga valleys of Himachal Pradesh, and the Hoshiarpur-Chandigarh sector of the Siwalik Frontal Range.
2.Acheulian Cultural tradition:
- Hand-axes and cleavers, represented advanced and increasingly symmetrical shapes.
- Quartzite was the preferred rock for tool-making, but in areas where it was not naturally available, Acheulian groups utilized other rocks such as limestone in the Bhima basin, dolerite and basalt in Maharashtra, and fossil wood in Bihar and Bengal.
- Techniques like stone hammer, soft hammer, and prepared core methods were employed to detach flakes and shape them into implements.
Key Lower Paleolithic sites
- Singi Talav in western Rajasthan
- Rock shelter III F-23 at Bhimbetka in Madhya Pradesh, providing Acheulian, Middle and Upper Palaeolithic, and Mesolithic levels.
- Adamgarh in Madhya Pradesh
- Paisra in Munger district, Bihar: The excavation exposed hut-like dwelling structures and a circular arrangement of stone blocks.
- Chirki-Nevasa in Maharashtra, yielding dolerite artifacts along with fossil bones of wild cattle and other animals.
- Morgaon, a site in the Deccan basalt landscape in the Bhima drainage basin
- Hunsgi in north Karnataka.
- Attirampakkam in Tamil Nadu, an in situ Acheulian site recently dated to 1.5 million years BP by advanced scientific techniques.
Middle Paleolithic phase:
- Middle Paleolithic culture encompasses a diverse array of tools crafted from flakes, produced through specialized techniques, earning it the designation of a flake tool industry.
- In Africa, Europe, South-West Asia and Russia, this culture is associated with the extinct Homo neanderthalensis, commonly known as Neanderthal man, who lived during the Upper Pleistocene period.
- Middle Paleolithic tools in India are fashioned from flakes and flake-blades.
- Tool types include various scrapers, awls, borers, unilateral or bilateral points, miniature handaxes and cleavers, and utilized flakes.
- Stone types employed: Fine grained rocks like chert, jasper, chalcedony, agate etc.
- Technique of making stone tools: Levallois technique, retouching etc.
- Manufacturing sites also reveal the presence of hammers.
- Middle Paleolithic Culture in India was first recorded in Pravara at Nevasa (Maharashtra) and then later in Godavari Valley in Karnataka by H. D. Sankalia. Sankalia named this culture Nevasian.
- Middle Paleolithic sites are distributed across the Indian subcontinent.
- Notable sites include: Didwana in Rajasthan, Hiran valley in Gujarat, Potwar Plateau between the Indus and Jhelum rivers, Budha Pushkar in Rajasthan, Luni river system (indicating tool industries west of the Aravallis), Chirki Nevasa in Maharashtra, and Kalpi in Uttar Pradesh.
Upper Palaeolithic phase:
- Upper Palaeolithic marks the final phase of Palaeolithic era and stands out as a period of significant human achievements.
- Upper Palaeolithic cultures flourished in Europe, South-West Asia, Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia during the later stages of Upper Pleistocene, often referred to as Late Pleistocene falling between 40,000 to 10,000 years ago.
- The Anatomically Modern Homo sapiens (AMHS), the only surviving human species, is associated with this cultural phase, encompassing our own species.
- Technologically, the Upper Palaeolithic is characterized by advancements in stone tool manufacture, particularly the production of parallel-sided blades.
- These blades, refined and elongated in shape with parallel sides, are created through the prismatic-core technique or fluted-core technique.
- Blades are produced by striking along the circumference of the core, resulting in a series of blades removed by indirect percussion.
- Subsequently, these blades are further worked and finished through a process known as backing, resulting in tools termed backed blade tools.
- In the Indian context, Upper Palaeolithic cultural relics are primarily stone tools based on blade-tool technology.
- As most of these sites are open-air occupations, tools made of organic materials like bone are scarce due to disintegration in open-air conditions.
- Bone tools, however, were discovered in the Kurnool caves (Andhra Pradesh), where favourable preservation conditions existed.
Bone tool industries of the Upper Palaeolithic phase:
- These are known from the Kurnool cave sites in Andhra Pradesh, revealing a variety of tools such as awls, barbed and un-barbed arrowheads, daggers, scraper-knives, scrapers, chisels, gouges, wedges, axe heads, and sockets
- These bone tools exhibit crude technology, reflecting the short-term nature of cave occupations.
- Subsequent excavations in the Muchchatla Chintamanu Gavi cave have revealed blade tools and bone tools, showcasing the technological diversity of this cultural phase.
- Prominent Upper Palaeolithic sites in the Indian subcontinent include Chopani Mando in Belan valley, Baghor in Madhya Pradesh, Paisra in Munger district of Bihar, Haora and Khowai river valleys in western Tripura, Kurnool in Andhra Pradesh, Muchchatla Chintamanu Gavi in Andhra Pradesh, and Renugunta in Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh.