ANCIENT INDIA -1 Stone Age

• History of India
• is interesting because India offered to be a melting pot of numerous races religions communities and languages.
• The pre-Aryans, the Indo Aryans, the Greeks, the Scythians, the Hunas, the Arabs, the Turks, the Afghans, the Mongols,  Parsis, Jews, Christians, Muslims, atheists etc., made India their home.
• Each ethnic group contributed to the making of Indian culture. All these peoples mixed up so inextricably with one another that at present none of them can be identified in their original form.
• 
  
• Father of Indian archaeology- Alexander Cunningham.
• Stone Age
• Paleolithic or Old Stone Age (BC 1000000-BC10000)
• Human being evolved qver millenium and the present form reached about 50,000 years ago.
• The archaeological site of Bori in Pune district of Maharashtra is about 1 million years old.
• The Old Stone Age sites are widely found in various parts of the Indian subcontinent generally located near water resources.
• They also lived rarely in huts made of leaves.
• Some of the famous sites of Old Stone Age in India are:
• Athirampakkam near Chennai.
• The Soan valley and Potwar Plateau on the northwest India.
• The Siwalik hills on the north India.
• Bhimbetka in Madhya Pradesh.
• Adamgarh hill in Narmada valley.
• Kurnool in Andhra Pradesh In the Old Stone Age,  they are known as hunter-gatherers since they obtained food by hunting animals and gathering edible plants and tubers.
• They used stone tools, hand-sized and flaked-off large pebbles for hunting animals.
• Stone implements are made of a hard rock known as quartzite.
• The hunting of large animals would have required the combined effort of a group of people with large stone axes.
• We have little knowledge about their language and communication.
• The Rock Shelters of Bhimbetaka, Bhopal Madhya Pradesh Is located inside the Ratapani Wildlife Sanctuary,at the southern edge of the Vindhya hills embedded in sandstone rocks.
• The oldest paintings are found to be 30,000 years old, but some of the geometric figures date to as recently as the medieval period.
• It was declared as a world heritage site by UNESCO in 2003.
• drawings and paintings can be classified under seven different periods.
• The Auditorium rock is the largest shelter at Bhimbetka.
• the Auditorium cave is Surrounded by quartzite towers which are visible from several kilometers
• In addition to animals there are human figures and hunting scenes.
• giving a clear picture of the weapons they used: barbed spears, pointed sticks, bows and arrows
• Some scenes are interpreted as depicting tribal war.
• The depiction of communal dances, "a man" being hunted by a beast, a horned boar, birds, musical instruments, mothers and children, pregnant women, men carrying dead animals, drinking and burials appear in rhythmic movement.
  https://youtu.be/-7bqi70B3tE