Till 5 December 1982, there was no unequivocal evidence of the occurrence of a true hominid fossil from anywhere in the subcontinent. This contrasted sharply with the number of such finds in eastern and southern Africa, Europe and parts of Asia, including China, and Java in Indonesia. The discovery of such a fossil at Hathnora in the Narmada valley by Arun Sonakia of the Geological Survey of India on that date put the subcontinent on the global map of hominid fossil finds, but it is still a lone find and not everything related to it is beyond dispute.
The specimen in question is a completely fossilized, undistorted cranial vault, dark brown to grey in colour and nearly complete except for the left supra-orbital, a part of the left parietal and occipital bones. Basically, it is the right half of the skull cap with a little of the left parietal attached to it and with parts of the orbit, eye-brow ridge and the occipital region preserved. According to Sonakia, the estimated cranial capacity is nearly 1260 cc and the specimen possibly belonged to a male. The locality of discovery is the northern bank of the Narmada river, about 200 m to the west of the modern village of Hathnora, about 40 km to the east of Hoshangabad in Madhya Pradesh. The specimen was found deeply embedded in the uppermost layer of the 3 m thick basal conglomerate horizon of this sequence. It is now in the custody of the Geological Survey of India.
|
TABLE II.2 |
||
|
Period |
Soil Type |
Thickness of Soil |
|
Upper Pleistocene to Holocene |
black cotton soil—grey silty sand |
2 m thick |
|
Middle to Upper Pleistocene |
yellowish to brownish silty clay with thin inconsistent pebble beds (comprising quartzites and chert), profuse calcareous nodules and lime concretions with mammalian fossils and stone implements |
11 m thick |
|
pinkish silty clay with lime concretions |
2 m thick |
|
|
fairly hard compact and cemented gravel and conglomerate comprising pebbles of quartzite, sandstone, chert, chalcedony, jasper and agate with hominid and other mammalian fossils, and stone implements (heavy handaxes with sharp edges) |
3 m thick |
|
|
-----------------------Unconformity----------------------- |
||
|
Bedrock of Deccan Trap |
||
According to the initial report by Sonakia, the Hathnora specimen dates from the Middle Pleistocene and belongs to the Homo erectus variety of hominid fossils. However, he adds that ‘it differs from all the known subspecies of H. erectus in having comparatively larger cranial capacity (1260 cc), higher vault and mental eminence.’ He further suggests that the Narmada Man ‘appears to represent an advanced stage of H. erectus’.
More observations on the stratigraphic position of the find were available from G.L. Badam and others in 1986. There is a 1.5 m thick cemented, sandy, pebbly gravel at the base. This is unconforrnably overlain by a 0.5 m thick cemented, sandy, pebbly gravel. The skull cap has been found in this gravel along with a good number of vertebrate fossils consisting of proboscideans and bovids. This gravel also yielded a few late Acheulian tools. This grades into an overlying, c. 5 m thick unconsolidated, sandy, pebbly gravel with middle palaeolithic and a few late Acheulian tools. The overlying c. 2 m thick bed of pebbly—cobbly silty clay with calc-nodules contains only middle palaeolithic tools. Overlying this is a c. 4 m thick yellow silty clay, itself overlain by the black cotton soil of the region.
On the basis of the archaeological investigations at fossil hominid site of Hathnora, and the close similarity of the associated tools with other Late Acheulian complexes in and outside India, the age assigned to the culture and the fossil skull cap is late Middle Pleistocene to early Late Pleistocene. However, it would be premature to comment on the phylogenetic position of the hominid at this stage. But the findings of archaic Homo sapiens in association with Late Acheulian complexes outside India … necessitate a critical reinvestigation into the identification of Homo erectus narmadensis.
In the above-mentioned publication by Badam and others in 1986 one senses a controversy regarding the evolutionary status of the Narmada skull: Homo erectus or Archaic Homo sapiens? However, the balance of current opinion seems to favour the latter position. K.A.R. Kennedy published a detailed formulation of this viewpoint in 1992, with an earlier statement made along with Sonakia and others in 1991. In addition to the morphometric details offered by him, there are some changes from the initial observations by Sonakia: the age of the specimen is in the range of 27 to 32 years, 30 being an acceptable estimate; it is a female skull and its cranial capacity is in the range of 1155 to 1421 cc, ‘values which are high for African and Asian Homo erectus but closer to ranges for Homo sapiens’. Further, following the traditional method of comparing the morphometric data of the specimen with traits held to be diagnostic of established fossil series and seeking a multivariate statistical method using a larger comparative specimens series, Kennedy (1992) reaches the following conclusion:
We conclude that employment of the Bayes factor in this multivariate analysis erodes the initial confidence in assignment of Narmada Man to the taxon Homo erectus. This confirms the independent results of our morphometric univariate analysis. That Narmada Man does not fit easily within the suite of morphometric characters of Asian Homo erectus is correlated with the extremely high incidence of characters that are found in middle Pleistocene hominid specimens variously labelled as ‘archaic’ Homo sapiens, pre-Neanderthals and ante-Neanderthals.
In 1995, Badam gave out the fluorine/phosphate ratio of the Hathnora skull as 7.53 which, according to him, lent substance to his dating of the specimen in ‘late middle Pleistocene’. However, considering that the middle Pleistocene is currently assumed to have lasted from 900,000 to 127,000 years ago, this is not a focussed date. Another opinion, that the Narmada Pleistocene column as a whole falls within the geomagnetic polarity epoch known as ‘Brunhes chron’ which began about 780,000 years ago, does not also help to get a more focussed idea of the skull’s chronology.
Interestingly, Badam also raises doubt regarding the in situ position of the find by arguing that its position in a channel bar environment at Hathnora ‘combined with taphonomic features indicate that the cranium was redeposited in this section after having been transported over some distance’. However, it must be pointed out that the initial characterization of the skull as Homo erectus by Sonakia was fully supported by the French scientist M-A. de Lumley and her colleagues on the basis of their univariate and morphometric analysis. More recently, a hominid clavicle or collar-bone has been reported from Hathnora by the Anthropological Survey of India.