Indian Mesolithic Variations – Anthropology by K.V RAMESH

Cultural complexes:

The mesolithic sites in India can be grouped into

Western (Bagor, Tilwara, and Langhnaj),
Central (Bhimbetka and Adamgarh),
Northern (Sarai Nahar Rai, Morhana Pahar, Baghai Khor, Lekhania, Gagharia Rock Shelter-I, and Dam Dama),
Southern (Tens, Bangaltota, Shoarpur Doab, Khandvil, Palavoy, and Kumool), and
Eastern (Birbhanpur and Kuchai) culture complexes.

(i). Characteristics of Western culture complex:

(a) V.N. Misra (1967) discovered and excavated die site of Bagor in Rajasthan. Bagor is a village located on the bank of river Kothari which is a tributary of the river Banas. The site lies on a huge sand dune (Mahasati). It yielded:

(1) Thousands of Mesolithic tools such as thin blades with flat retouchings, blunted back blades, obliquely truncated blades, obliquely truncated with lateral backing, triangles which mainly included scalenes, trapezes, broad trapezoids or transverse arrow heads, crescents and points.
(2) Very small microliths measuring between 2-1.5 ems and between 1-0,5 ems,
(3) Presence of both geometrical and non-geometrical types, geometrical types being predominant in numbers.
(4) Absence of flake tools such as scrapers and burins.
(5) Absence of the serest guiding blades found commonly in other sites.
(6) Perforated stones which served as weights of digging sticks.
(7) Copper tools and ornaments. (8) Hand-made pottery with incised decorations.
(9) Charred bones of domesticated and wild fauna such as sheep, goat, buffaloe, humped cattle, pig, black buck, chinkara, chital, sambhar, hare, fox, mongoose, tortoise, and fish.
(10). Extensive burial with pottery, metal tools and ornaments to accompany the dead.
(11). Stone paving on habitation floor showing an almost sedentary life.
(12) Initially settles as hunters and herders, but later primarily as herders.

(b). Another important site in the Western zone in Tilwara located on the fringe of Thar desert in Barmer District in Rajasthan. V.N. Misra (1971) excavated it. The site yielded:

(1). Microliths in the form of trapezes, lunates and points,
(2). Numerous parallel-sided blades and fluted cores.
(3). Bits of iron.
(4). Glass beads.
(5). Wheel-made pottery.
(6).Charred bones.
(7). Circular arrangements of stones on the ground indicating circular habitations –
(8). Habitation with hearths.
(9). Habitations! debris indicating sedentary life.

(c). Langhnaj in Mehasana District of Gujarat is another important mesolithic site. It is located on a sand dune along the western bank of the river Sabarmathi Sankalia (1941-1963) excavated the site and acquired plenty of mesolithic evidence from the two upper layers. The evidence included:

(1) Liclilc material of which more than 90% were waste material, cores, and chips, 4.67% were parallel-sided blades and the remaining 5.33% included finished microliths, such as blunted back blades, lunates, serrated blades, trapezes, scrapers and borers.
(2) Existence of microliths of geometrical and non-geometrical types.
(3) Harpoons, fishing spears, bolas, burins, and notched flakes, grinders.
(4) A rhinoceros shoulder blade with marks of strainers and several hammer stones.
(5) Fragments of stones grinders and querns.
(6) A stone bead.
(7) A tanged iron arrow head.
(8) A soft haematite piece with smooth rubbed surface.
(9) Crude pottery.
(10) Bones of wild boar, blue bull (nilgai), spotted deer, swamp deer, hog deer, a black buck, cattle wild buffalo, rhinoceros, wolf, mongoose, tortoise, rats and fish.
(11) Discovery of fourteen human burials in a flexed position.
(12) Cuts on the foreheads of all the fourteen skulls indicating cannibalism.
(13) Dependence on hunting, gathering and to some extent on livestock raising. The Langhnaj culture existed around 2000 BC.

