Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers

Detail

What "Palaeolithic" means

• Palaeolithic = "Old Stone Age" (the long first phase when people only chipped stone tools and did not farm).
• People in this age were hunter-gatherers: they hunted animals, fished, and collected fruits, roots, tubers, honey and eggs. They did not grow crops or keep herds.
• The age ends in India around c. 2600 BCE in this note's frame, by which time farming and early cities had begun elsewhere in the subcontinent.

Indian evidence — the oldest settlement

• The subcontinent's oldest human settlement dates to about 2 million years ago. So India was occupied by early humans very early, not late.
• Attirampakkam, Tamil Nadu — c. 1.5–1.7 mya. This is a Lower Palaeolithic (earliest sub-phase) site.
• It lies in the Korttalayar river basin, Chingleput (Chengalpattu) district, and is a key site for the South Indian Lower Palaeolithic industry. [2]
• The tools here belong to the Acheulian culture (a tool tradition known for big handaxes). Acheulian levels at the site are dated to about 1 to 1.7 million years old, with a gap in occupation in between whose cause is unknown. [2]

• Later work using luminescence dating (a lab method that measures when a buried grain of sand last saw sunlight) showed the Acheulian ended and a Middle Palaeolithic culture began here at 385 ± 64 thousand years ago, and this Middle Palaeolithic continued till 172 ± 41 thousand years ago. [3][4]

• Isampur, Karnataka — c. 1.2 mya. Another major Lower Palaeolithic site.

• What both sites give us:
• Animal fossils — bones of the animals these people lived alongside and ate.
• Large cutting tools: handaxes and cleavers.
• Smaller working tools: scrapers and choppers.

The raw material and what the tools did

• Tools were made of quartzite and limestone — hard rocks that break with a sharp edge.
• Uses, one job per tool type:
• Chop meat off a carcass.
• Dig out tubers (roots eaten as food).
• Scrape skins clean, so hides could be used.
• Cleave bones open to get at the marrow — a rich fatty food inside the bone that other animals could not reach.

Toolkit progression — tools get smaller and smarter

• Stage 1 — smaller tools. Over time the big handaxe gives way to scrapers, borers and points.
• A point is a sharp stone tip. Fixed to a stick, it makes a projectile (a weapon you throw or shoot).

• Projectiles let a hunter kill from a distance. Hunting became far more efficient and far less dangerous.

• Stage 2 — the bow and arrow. A major jump: it sends a light point fast and far, again and again.

• Stage 3 — blades and microblades.
• Blades are long, parallel-sided flakes struck off a stone core.
• Microblades are the tiny version, used for hunting small game.
• They were struck from glassy-textured rock, which is razor-sharp when freshly broken.

• Microblades were hafted — set into a handle of wood or bone — so several small blades together made one long cutting edge.

• The burin. A stone engraver. It cut symbolic marks into bone and shell, including ostrich eggs. Not a food tool — a tool for making meaning.

Note: At Bhimbetka this same progression is visible in one place — smaller tools appear in the Middle Palaeolithic along with new scrapers, and in the Upper Palaeolithic come blades, borers and burins. [5]

Symbolic behaviour — the mind of Homo sapiens

• This behaviour is linked with Homo sapiens (modern humans). It shows thinking beyond food and safety.
• Three main kinds of evidence:
• Paintings on the walls of caves and rock shelters (a shallow overhang in a cliff, not a deep cave).
• Pigments — colours used to decorate the body.

• The first beads — made of stone, bone and shell.

• Rock paintings survive in hundreds of caves worldwide — this is a global habit, not an Indian one alone.

• Bhimbetka, Madhya Pradesh, is the best Indian example of this record.
• It sits in the foothills of the Vindhyan mountains, on the southern edge of the central Indian plateau, inside big sandstone outcrops. [5]
• Discovered in 1957; about 700 shelters in five clusters; one of the largest stores of prehistoric art in India. [5][6]
• Its paintings run from the Mesolithic period right through to historical times, and the shelters show human occupation continuing from the Lower Palaeolithic onward. [5]
• UNESCO records that Bhimbetka is closely tied to a hunting and gathering economy, shown both in the rock art and in the living traditions of the adivasi villages around it — the customs of the 21 nearby villages strongly resemble what the paintings show. [5]

Life in bands

• People lived in bands — small groups, not lone families.
• Where they stayed: temporary camps, rock shelters and caves. They moved as food and water moved. Nothing permanent was built.
• Fire: they used it — for warmth, for cooking, for light, and to keep animals away.
• Language: they spoke languages. Those languages are now completely lost, because nothing was written.
• Beliefs: they held beliefs about natural elements (sun, rain, rivers, animals) and possibly about an afterlife — a life after death.
• Ornaments: beads of stone and shell, and pendants made from animal teeth.
• Exchange: ornaments were exchanged with other bands. So bands were not sealed off — goods and contact moved between groups.

Caution on gender roles — an exam-worthy warning

• Textbook and museum pictures usually show men hunting, women gathering and minding children. This looks "natural" but the chapter warns it is not necessarily accurate.
• Why the caution matters:
• Women may have painted the rock art.
• Men may have cooked or minded children.

• The evidence is limited — stone tools and bones rarely tell us who held them.

• Lesson for answers: separate what the evidence shows from what modern assumptions add to it.

Prelims Hooks

• Oldest human settlement in the subcontinent: about 2 million years ago.
• Attirampakkam is in Tamil Nadu, dated c. 1.5–1.7 mya; it lies in the Korttalayar basin, Chingleput district. [2]
• Attirampakkam's Middle Palaeolithic begins at 385 ± 64 ka and continues to 172 ± 41 ka, shown by luminescence dating. [3][4]
• Isampur is in Karnataka, dated c. 1.2 mya.
• Lower Palaeolithic large cutting tools = handaxes and cleavers; raw materials = quartzite and limestone.
• The burin is an engraver, used on bone, shell and ostrich eggs — not a hunting tool.
• Microblades were hafted into handles and used on small game.
• The first beads were of stone, bone and shell; pendants were made of animal teeth.
• Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka: Vindhyan foothills, Madhya Pradesh; discovered 1957; about 700 shelters in five clusters; UNESCO World Heritage Site. [5][6]
• Upper Palaeolithic new tool types at Bhimbetka: blades, borers and burins. [5]

Mains Points

• Technology and food security move together. The shift from heavy handaxes to points, bow and arrow, and hafted microblades is not just "better stone work" — it lets a band kill at a distance, take small game, and spread risk. Efficient hunting gave the spare time that symbolic work (painting, beads) needed.
• India is central to the human story, not peripheral. Dates of 1.5–1.7 mya at Attirampakkam and 1.2 mya at Isampur, plus a Middle Palaeolithic starting at 385 ± 64 ka, place the subcontinent inside the main debate on when and how modern behaviour spread — the Nature study explicitly reframes Out of Africa models. [3] Useful for any GS-I question on India's place in world prehistory.
• Symbolic behaviour is the real marker of modern humans. Beads, pigments, burin-engraved shell and rock paintings show identity, belief and possibly an idea of an afterlife. Exchange of ornaments between bands shows social networks existed long before trade routes or cities.
• Evidence has limits — say so in the answer. The chapter's warning on gender roles is a model of good historical method: reconstructions of who hunted, who cooked and who painted rest on modern assumptions, not on the stone and bone we dig up. Bhimbetka's living adivasi villages offer an ethnographic parallel, but a parallel is not proof. [5]