CHAPTER-7 Human Evolution: The Old Stone Age Revision or Short Notes( Notes for Civil Services)

CHAPTER-7

Human Evolution: The Old Stone Age

Revision or Short Notes (PRELIMS + MAINS)

1. African Ancestors of Human Beings-

• Earth is over 4600 million years old. The evolution of its crust shows four stages. The fourth stage is called the quaternary. It is divided into two epochs called Pleistocene (ice age) and Holocene (post-ice age).
• first epoch lasted from 2 million BC to 12,000 BC, the second began in about 12,000 BC and continues to this day.
• birth of the creature called Australopithecus was the most momentous step in the evolution of the human line. Australopithecus is a term that originated in Latin and means southern ape. This creature was bipedal and pot-bellied, with a very small braincase measuring 400 cubic centimetres. That is why this species is also called proto-human.
• first important Homo or human was Homo habilis found in eastern and southern Africa about 2–1.5 million years ago. Homo habilis means a handy or skilful man. Fractured pieces of stone have been found in the same places as the bones of Homo habilis. This creature had a lightly built braincase which measured 500–700 cubic centimetres.
• second important step saw the appearance of Homo erectus dated to 1.8 to 1.6 million years ago. Homo erectus means an erect or upright man. Its skull was strongly built, its braincase measuring 800–1200 cubic centimetres. New types of stone tools have been found with Homo erectus. The hand axe is considered the most distinctive. Their remains have been found in Africa,China, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.
• third step marked the emergence of Homo sapiens, which means wise man. Our own species evolved from Homo sapiens. It resembles the Neanderthal man found in western Germany around 230,000–30,000 years ago.
• It had a short body and very narrow forehead, but its braincase measured about 1200 to 1800 cubic centimetres. The race probably evolved in Europe, but the Neanderthal remains have also been found in the Near East and elsewhere in the Old World.
• full-fledged modern man called Homo sapiens sapiens is traceable to about 115,000 years ago in southern Africa in the late Stone Age called the Upper Palaeolithic. The Homo sapiens sapiens had a large rounded braincase of about 1200–2000 cubic centimetres in volume.

1. The Early Man in India

• Some of the earliest skull fossils have been found in the Siwalik hills covering India and Pakistan. These skulls appear in the Potwar plateau, in Punjab province of Pakistan, which developed on sandstone.
• These skulls are called Ramapithecus and Sivapithecus. They seem to possess some hominid features though they represent apes. Ramapithecus was the female. It seems that further evolution from the Siwalik category of hominids came to a dead end in the subcontinent, and this species became extinct.
• An almost complete hominid skull was discovered in 1982 in the middle valley of the Narmada at Hathnora in MP. This fossilized skull was called Homo erectus or upright human, but is now anatomically recognized as archaic Homo sapiens.
• remains of a full-fledged modern man called Homo sapiens sapiens have been reported from Sri Lanka. The find place is called Fa Hien, and the fossils found nearby are 34,000 years old.
• Phases in the Palaeolithic Age

 (Source- New NCERT Class-6)

