Hunter-Gatherers : Paleolithic & Mesolithic Age
Introduction:-
This is the story of our fore fathers.Who used to hunt and gather foods , unlike us , who think that breakfast comes from the near by grocery store.Human societies during more than 99% of their existence on the earth have lived as hunters/gatherers. This means that before human beings started producing food about 10.000 years ago, they lived off the resources of nature.Lets explore what they did, when they did, how they did and where they did .
Paleolithic Age:-
- Palaeolithic Culture developed in the Pleistocene period. The Pleistocene period (about 2 million years ago) is the geological period refe*ng to the last or the Great Ice Age. It was the period when ice covered the earth’s surface.
- Palaeolithic Tools :- Palaeolithic Culture has been divided into three phases on the basis of the nature of stone tools made by human beings as well as due to the changes in the climate and environment.
- Lower Palaeolithic tools -handaxes, cleavers, choppers and chopping tools.
- Middle Palaeolithic tools- made up of flakes
- Upper Palaeolithic tools – characterised by burins and scrapers
- Palaeolithic Sites :-
- Kashmir , Potwar region (Present day West Punjab and Pakistan) and Sohan valley
- Luni river complex in Rajasthan
- Chittorgarh (Gambhirs basin), Kota (Chambal basin), and Negarai (Berach basin)
- Wagaon and Kadamali river basins in Mewar
- Sabarmati, Mahi Complex in Gujarat
- Bhandarpur near Orsang Valley
- Bhader river valley in Saurashtra and Kutch region
- Bhimbetka (near Bhopal) located in the Vindhyan range
- The rivers-Tapti, Godavari, Bhima and Krishna have yielded a large number of Palaeolithic sites
- Koregaon,Chandoli and Shikarpur in Maharashtra.
- In eastern India, the river Raro (Singhbhum, Bihar) is rich in Palaeolithic tools
- Palaeolithic tools have also been reported from the valleys of the Damodar and the Suvarnarekha
- The Buharbalang Valley ‘in Mayurbhang in Orissa has many Early and Middle Palaeolithic tools
- From Malprabha, Ghatprabha and the amuents of the Krishna a number of Palaeolithic sites have been reported.Anagawadi and Bagalkot are two most important sites on the Ghatprabha where both Early and Middle Palaeolithic tools have been found
- The rivers Palar, Penniyar and Kaveri in Tamil Nadu are rich in Palaeolithic tools. Attirampakkam and Gudiyam (in Tamil Nadu) have yielded both Early and Middle
Palaeolithic artefacts.
- Palaeolithic Subsitence Pattern:-
- Primates, many giraffe-liki forms, muskdeer, goats. buffaloes, bovines and pigs seem to be of indigenous origin. The camel and the horse had Horth-American connection. Hippopotamus and elephants migrated to India from Central Africa
- Hunting practices were concentrated on large and middle sized mammals especially ungulates (a type of animal).
- Rock paintings and carvings also,gve us an insight into the subsistence pattern and social life of the Palaeolithic people.
- Bhimbetka located on the Vindhyan range, is well known for continuous succession of paintings of different periods. Period-I belongs to Upper Palaeolithic stage and paintings are done in green and dark red colours. The paintings are predominantly of bisons, elephants, tigers, rhinos and boars.
- Paintings also reflected that palaeolithic people lived in small band (small groups) societies whose subsistence economy was based on exploitation of resources in the form of both animal and plant products/
Mesolithic Age:-
- The Mesolithic Age began around 8000 BC. It was the transitional phase between the Palaeolithic Age and the Neolithic Age. There was rise in temperature and the climate became warm and dry. The climatic changes affected human life and brought about changes in fauna and flora. The technology of producing tools also underwent change and the small stone tools were used.
- Mesolithic tools:-The Mesolithic tools are microliths or small stone tools. Microliths are very small in size and their length ranges from 1 to 8 cm.Blade, core,
point, triangle, lunate and trapeze are the main types of Mesolithic tools. - Mesolithic Sites:-
- Pachpadra basin and the Sojat area (Rajasthan)
- Tilwara is a significant site.
- Bagor (Rajasthan) on the river Kothari is the largest Mesolithic site in India
- Akhaj, Valasana, Hirpur and Langhnaj are situated east of the river Sabarmati
- The Vindhyas and Satpura range are rich in Mesolithic sites
- Morhana Palm (Uttar Pradesh) and Lekhabia (Uttar Pradesh) are two significant sites
- Adamga& in Hosangabad and lying to the south of Bhimbetka is another significant Mdthic site
- KonKan region
- The Kriahna and Bhima rivers have produced my microliths
- The Godavari delta is rich in microliths . Here the microliths are associated with the Neolithic Culture. The Kurnool area has many microliths.
- Mesolithic Subsistence Pattern:-
- The early Mamlithic sites have yielded the faunal reamins of cattle, sheep, goat, buffalo, pig, dog,boar, bison, elephant, hippo, jackal, wolt, cheetah, sambal, brasingha, black-buck, chinkara, hog deer, hare, porcupine, mongoose, lizard, tortoise and fish.
