The Prehistoric Period in India

1.1 Paleolithic Through Neolithic

• Lower Paleolithic tools are called Acheulian — hand-axes and cleavers, made by knocking flakes off both faces of a stone. This style goes back roughly 1.5 million years in India. Attirampakkam, in Tamil Nadu, is among the oldest known sites, alongside the Hunsgi Valley (Karnataka) and the Narmada Valley (Madhya Pradesh).
• Middle Paleolithic tools shift toward smaller flake tools and scrapers, made with a more controlled, prepared technique.
• Upper Paleolithic tools introduce blades and worked bone tools. This period also produced India’s earliest known cave art.
• The Mesolithic period is marked by tiny stone tools called microliths, often mounted on wood or bone handles.
• The Neolithic period brings polished, ground stone tools, alongside the wider shift to farming and permanent settlement.

Worked example: Say you find a hand-axe made by knocking flakes off both faces of a stone. That is an Acheulian tool — a Lower Paleolithic marker roughly 1.5 million years old, not a later, more refined blade tool.

1.2 Bhimbetka, Adamgarh, Mehrgarh

• Bhimbetka, in Madhya Pradesh, holds over 700 rock shelters, more than 400 of them painted. Discovered in 1957, it was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003. Some shelters were inhabited over 100,000 years ago, and its paintings span from the Mesolithic period all the way into historical times.
• Adamgarh, also in Madhya Pradesh, is a Mesolithic site. It offers early evidence of animal domestication — mainly dog bones.
• Mehrgarh sits in present-day Balochistan, Pakistan, part of the wider South Asian prehistoric world. It is among the region’s earliest known farming settlements, dating to around 7000 BCE. Its early farmers grew barley and wheat, and the site later became a precursor to the Indus Valley Civilisation.

Worked example: If an exam asks which site is both an early farming settlement AND a precursor to the Indus Valley Civilisation, the answer is Mehrgarh, not Bhimbetka — Bhimbetka is about rock art, not farming.

1.3 Burzahom, Chirand, and Regional Sites

• Burzahom, in Kashmir, is a Neolithic site known for pit-dwellings, and for burying domestic dogs alongside their owners.
• Chirand, in Bihar, is another Neolithic site. It stands out for an unusually large collection of bone and antler tools.
• Inamgaon, in Maharashtra, is a well-documented Chalcolithic settlement, known for mud-brick houses arranged in a planned layout, and burials under house floors.
• Mangadu, in Kerala, is a genuine megalithic burial site, with laterite-block monuments dated roughly 1000–100 BCE.
• Common trap: Chandraketugarh, an ancient trading port town, is actually in West Bengal (near Kolkata), not Odisha. Salihundam, in Andhra Pradesh, is a major Buddhist site known for stupas — not rock-cut cave shrines.

2.1 Copper, Burials, and Regional Threads

• The Chalcolithic period is the Stone-Copper Age. It saw the first use of copper, alongside continued stone tool use.
• Some Chalcolithic communities in Maharashtra buried their dead under the floor of their own houses. Multiple burial skeletons found together at some sites give archaeologists a window into prehistoric social and mortuary practice.
• The Ahar Culture, also called the Banas Culture, grew up along the Banas and Berach rivers, in Rajasthan. It is known for copper tools and distinctive black-and-red pottery.
• Mehrgarh, though in present-day Pakistan, is closely tied to South Asian prehistory, as one of the region’s earliest farming villages.
• Burzahom’s dog burials are unusual. They suggest domestic dogs held real social or emotional value for Neolithic communities in Kashmir.
• Chirand’s bone and antler tools survived well because of the site’s alluvial, silt-rich soil.

2.2 Why Hunter-Gatherers Moved, and How Domestication Began

• Hunter-gatherers moved for four main reasons: to avoid running out of local food, to follow migrating prey, to chase seasonal fruiting plants, and to find water in the dry season.
• Around 12,000 years ago, the world grew warmer. Grasslands expanded, boosting deer, antelope, goat, sheep, and cattle populations.
• The wild ancestor of the dog was likely the first animal tamed. Gentler herd animals, like sheep, goat, and cattle, came later.
• Domestication meant selecting disease-resistant plants with large grain and strong stalks, and breeding only the gentlest animals — gradually making them physically different from their wild ancestors.
• Farmers stored grain in clay pots, woven baskets, or pits. Herded animals themselves worked as a living food store, giving milk and meat on demand.
• At Mehrgarh, one burial included goats alongside the human dead — likely meant to serve as food in an afterlife.

Worked example: Imagine two goat herds, where humans in one herd kept only the calmest animals to breed, generation after generation. Within a few hundred years, that herd would be visibly gentler and more manageable than its wild ancestors. That selection process is domestication.

3.1 Why This Slow Transition Matters

• The shift from hunting-gathering to settled farming, during the Neolithic period, ranks among the most consequential shifts in all of human history.
• Prehistoric rock art and burial practices give rare, direct glimpses into the beliefs of people who left no written records behind.
• India’s prehistoric record, spanning Paleolithic through Chalcolithic phases, shows a gradual, regionally varied path toward settled civilisation.
• Acheulian tool-making, seen at sites like Attirampakkam, stayed in use across India for over a million years. Change came remarkably slowly.
• Bhimbetka’s paintings, made over tens of thousands of years, form a continuous visual record spanning the Mesolithic to historical periods.

3.2 Comparing Elsewhere: France and Turkey

• Cave paintings in France, discovered by four schoolchildren over a century ago, show wild horses, bison, and woolly rhinoceros, painted between 20,000 and 10,000 years ago.
• These paintings used colours made from minerals like ochre and charcoal, likely for ceremonial occasions or hunting rituals.
• Catal Huyuk, in Turkey, is a famous Neolithic site. It imported materials from great distances, including flint from Syria and shells from the Mediterranean and Red Sea.
• Since carts did not yet exist, goods at Catal Huyuk were carried by pack animals like cattle, or by people themselves.

Worked example: Catal Huyuk’s imported flint and shells prove long-distance trade networks existed even before the wheel — people carried goods hundreds of kilometres on foot or by animal, long before carts made it easier.