• Palaeolithic Age in India is divided into three phases in accordance with the type of stone tools used by the people and also according to the nature of climatic change.
• first phase is called Early or Lower Palaeolithic, the second Middle Palaeolithic, and the third Upper Palaeolithic.
• Bori artefacts-the first phase may be placed broadly between 600,000 and 150,000 BC, the second between 150,000 and 35,000 BC, and the third between 35,000 and 10,000 BC.
• Lower Palaeolithic or the Early Old Stone Age covers the greater part of the ice age. The Early Old Stone Age may have begun in Africa around two million years ago, but in India it is not older than 600,000 years.
• This date is given to Bori in Maharashtra, and this site is considered to be the earliest Lower Palaeolithic site. People use hand axes, cleavers, and choppers.
• axes found in India are more or less similar to those of western Asia, Europe, and Africa. Stone tools were used largely for chopping, digging, and skinning.
• Early Old Stone Age sites have been found in the valley of river Son or Sohan in Punjab, now in Pakistan. Several sites have been found in Kashmir and the Thar desert.
• Lower Palaeolithic tools have also been found in the Belan valley in UP and in the desert area of Didwana in Rajasthan. Didwana yielded not only LowerPalaeolithic stone tools but also those of the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic ages. Chirki-Nevasa in Maharashtra has yielded as many as 2000 tools, and those have also been found at several places in the south.
• Nagarjunakonda in Andhra Pradesh is an important site, and the caves and rock shelters of Bhimbetka near Bhopal also show features of the Lower Palaeolithic age.
• Bhimbetka (in presentday Madhya Pradesh)- This site is called habitation-cum-factory Each marks of the site from where archaeologists have found evidence of early farmers and herders. Some of the most important ones are in the north-west, in present-day Kashmir, and in east and south India. [NCERT CHAPTER-2 CLASS-VI]
• The earliest people were skilled gatherers who lived along the banks of river Narmada.The Sulaiman and Kirthar hills to the Northwest are the areas where women and men first began to grow crops such as wheat and barley about 8000 years ago are located here. The Garo hills to the north-east and the Vindhyas in central India. The places where rice was first grown are to the north of the Vindhyas. [NCERT CHAPTER-1 CLASS-VI]
• Hand axes have been found in a deposit of the time of the second Himalayan inter-glaciation, when the climate became less humid. The people of the Lower Stone Age seem to have principally been food gatherers.
• The Middle Palaeolithic industries were largely based upon flakes or small pieces of stone which have been found in different parts of India with regional variations.
• principal tools comprise blades, points, borers, and scrapers, all made of flakes. The geographical horizon of the Middle Palaeolithic sites coincides roughly with that of the Lower Palaeolithic sites.
• artefacts of this age are found at several places on the river Narmada, and also at several places, south of the Tungabhadra river. The Belan valley (UP), which lies at the foothills of the Vindhyas, is rich in stone tools and animal fossils including cattle and deer.
• These remains relate to both the Lower and Middle Stone ages. In the Upper Palaeolithic phase we find 566 sites in India. The climate was less humid, coinciding with the last phase of the ice age when the climate became comparatively warm.
• In India, we notice the use of blades and burins, which have been found in AP, Karnataka, Maharashtra, central MP, southern UP, Jharkhand and adjoining areas.
• Caves and rock shelters for use by human beings in the Upper Palaeolithic phase have been discovered at Bhimbetka, 45 km south of Bhopal. An Upper Palaeolithic assemblage, characterized by comparatively large flakes, blades, burins, and scrapers has also been found in the upper levels of the Gujarat sand dunes.

1. The Mesolithic Age: Hunters and Herders

• In 9000 BC began an intermediate stage in Stone-Age culture, which is called the Mesolithic age. It intervened as a transitional phase between the Palaeolithic and the Neolithic or New Stone ages.
• Mesolithic people lived on hunting, fishing, and food gathering; at a later stage they also domesticated animals. The first three occupations continued the Palaeolithic practice, whereas the last developed in the Neolithic culture.
• Thus the Mesolithic age marked a transitional phase in the mode of subsistence leading to animal husbandry. The characteristic tools of the Mesolithic age are microliths or tiny tools.

• Mesolithic sites abound in Rajasthan, southern UP, central and eastern India, and also south of the river Krishna.
• Bagor in Rajasthan is very well excavated. It had a distinctive microlithic industry, and its inhabitants subsisted on hunting and pastoralism. The site remained occupied for 5000 years from the fifth millennium BC onwards.
• Adamgarh in MP and Bagor in Rajasthan provide the earliest evidence for the domestication of animals in the Indian part of the subcontinent; this could be around 5000 BC. The cultivation of plants around 7000–6000 BC is suggested in Rajasthan.

1. Art in the Old Stone Age

• people of the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic ages practised painting. Prehistoric art appears at several places, but Bhimbetka in MP is a striking site. Situated in the Vindhyan range, 45 km south of Bhopal, it has over 500 painted rock shelters distributed in an area of 10 sq. km. At Bhimbetka, the rock paintings extend from the Upper Palaeolithic to the Mesolithic age

1. Earliest Human Organization

• Bands were formed for hunting, there could have been a form of alliance between various bands for mutual aid, Rituals could have been conducted to ratify such an alliance. Eventually the band turned into an exogamous group called clan in the Neolithic phase.