A close study of the total evidence has been made recently by R.G. Bednarik, and it should be useful to follow his discussion. The earliest evidence is from Bhimbetka site III.F-24 which is basically a tunnel (c. 25 m long) widening into a hall. A large rock in its centre contains, on its flat vertical wall facing the passage coming in from the main entrance of the tunnel, seven cupules or small cup-shaped depressions, up to 16.8 mm deep and preceding the present surface deterioration of the rock face. Further, a huge boulder uncovered in an excavation pit near this rock carries a single large, well-shaped and circular cup mark with an adjacent meandering line above. According to Bednarik, who has also examined the archaeological stratigraphy in relation to this boulder found in an excavation pit, neither this line nor the cupule is natural. He locates the cup mark and the meandering line roughly at the interface of the Acheulian with the middle palaeolithic levels and considers it more likely to have been made during the Acheulian rather than the middle palaeolithic. Bednarik further points out that such cup marks occur at the site of the presumably later rock-art site of La Ferrassie in France. The rest of the lower palaeolithic evidence is tentative: a stone disc from Bhimbetka, a similar disc from the Acheulian site of Maihar (also in Madhya Pradesh), six small quartz crystals in a similar context at Singi Talav in the Didwana area of western Rajasthan, and more definitively, a red ochre piece (1 cm across) from the locality V at Hunsgi. Both rock crystals and ochre pieces are known from palaeolithic sites outside India. None of the evidence cited is strictly art but certainly suggests a level of cognitive awareness in the lower palaeolithic.
The evidence is more explicitly artistic in the upper palaeolithic stage in India as it is elsewhere. The late V.S. Wakankar, the premier student of prehistoric art in India, used to argue that the earliest level of superimposed paintings at Indian rock-art sites was done in green and that ‘green earth’ was found in the upper palaeolithic context at Bhimbetka site III.A-28. The opinion is by no means undisputed but the issue is not yet settled either. There are, however, two indisputable pieces of upper palaeolithic evidence: an engraved ostrich-shell fragment from Patne in Maharashtra, with two banded panels of criss-cross designs; and a somewhat damaged bone object dug out of the Belan valley upper palaeolithic gravel (Gravel III, bracketed roughly between 25,000 and 19,000 BP) at Lohanda Nala. Originally identified as a mother goddess figurine, this has been identified by Wakankar and Bednarik as a harpoon. Bednarik also points out that such harpoons also occur in similar contexts in Africa and Java and ‘provide cogent evidence of a highly sophisticated tradition of bone working in the upper palaeolithic of India’.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
The palaeolithic stage marks the most visible interface between geological and historical research. Here the earth sciences provide the basic framework of archaeological investigations, and, as we have seen, knowledge has significantly progressed in this field in India only where earth scientists have collaborated with archaeologists. One hopes that the trend will continue and develop, because behind this apparently silent mass of palaeolithic stone tools lies the history of India of about two million years. This history ends only ten to twelve thousand years ago, and from this point of view, what follows after that is only recent history!
Those who are familiar with the ubiquity of palaeolithic remains in the subcóntinent are well aware that they occur virtually in all eco-zones, if not in all, but certainly in most of them outside the major alluvial deposits between Baluchistan and the western borders of Bangladesh and perhaps Manipur, and between Ladakh and the Palghat area of Kerala. Our ancestors knew about the suitability of different types of local stones as raw materials for their tools and where such stones were not available, as was the case in Tripura and Bangladesh, they settled for a suitable type of fossil wood. They certainly knew the terrain they were living in: in the Kortalayar plain they got raw material from about 4 km away and at Hunsgi they were aware of the ochre pieces they could gather in the local geological outcrops. They had to know about the local food and water resources and pattern their activities accordingly. They were the first explorers of the Indian landscape; in many parts of India their presence is very close to us—on hill-tops and slopes, in jungles and plains, on the banks of the water-courses, on the outcrops of raw materials, and in numerous cliff profiles where they lie embedded. By the time we reach the upper palaeolithic stage, their occurrences become more profuse and the tools more diverse and beautiful. There is a lot of beauty on nicely and assuredly flaked Acheulian handaxes too, but the sheer dexterity of flaking, detaching blades from blade-cores, retouching and choice of raw materials gets rather exciting in the upper palaeolithic. The fact that some of these techniques continued in the later periods shows the contribution made by these people towards the elaboration of technology. Large spreads of upper palaeolithic tools and related debris are a common feature of the landscape in many areas of the land, the Damin area of the Rajmahal hills being one of them. Very few of these spreads have yet been excavated.
As we get back to the lower palaeolithic, one of the burning questions is the evaluation of south Asia as a geographical zone in the overall scheme of human evolution. All that we know on the basis of the Hathnora evidence is that the region was within the distribution area of archaic Homo sapiens. What went on earlier and later is, of course, still unknown.