Ancient History and Archaeology

The Jwalapuram Locality 9 rockshelter in southern India dates back to 35 000 years ago and it is merging as one of the key sites for documenting human activity and behaviour in South Asia. The excavated assemblage includes a proliferation of lithic artefacts, beads, worked bone and fragments of a human cranium. The industry is microlithic in character, establishing Jwalapuram 9 as one of the oldest and most important sites of its kind in South Asia.

Petraglia, M., Korisettar, R., Kasturi Bai, M., Boivin, N., B, J., Clarkson, C., Cunningham, K., Ditchfield, P., Fuller, D., Hampson, J., Haslam, M., Jones, S., Koshy, J., Miracle, P., Oppenheimer, C., Roberts, R. & White, K. (2009). Human occupation, adaptation and behavioural change in the pleistocene and holocene of south India: recent investigations in the Kurnool district, Andhra Pradesh. Eurasian Prehistory, 6 (1-2), 119-166.

Petraglia, M., Korisettar, R., Kasturi Bai, M., Boivin, N., B, J., Clarkson, C., Cunningham, K., Ditchfield, P., Fuller, D., Hampson, J., Haslam, M., Jones, S., Koshy, J., Miracle, P., Oppenheimer, C., Roberts, R. & White, K. (2009). Human occupation, adaptation and behavioural change in the pleistocene and holocene of south India: recent investigations in the Kurnool district, Andhra Pradesh. Eurasian Prehistory, 6 (1-2), 119-166.

The newly documented painted rock shelters in the southern stretches of the Erramalai hills in the Owk Mandal between Kunukuntla and Uppalapadu villages, in Kurnool district helps us understand the geographical and geological association of the rock art sites in the mesas and tablelands that are formed in the Neoproterozoic near horizontal sandstone-quartzitic formation in the Kurnool basin. A numerous number of non-figurative characters generally geometric or abstract patterns dominant over the figurative characters featuring representations of Tetracerus Quadricornis (four horned antelope), Boslephus Tragocamelus (nilgai), salt water crocodile, turtle, Panthera tigris (tiger), Canadae (fox or jackal), Giraffidae (giraffe), hyena, etc. explicated in the chapter assist in perceiving the cognition and the behaviour of the contemporary man who can recreate whatever he saw, who begun leading a seasonally sedentary life implied by the delineation of butterfly which indicates monsoonal spring activity in the region supporting life around. Though subjects are comparable to Errajari-Yaganti-Jwalapuram group of sites, several most phenomenal and insignificant imageries such as butterfly, boat, Patagonian Mara, repeated occurrence of kangaroo-like figure, not known from the formerly mentioned group, noteworthy as the latter mentioned imageries hitherto devoid of any palaeontological evidence.

India is located at a critical geographic crossroads for understanding the dispersal of Homo sapiens out of Africa and into Asia and Oceania. Here we report evidence for long-term human occupation, spanning the last ~80 thousand years, at the site of Dhaba in the Middle Son River Valley of Central India. An unchanging stone tool industry is found at Dhaba
spanning the Toba eruption of ~74 ka (i.e., the Youngest Toba Tuff, YTT) bracketed between ages of 79.6 ± 3.2 and 65.2 ± 3.1 ka, with the introduction of microlithic technology ~48 ka. The lithic industry from Dhaba strongly resembles stone tool assemblages from the African Middle Stone Age (MSA) and Arabia, and the earliest artefacts from Australia, suggesting that it is likely the product of Homo sapiens as they dispersed eastward out of Africa.