Palaeolithic Age
The Basics
Palaeolithic tools are classified as core tools, such as handaxes and cleavers, and flake tools, such as scrapers.
Sign up free for the full concept, practice MCQs and PYQsAncient India · Topic 2 of 17
Prehistoric Cultures: Palaeolithic to Chalcolithic
Stone Age and early farming/metal-using cultures before Harappan urbanism
Mesolithic Age
The Basics
The Pleistocene gave way to the Holocene around 10,000 years ago. The climate became warmer and wetter. Forests spread and rainfall patterns changed. Animal and plant life changed too. Hunter-gatherers who had used Upper Palaeolithic blade tools now had to adapt.
Sign up free for the full concept, practice MCQs and PYQsNeolithic Revolution
The Basics
By the end of the Mesolithic, some bands already kept animals and harvested wild rice. This happened at Bagor, Adamgarh, Chopani Mando and Damdama. But these bands still moved often. They depended mainly on hunting and foraging. Around 8000 to 6000 BCE, some groups worldwide crossed a threshold. Instead of only gathering wild grain, they began planting seeds deliberately. They also began breeding animals in captivity. The archaeologist V. Gordon Childe called this change the Neolithic Revolution. He used this term because it transformed how people got food and lived together. However, it was a gradual change. It happened separately in many regions, not as one sudden event.
Sign up free for the full concept, practice MCQs and PYQsNeolithic Settlements in India
The Basics
The early Neolithic story opens in the dry Kachi plain of Baluchistan, where the site of Mehrgarh lies on the Bolan river, at a point linking the Indus plains to central Asia. In 1974, a French archaeological mission began excavating this mound, and its decade-long work changed how historians understood the beginnings of agriculture in South Asia.
Sign up free for the full concept, practice MCQs and PYQsChalcolithic Cultures
The Basics
By around 3000 BCE, village communities in many parts of India began using copper alongside stone tools. This gave rise to what is called the Chalcolithic or copper-stone phase. These were not one culture, but many separate regional ones. Each is named after its type-site or pottery style. They are found mainly in areas with copper ores, such as Rajasthan, Gujarat, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh.
Sign up free for the full concept, practice MCQs and PYQsCopper Hoard and Ochre Coloured Pottery Cultures
The Basics
Ochre Coloured Pottery culture used a red-slipped, wheel-made pottery datable broadly to c. 2000-1500 BCE in the upper Ganga doab.
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