Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): Cultural remains of early stone-age going back to 1.5 million years have been discovered in Raisen district of Madhya Pradesh, said former Joint Director General, Archaeological Survey of India, SB Ota.
He made the statement in a lecture on, ‘Inquiries into Deep Human History: Investigations of Acheulian Sites around Tikoda and Damdongri District Raisen, Madhya Pradesh’. Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya (IGRMS), Bhopal, organised its annual lecture on Tuesday.
Ota said that in last two decades, there is headway in prehistoric research particularly to understand the earliest stone-age cultural remains, that is, Acheulian cultural remains of the Indian subcontinent.
“It is now well established that our earliest stone age cultural remains go back to 1.5 million years. One such pocket is in Central India, which has been excavated in Raisen district for last couple of years,” says Ota, former director of IGRMS.
He further said this comprehensive study is to understand the early human behaviour. Systematic explorations and excavations of Acheulian sites in Tikoda and Damdongri villages in district Raisen have helped to understand various aspects of human behaviour of early Hominin in this part of the sub-continent.
Excavations have shown that the area was extremely rich in Acheulian occupations in the form of large scatters of stone artifacts. “It has been noticed that almost all varieties of stones available in the area were used to make tools, but certainly there was a preference for selection of suitable materials for its fabrication,” Ota said.
Besides, the early habitations in the form of a large number of artifact clusters in the area suggest that these prehistoric hunter-gatherers had a band society with repeated occupations with a wide mobility within the valley.
Such densities indicate long-term continuous occupation by early hominin due to availability of suitable raw material, rich plant and animal food, water sources etc. Detailed multi-disciplinary study of such sites will certainly help in decoding prehistoric hunter-gatherer human behaviour in respect of settlement and subsistence pattern, man-land relationship, movement strategies etc, according to Ota.
