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Book No. – 11 (History)
Book Name – India: The Ancient Past (Burjor Avari)
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1. Earliest phases of human settlement and activity
1.1. The Palaeolithic era
1.2. The Mesolithic era
2. The Neolithic Revolution and the rise of agriculture
2.1. Main Neolithic regional concentrations
2.2. The socio-economic consequences of agriculture
3. Development of proto-urban settlements in the late Neolithic period
3.1. Four proto-urban sites
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From Africa to Mehrgarh: The Early Prehistory of India
Chapter – 2
Table of Contents
- In the absence of contemporary written records, archaeology is the primary method for studying prehistory.
- Archaeologists collaborate with specialists in cultural anthropology, geology, climatic studies, and genetics to enhance the interpretation of data.
- Over the past two centuries, archaeological research and other interdisciplinary studies have provided significant scientific evidence to explore prehistory, though controversies over evidence remain.
- Key questions in the study of prehistory in India and South Asia include:
- When did the first humans emerge in these regions?
- What tools did early humans create?
- What was their socio-economic lifestyle?
- When did they begin farming?
- When did urban civilization first emerge in the subcontinent?
- The answers to these questions are often unclear as research is ongoing.
- The chapter seeks to address these questions by examining three settlement phases based on available evidence.
Earliest phases of human settlement and activity
- Human evolution reached a critical stage around six million years ago, during the Miocene, Pliocene, and Pleistocene geological periods, with the emergence of our remotest ancestors in Africa.
- These ancestors, referred to as hominins, used bipedal locomotion (walking on two feet), providing an evolutionary advantage over other primates.
- Various species of hominins coexisted for 3.5 million years, with evidence of the first tool-using hominins emerging around 2.5 million years ago in eastern and southern Africa.
- These tool-using hominins evolved into three branches: Homo Habilis, Homo Ergaster, and Homo Erectus.
- Over one million years ago, some of these hominins began migrating out of Africa to Europe, west Asia, east Asia, and the Indonesian islands.
- Fossil remains of hominins like Sivapithecus and Ramapithecus have been found in northern India, suggesting tool-using hominins existed outside Africa earlier than one million years ago.
- A chopping tool discovered in north-west Pakistan, dating back two million years, indicates that the dating of human ancestry is still evolving.
- Homo Sapiens, modern humans, emerged around 400,000 years ago after a long period of evolution, adaptation, and diffusion by earlier species.
- Two main hypotheses exist regarding the origin of Homo Sapiens: the multi-regional model and the Out-of-Africa hypothesis.
- The multi-regional model suggests that Homo Sapiens gradually emerged from Homo Erectus populations across different regions.
- The Out-of-Africa hypothesis asserts that Homo Sapiens spread from Africa to other parts of the world and replaced other species.
- The Out-of-Africa hypothesis is gaining support due to the abundance of African fossil remains and genetic research pointing to an African origin for modern humans.
- Homo Erectus likely migrated from Africa to South Asia around 500,000 years ago.
- Homo Sapiens arrived in the subcontinent around 30,000 years ago via west Asia, with evidence suggesting an earlier arrival of a group around 50,000 years ago through South India.
- Genetic studies are expected to offer new insights into the first settlements of Homo Sapiens in different parts of the world.
- The peopling of India is still undecided, but it is clear that South Asian Homo Sapiens have flourished in the region for at least 30,000 years.
- By 100,000 years ago, Homo Sapiens dominated the world, replacing all other homo genera.
- Archaeology reveals the material culture of stone tools and, later, pottery, reflecting the progress of early human societies.
- Archaeologists employ three main procedures in their research:
- Typological classification – analyzing similarities and differences in tools and artefacts.
- Stratigraphy – studying layers of the ground to determine the relative age of materials.
- Dating methods – including spectrometric dating, radio-carbon dating, dendrochronology, and thermoluminescence for materials up to 10,000 years old.
- Over the past 150 years, archaeological methods combined with research from other sciences have significantly advanced our understanding of early humans and their activities.