Characteristics of the central culture complex

(a). Sankalia (1974)excavated cave III, F-23 at Bhimbetka in Raisen District of Madhya Pradesh. The sites yielded:

(1) Microliths such as triangles, trapezes, lunates, and so on.
(2) Microliths were large in size, especially the lunates were slender and 3-4 cm long.
(3) Numerous fluted coxes and parallel-sided blades.
(4) Geometric microliths, wheel made pottery.
(6) Extremely fragmented human burials which show medium range characters uidike .dose at Bagor.
(7) A three feet high screen or wall built by piling stones near the mouth of the cave toward the side wall, which served as a windbreak.
(8) Remains of domestic animals like sheep, goat and of several wild animals.
(9) Paintings on the cave walls and ceilings.
(10.) The culture existed between 2000-7000 BC.

(b). Adamgarh is another important site in the Western zone. R.V. Joshi (1964) excavated the site and obtained evidence of mesolithic. The evidence included:

(1) Microliths such as blades, lunates, obliquely blunted knives along with triangles and trapezes.
(2) Flake tools such as side scarpers, borers, points, and occasionally burials prepared on exhausted cores.
(3) Microliths cruder than those obtained at Langhnaj.
(4) Microliths were constantly associated with pottery fragments and animal remains such as those of domesticated animals such dog, buffalo, sheep, goat, and pig and of wild animals like deer, nilgai, stag and so on. The culture existed around 5500 BC.

Characteristics of the Northern culture complex

(a). The largest site in the Northern zone is Sarai Nahar Rai in Pratapgarh District in Uttar Pradesh. Dutta (1971) excavated it and retrieved:

(1). Microliths such as trapezes, points, crescents, lunates and triangles.
(2). Flake tools like blades, borings, piercers, arrow heads, and utilized flakes.
(3). Presence of geometric microliths.
(4). Animal remains like those of sheep, goat, buffalo, cattle, elephant and tortoise, many of which are of domesticated ones.
(5). Rectangular house raised oh four posts with fire hearths and with living floor made of humps of burnt clay.
(6). Fire hearths with charred bones near them.
(7). Human burials in extended forum.
(8), One human skeleton with a microlith embedded in one of its ribs,
(9). The site was located by the side of a horse-shoe shape lake. The cultures existed around 9000 BC.

(b). The other important sites in the Northern zone are the rock shelters in Mirzapur and Sidhi Districts in Uttar Pradesh. Marhana Pahar and Baghai Khor (Varma 1964) are the different rock shelters, which yielded microliths like lunates, points, trapezeums and burins, and potsherds. In addition, rock shelter at Lekhania yielded microliths of both geometric and nongeometric varieties, pot-sherds, bone tools, beads, and a broken ring stone_ Ghagharia Rockshelter-1 is in the Sidhi District. The ceilings of walls of the rock-shelters contain mesolithic paintings.

(c). In addition to rock-shelters, there were open air, alluvial sites, which yielded microliths. Chopani Mando is one such site on the river Belan in Allahabad District, Uttar Pradesh. The site yielded:

(1). Geometric microliths like lunates, trapezes and triangles.
(2). Side scrapers, burins, points, borers, backed blades and retouched blades.
(3). Hammer stones, anvils and sling balls.
(4). Animal bones.
(5). Circular huts with floors paved with burnt clay bumps.

(d). Dam Dama is another site in Pratapgarh District, Uttar Pradesh. It yielded:

(1). Microliths of pre-pottery and geometric namely scalenes, and isosceles, triangles, trapezoid, trapezes, lunates and percoir (borer).
(2). Blade fragments, cores, backed blades, truncated blades, arrowheads, side and end-scrappers.
(3). Querns, mullers, anvils and other stone fragments.
(4). Several bone objects like pendants, bangles and fragments.
(5). A large number of charred and semi-charred bones of cattle, goat, stag, deer, and so on.
(6). Human burials and skeletal remains.
(7). Burnt lumps of clay.

Characteristics of Eastern culture complex

(a). There are thousands of microlithic sites located in Jharkhand region. However, none of these sites were excavated. Only surface collections included microliths of which geometric forms are either dominant or rare. The microliths were fairly large in size and included blades, lunates or points along with burins and side and end scarpers on fluted cores and flakes.

