South Asian Stone Age
As in other parts of the world, in South Asia, the divisions of the stone age into the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic periods do not carry precise chronological boundaries; instead, they describe broad phases of technological and cultural development based on the tools and artifacts found at various archaeological sites.
[1] The Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) in South Asia began as early as 2.6 million years ago (Ma) based on the earliest known sites with hominin activity, namely the Siwalik Hills of northwestern India.
The Neolithic (New Stone Age), starting around 7000 BCE, is associated with the emergence of agriculture and other hallmarks of settled life or sedentism, as opposed to hunter-gatherer lifestyles.
The Masol site, located in the Siwalik Frontal Range north of Chandigarh, India, was surveyed between 2009 and 2011 by an Indo-French research program patroned by Professor Yves Coppens, the College of France and Academy of Sciences and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
[9] Although critics have attributed similar types of bone markings elsewhere to large predators or trampling,[10] in this case, researchers concluded the "anthropic origin can be in no doubt" based on several lines of evidence.
These discoveries indicate that Acheulean technology was not confined to a single area but was widespread across the Indian subcontinent, suggesting that associated early hominins like Homo erectus had a broad geographical distribution throughout the region.
The Middle Paleolithic in South Asia is marked by the emergence of flake-based technologies that suggest more advanced planning as well as signs of early symbolic behavior.
These findings may represent the work of early anatomically modern humans.The transition to the Middle Paleolithic in South Asia has been uniquely informed by Attirampakkam, an open-air site with evidence of lithic industry spanning over a millennium.
[25] The discovery of over 7,000 artifacts, bearing evidence of the Levallois technique at Attirampakkam, was published in Nature in 2018 by a research team led by Shanti Pappu, which challenges some long-held assumptions about the Out of Africa migration theory.
"[32] Whether the Attirampakkam Levallois tools were made by early modern humans living in India long before the accepted migration out of Africa or by earlier hominin species such as Homo heidelbergensis remains unresolved in the absence of DNA or fossil evidence.
Fossils uncovered by anthropologist Anek Sankhyan include robust but unusually short clavicles, which point to a previously unknown “short-stocky” hominin, coexisting with a larger-bodied, so-called "Acheulian Man".
[34] Further inland from Attirampakkam, on the Deccan Plateau in present-day Andhra Pradesh, the sites of Jwalapuram and the Kurnool Caves offer insights into the adaptability and cognitive depth of early hominins in South India.
[45][46] Recently another site along the ancient Saraswati riverine system in the present day state of Haryana in India called Bhirrana has been discovered yielding a dating of around 7600 BCE for its Neolithic levels.
[49] The earliest clear evidence of the presence of the megalithic urn burials are those dating from around 1000 BCE, which have been discovered at various places in Tamil Nadu, notably at Adichanallur, 24 kilometers from Tirunelveli, where archaeologists from the Archaeological Survey of India unearthed 12 urns containing human skulls, skeletons and bones, husks, grains of charred rice and Neolithic celts, confirming the presence of the Neolithic period 2800 years ago.
