Mesolithic Cultures
Introduction: THE Mesolithic or the Middle Stone Age
Cultures represent a phase of transition from the preceding
hunting and food-gathering stage of the Palaeolithic period to
that of farming and herding in the succeeding Neolithic period.
The earliest evidence of the presence of Mesolithic man in India
was noted as early as 1867-68 by A.C.L. Carlyle who had
discovered a large number of microliths in the caves and rock
shelters in the Kaimur range (Mirzapur district of Uttar
Pradesh). But there had been no significant progress in, our
nowledge of. Mesolithic period until H.D. Sankalia undertook
excavations jn 1950s at Langhnaj and other places in Gujarat.
Sometimes Mesolithic period is treated as a later part of the
Palaeolithic Age (Epipalaeolithic) but in Indian context the
term Mesolithic has come to be accepted as a separate phase of
the Prehistoric culture. It was marked by a significant
improvement in tool technology and life pattern though some of
the earlier traditions continued to exist.
Salient Features:
The Mesolithic period coincides with the beginning of the
Holocene age, around 10,000BP or 8,000BC.This age, as
mentioned earlier ,witnessed a change in climate from cold and
arid to warm and on account of the gradual recession of the
glaciers. This change led to the melting oF snow~and the
formation of rivers resulting in the growth of forests and
vegetation. The studies by Williams and Clark in eastern
Madhya Pradesh ; indicate that there was a marked increase in
rainfall in these regions at the beginning of the Holocene age .
The change in climate naturally affected both flora and fauna.
The giant animals that roamed the surface of earth in the "Ice-
age" gradually vanished and these were replaced with swifter
and smaller animals such as various species of deer, cattle,
sheep, goat, etc. The fish also became more abundant. The new
environment thus created conditions for the availability of new
resources, and in order to exploit them more effectively, it
became essential for the Mesolithic man to make necessary
modifications in his tool-types. The most innovative aspect of
Mesolithic is the intro of microliths which could be used with
wooden or bone handle to make composite tools. These tools
could be employed more used profitably for hunting as well as
for collecting vegetal food. An important feature of the
Mesolithic period was the significant growth in population and
the change in demographic profile. . It, according to vn mishra
is evident from the fact that sites of this period are much larger
in number than those of the preceding Palaeolithic stage. At
Bhimbetka, for example, while the evidence of Palaeolithic
occupation has been found in only a few shelters, that of the
Mesolithic period is found in almost every shelter. Further, it is
during this period that the humans extended their habitat.
It is suggested that greater availability of food and better health
of the people were probably the main factors which led to
decrease in mortality rate and the increase in population. While
better rainfall in Holocene age contributed to greater plant
growth as well as increase in fish and animal population, the
use of microliths as arrows or spear-heads greatly improved the
hunting efficiency of the Mesolithic man. The evidence of
querns and mullers which appear for the first time in this
period further confirms that plant food was supplementing the
animal diet. Thus, assured of better food supply, the Mesolithic
man led a healthier and a longer life.
The Mesolithic period is also significant because the evidence
of burials or the ritual of intentional disposal of the dead
appears for the first time during this period. The grave goods
such as bone beads, rings, etc., put along with the dead in some
of the graves, are greatly helpful in giving us an insight into the
beliefs, rituals and the craft activities of the Mesolithic man.
Finally, the earliest rock paintings in India belong primarily to
this period. They throw valuable light not only on the aesthetic
sense and artistic taste of the Mesolithic people but also enable
us to reconstruct their socio-economic behaviour.
Chronologically, Indian Mesolithic cultures are normally placed
between 8,000 BC to 5,000-4,000 BC. But on the basis of a
copper knife reported from Langhnaj (Gujarat) and the C14
dates received from various other sites, it is assigned to a broad
time-span ranging from 8,000 BC - 2,000 BC, surviving well
into the Neolithic and Chalcolithic phases .
Material Culture and Subsistence Pattern
Our knowledge on the dwellings and material culture of the
Mesolithic people is quite limited. However, the excavations at
certain sites such as Bagor, Tilwara, Sarai Nahar Rai, etc., have
revealed that they lived in semi-permanent hut-like structures
having wattle and daub walls (walls made of tree twigs and
branches plastered with mud) and paved floors. The post-holes
found on the periphery of hutments suggest the presence of a
roof-like structure for protection. In central India, these people
preferred to stay in readily available rock shelters. The animal
bones and stone tools found at various sites form the chief
evidence of the subsistence pattern of the Mesolithic people.