- wild sheep, wild goat, ass, elephant, bison, fox, hippo, sambar, chinkara, hare, porcupine, lizard, rat, fowl and tortoise are absent at the sites falling in the category of Mesolithic tradition
- Bhimbetka is extremely ridh in paintings. Many animals like, boar, buffalo,monkey and nilgai are frequently depicted. The paintings and engravings depict activities like sexual union, child birth, rearing of child, and burial ceremony. All these indicate that during the Mesolithic period, social organization had become more stable than in paleolithic times. It seems that the religious beliefs of the Mesolithic people are conditioned by ecological and material conditions.
Radiocarbon dating method :- One of the best known chronomatic dating techniques which can be used for dating of most organic material up to 70,000 years old. Plants and other living organs consume carbon from the atmosphere during this life time. This carbon also includes carbon 14 (14c) which is a radioactive element. After the death of plants and the living organs the accumulated 14c starts decaying and by measuring its present concentration we can determinethe age of the organisms which became extinct a long time ago.
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Steve Ovett, the famous British middle-distance athlete, won the 800-metres gold medal at the Moscow Olympics of 1980. Just a few days later, he was about to win a 5,000-metres race at London’s Crystal Palace. Known for his burst of acceleration on the home stretch, he had supreme confidence in his ability to out-sprint rivals. With the final 100 metres remaining,
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]Ovett waved to the crowd and raised a hand in triumph. But he had celebrated a bit too early. At the finishing line, Ireland’s John Treacy edged past Ovett. For those few moments, Ovett had lost his sense of reality and ignored the possibility of a negative event.
This analogy works well for the India story and our policy failures , including during the ongoing covid pandemic. While we have never been as well prepared or had significant successes in terms of growth stability as Ovett did in his illustrious running career, we tend to celebrate too early. Indeed, we have done so many times before.
It is as if we’re convinced that India is destined for greater heights, come what may, and so we never run through the finish line. Do we and our policymakers suffer from a collective optimism bias, which, as the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman once wrote, “may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases”? The optimism bias arises from mistaken beliefs which form expectations that are better than the reality. It makes us underestimate chances of a negative outcome and ignore warnings repeatedly.
The Indian economy had a dream run for five years from 2003-04 to 2007-08, with an average annual growth rate of around 9%. Many believed that India was on its way to clocking consistent double-digit growth and comparisons with China were rife. It was conveniently overlooked that this output expansion had come mainly came from a few sectors: automobiles, telecom and business services.
Indians were made to believe that we could sprint without high-quality education, healthcare, infrastructure or banking sectors, which form the backbone of any stable economy. The plan was to build them as we went along, but then in the euphoria of short-term success, it got lost.
India’s exports of goods grew from $20 billion in 1990-91 to over $310 billion in 2019-20. Looking at these absolute figures it would seem as if India has arrived on the world stage. However, India’s share of global trade has moved up only marginally. Even now, the country accounts for less than 2% of the world’s goods exports.
More importantly, hidden behind this performance was the role played by one sector that should have never made it to India’s list of exports—refined petroleum. The share of refined petroleum exports in India’s goods exports increased from 1.4% in 1996-97 to over 18% in 2011-12.
An import-intensive sector with low labour intensity, exports of refined petroleum zoomed because of the then policy regime of a retail price ceiling on petroleum products in the domestic market. While we have done well in the export of services, our share is still less than 4% of world exports.
India seemed to emerge from the 2008 global financial crisis relatively unscathed. But, a temporary demand push had played a role in the revival—the incomes of many households, both rural and urban, had shot up. Fiscal stimulus to the rural economy and implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission scales had led to the salaries of around 20% of organized-sector employees jumping up. We celebrated, but once again, neither did we resolve the crisis brewing elsewhere in India’s banking sector, nor did we improve our capacity for healthcare or quality education.
Employment saw little economy-wide growth in our boom years. Manufacturing jobs, if anything, shrank. But we continued to celebrate. Youth flocked to low-productivity service-sector jobs, such as those in hotels and restaurants, security and other services. The dependence on such jobs on one hand and high-skilled services on the other was bound to make Indian society more unequal.
And then, there is agriculture, an elephant in the room. If and when farm-sector reforms get implemented, celebrations would once again be premature. The vast majority of India’s farmers have small plots of land, and though these farms are at least as productive as larger ones, net absolute incomes from small plots can only be meagre.
A further rise in farm productivity and consequent increase in supply, if not matched by a demand rise, especially with access to export markets, would result in downward pressure on market prices for farm produce and a further decline in the net incomes of small farmers.
We should learn from what John Treacy did right. He didn’t give up, and pushed for the finish line like it was his only chance at winning. Treacy had years of long-distance practice. The same goes for our economy. A long grind is required to build up its base before we can win and celebrate. And Ovett did not blame anyone for his loss. We play the blame game. Everyone else, right from China and the US to ‘greedy corporates’, seems to be responsible for our failures.
We have lowered absolute poverty levels and had technology-based successes like Aadhaar and digital access to public services. But there are no short cuts to good quality and adequate healthcare and education services. We must remain optimistic but stay firmly away from the optimism bias.
In the end, it is not about how we start, but how we finish. The disastrous second wave of covid and our inability to manage it is a ghastly reminder of this fact.