(b). An important excavated site in the Eastern culture complex is Kuchai (Thaper 1968) in Mayurbhanj District of Orissa. The site yielded microliths without any ceramics. On the other hand, some sites located in Burdwan, Bankura and Purulia Districts in West Bengal yielded microliths often in association with Black-and-Red ware pottery, rising stones or at times even iron slag. B.B. Lai (1957) excavated Birbhanpur located on the banks of Damodhar river in Burdwan District in West Bengal. The site provided:

(1). Microliths nongeometric ones, besides few lunates only. Triangles and trapezes does conspicuously absent.
(2). Big flakes and blade tools dominate because almost 40% of tire total lithic industry included scarpers, borers, and burins.
(3). Post-holes indicated a circular plan of the house.
(4). Absence of hearths.
(5). Absence of bones and human burials.

The characteristics of the Southern culture complex.

(a). The important sites systematically explored in the Southern zone include those in Shoarpur Doab in Gulbarga District and Bangaltota in Beilary District of Karnataka, and Teri sites in Tinnelvelly District of Tamilnadu. Paddayya (1968) identified 25 mesolithic sites in Shoarpur Doab between Krishna and Bhima rivers. The tools he recovered from them are:

(1). Ten thousand microliths, which were slender and long, most of them being flat with hairthin lateral retouchings.
(2). Crescents, borers, and burins as the usual types.
(3). Triangles and trapezes were either totally absent or insignificant in numbers.

(b). Sankalia (1974) excavated Bangaltota in Bellary District and retrieved microliths from the sticky red-brown soil layer overlying the layer of Reddish murrum, which contained Upper Palaeolithic tools. The microliths included flakes and lunates. Blades were absent.

(c). Ayyappan (1946) and Zeuner and Allchin (1956) excavated the fossilized sand dunes called Teris at the place where river Tamraparni joins the sea. This site yielded:

(1).Geometrical and non-geometrical microliths-
(2), Microliths include lunates, backed blades, and pen knives, besides numerous blades and fluted cores.
(3). Discoid cores, flakes, shaped into various kinds of points, side scrapers, thumb-nail scarpers, and borers besides burins form the majority of the industry.
(4). Points and arrowheads prepared by using bifacial pressure flaking.
(5). The Ten lithic. industry was similar to that of Bandrareval factory site in Sri Lanka. This culture existed around 5000 BC,

SUMMARY:

The Mesolithic culture in India came into being with the beginning of Holocene period. The environment changed drastically. So also were the flora and fauna. The cold had vanished and with that large animals like mammoth, reindeer, cave bear and others. A more temperate and genial climate engulfed the country. Further, the country became comparatively barren and open.
The Mesolithic witnessed the manufacture of microliths and compound tools. The microliths show their evolution from non-geometric (Sarai Nahar Rai, Birbhanpur, Bangaltota, Palavoy and Sanganakallu) through crude geometric (Bagor and Tilwara) thereby showing evolution of microliths from non-geometric to highly geometric forms.
The shelters include caves and rock shelters (Bhimbetka), wind screen (Langhnaj) wattle huts and wind breaks (Bagor), circular huts (Tilwara), and circular houses (Birbhanpur) and rectangular huts (Sarai Nahar Rai).
The economic life of the mesolithic folk revolved around hunting, gathering and domestication of animals (Langhnaj, Bagor, Tilwara and Adamgarh), hunting and fishing (Langhnaj and of Sarai Nahar Rai). There were handmade pottery (Bagor and Bhimbetka) and wheel-made pottery (Tilwara) and Black-and-Red ware, (Bankura, Purulia, and Burdwana). There were religious beliefs woven around the disposal of the dead. There was cave art. There were also a few beads and ornaments. Inter-group warfare was empirically demonstrated in the skeleton at Sarai Nahar Rai and in some rock paintings. A stage was almost being set for men to enter into the settled and productive economy.