This direct evidence is supplemented by the depiction of scenes
of hunting, fishing, trapping of mice and plant food collection in
the contemporary rock paintings. The animal species identified
on the basis of bones include both domesticated and non-
domesticated varieties such as wild bear, wolf, rhino, cattle,
goat, sheep, etc. At Bagor, a paved floor littered with bones has
been identified by V.N. Misra as a place for butchering animals
or a slaughter house. The bones found in broken, split open and
charred conditions indicate that the meat was cooked or
roasted on open fire [V.N. Misra}. At Bagor and Adamgarh
there is evidence of domestication of cattle, sheep and goat.
Allchin [1997: 92] however doubts the domestication of cattle
but agrees that sheep /goat were "certainly domesticated" in
this period. Anyway, the Mesolithic period presents the earliest
evidence 67 66 Prehistory and Protohistory of India: An
Appraisal of the domestication of animals in India, and
suggests that the early humans had now started combining
hunting with stock-breeding. The earliest evidence of human
burials in India also comes from the Mesolithic period, and
these are reported from various sites such as Langhnaj, Bagor
and Sarai Nahar Rai. The deads were buried inside the
habitational area, and the most common form of burial was the
extended burial, a body lying on the back with face upward.
There are, however, some variations too. Sometimes, the dead
were buried in a flexed position with arms and legs folded as if
in a sleeping position. There is also evidence of secondary or
fractional burials, having only a few bones. Generally, one grave
contained a single individual, but sometimes two, three and
even more bodies were placed in one and the same grave. At
Sarai Nahar Rai, a grave contains four individuals in two pairs
of a male and a female each, the male being placed on the right
of the female. It, according to R.K. Varma , makes one ponder
whether the concept of a fam
Anyhow, the meticulous way in which the burials were made
and the way in which the dead bodies and grave goods were
placed clearly indicate the performance of some ritual at the
time of death and the emergence of belief in life after death. The
grave goods obtained from the graves give us an important
insight into the material culture of the Mesolithic people. These
goods include microliths and bone ornaments.
At Mahadaha, one skeleton is wearing an earring along with a
necklace of beads made of antler bone. Mahadaha has in fact
been identified as a place where bone tools and ornaments were
manufactured. Beads of semi-precious stones such as jasper
and agate have been reported from Bagor, Bhimbetka and
Adamgarh . It appears that the ornaments were probably used
by the people of higher status and may indicate the beginning of
some sort of social division or stratification in the Mesolithic
period, the nature and characteristics of which are not clear.
This period, anyway, reveals the earliest use of ornaments and
sheds enough light on the craft activity and aesthetic sensibility
of the Mesolithic people.
Tools and technologies:
The chief feature of the Mesolithic period was the use of a large
number of microliths or blades and bladelets, produced from a
well-prepared cylindrical or rectangular core by pressure
flaking with the help of a bone or a wooden hammer . It
represents a technological improvement on the earlier tool-
making techniques which were based on direct or indirect
hitting or flaking. There was also a change in the use of raw
material in most areas. Except in parts of south India where
fine type of quartzite was available, in all other areas people
switched over to chert, chalcedony, agate, jasper and other fine-
grained stones which occur in the form of small nodules. The
pressure technique economised the precious raw material and
produced more blades in lesser time. The blades thus produced
were further retouched or trimmed on one or more edges to
produce a variety of "geometric" type microliths in the shape of
triangles, lunates or crescents, trapezes, etc. These tools, the
size of which varied from less than one centimetre to five
centimetres could be hafted on bone or wooden handles arrow
or spear. Many contemporary paintings at Bhimbetka and other
places reveal the use of such arrowheads and spearheads. The
microliths could also be arranged in a linear series to provide a
serrated edge to make with natural gum to produce a
"composite tool" or a weapon such as a composite tool to serve
as a saw or a sickle.
The main advantage of these 'composite tools' was that being
made of a number of microliths, if one of the teeth broke down,
it could easily be replaced without having to discard the whole
tool as was the case with a single-piece tool of earlier times. I
Besides microliths, small non-geometric tools also formed a
part of the Mesolithic tool-kit. These were usually made on
flakes by secondary trimming along the margin. This group of
tools included various types of scrapers, burins, etc. The site of
Mohrana Pahar in Mirzapur (U.P.) reveals a gradual process of
evolution of lithic tools from non-geometric to geometric ones.
