Sequence and Distribution of Paleolithic culture in India

 

Sequence and Distribution of Paleolithic culture in India :

The Palaeolithic sites of India have been divided into primary, semi-primary and secondary categories, depending on their relationship with the place where the tools were first manufactured: original position, slightly removed from the original position through colluvial forces, and indeterminably removed from the original positions through alluvial agencies. The tools which occupy a vast space of the Indian literature on Paleolithic archaeology belong unhesitatingly to the last group.

Robert Bruce Foote, a British geologist discovered and identified the first Palaeolithic tool in the Indian Subcontinent in 1863, at the village of Pallavaram, near Madras (now Chennai), and laid the foundations of the Prehistory in India. Since then, prehistoric archaeologists have located hundreds of prehistoric sites in different parts of India and are attempting to understand the lifeways of prehistoric people. The Palaeolithic sites are found throughout the Indian subcontinent in a variety of ecological contexts, including mountain regions, hill slopes, alluvial settings, coastal plains, and in rock shelters. The cave sites are undoubtedly primary, but there are only three excavated cave sites: the upper Paleolithic Sanghao and Kurnool and the Acheulian rock-shelter III.F-23 at Bhimbetka(near Bhopal) and Adamgarh in Madhya Pradesh and Belan valley (the region from Allahabad to Varanasi) in Uttar Pradesh. . Sites buried in the alluvium or other deposits, such as those found in west Rajasthan, at Hunsgi in Karnataka, Paisra in Bihar. As far as the upper Paleolithic is concerned, there is more evidence from Baghor I in Sidhi, Madhya Pradesh, and the Kurnool caves of Andhra Pradesh. Some important sites of this age are the Kashmir valley and the Sohan valley in Rawalpindi (in Maharashtra).

The archaeological record clearly indicates that Acheulian was the earliest stage of hominine occupation of the subcontinent. The Acheulian site of Isampur has been dated to 1.2 million years by ESR (Electron Spin Resonance) dating method.