Large flake-tools like chopper and chopping tools are by and
large absent, though some examples of these could be found in
Tamil Nadu region. Apart from flake stone tools, the Mesolithic
people also used other tools which included hammer stone,
perforated discs or ring stones, querns and rubbers. The
hammerstone was used, besides other things, for splitting
animal bones; the function of the ring stone appears to have
been to serve either as a mace-head or a weight for a digging
stick with the help a wooden handle. Querns and rubbers must
have been used for processing both plant and animal food. It
may be mentioned that some of the sites such as Langhnaj and
Bagor have also reported hand-made pottery. The sherds are,
however, very small and generally shapeless, and there is no
evidence that these vessels were used for cooking [Varma: 1985:
32-3]. There is also evidence of the use of tools and ornaments
made of bone and antler by the Mesolithic people. These
include arrowheads, blades, knives and also rings which have
been found worn as earrings and necklaces in the burials. Such
bone tools have been reported from Sarai nahar and
maharshtra.
Regional distribution:
In the last five decades, a large number of Mesolithic sites have
been discovered and excavated . They are located all over the
country, except in the regions of northeast India , delta of
Bengal in the east, the Punjab plains, Gangetic plain beyond
Allahabad in the north, and Kerala in the south. It is believed
that the absence of microlithic sites in these areas was due
either to the lack of stone for making tools or to the heavy
rainfall and dense vegetation. However, their density is far
greater in some areas like Marwar and Mewar in Rajasthan,
north Gujarat and the alluvial plain of the Ganga in south-
central U.P., i.e. Allahabad — Mirzapur area. Among the
important microlithic sites reference may be made to Bagor (25
km west of Distt. Bhilwara) and Tilwara (Distt. Barmer, on the
left bank of the river Luni) in Rajasthan; Langhnaj (Distt.
Mehsana) in Gujarat; Bhimbetka (45 km south of Bhopal),
Adamgarh (Distt. Hoshangabad) and Baghor (Distt. Sidhi) in
Madhya Pradesh; Chopani Mando (77 km south-east of
Allahabad in the Belan Valley), Sarai Nahar Rai (Distt.
Pratapgarh), Mahadaha, Damdama, Lekhani
Mahadaha is also on the banks of an oxbow lake. Excavations
revealed a 60 cm thick occupational deposit and distinct areas
associated with habitation and butchering. The microliths were
made of chert, quartz, agate, all of which must have been
brought over fairly long distances across the river from the
Vindhyas. Twenty-eight burials of thirty individuals, including
two instances of a man and and woman buried together, were
found within the habitation area. The burials were elliptical and
their base sloping. The grave goods included microliths, shells,
burnt pieces of animal bones, bone arrowheads and rings. The
bones found in the butchering area included those of wild
cattle, hippopotamus, deer, pigs, and turtles. Thousands of
animal bones were found in the lake area. The mesolithic
people of Mahadaha were tall .
Damdama is situated at the confl uence of a small stream
belonging to the Sai river system. Within the 1.5 m thick
occupational deposit, excavators discovered microliths, bone
objects, querns and mullers, anvils, and hammer stones. There
were hearths, patches of burnt floor plaster, charred wild grain,
and animal bones. There were 4 multiple burials among the 41
human burials. In one of the graves, an ivory pendant was
found among the grave goods. Dates for Damdama fall within
the early 7th millennium BCE. Recently, domesticated rice has
been reported from mesolithic levels at this site.
Rock shelters excavated at Lekhakia (in Mirzapur district of
southern UP) have yielded blade tools and microliths. There is a
clear tendency of tools to become progressively smaller in the
upper levels of the deposit. Burials were found, and so was
pottery. Baghai Khor is another rock shelter site in the same
area. This has a pre-ceramic and a ceramic microlithic phase.
Two extended burials were identifi ed, the fi rst belonging to the
pre-ceramic phase and the second to the ceramic phase.
An overview of the spread of microlithic sites will indicate that
the Mesolithic communities were settled in a variety of
environments which included sand dunes, rock shelters and
also the alluvial plains of the mid-Ganga valley where they had
enough water, food resources and raw material for tools.
