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Periodization and human evolution - Part 2
3.0 Chalcolithic Farming Cultures
3.1 Chalcolithic settlements
The end of the Neolithic period saw the use of metals. The metal to be used first was copper, and several cultures were based on the use of stone and copper implements. Such a culture is called Chalcolithic which means the stone-copper phase. Technologically, Chalcolithic stage applied to the pre-Harappans. The Chalcolithic people mostly used stone and copper objects, but they also occasionally used low-grade bronze. They were primarily rural communities spread over a wide area in those parts of the country where hilly land and Rivers were available. On the other hand, the Harappans used bronze and had attained urbanisation on the basis of the produce from the flood plains in the Indus valley. In India, settlements belonging to the Chalcolithic phase are found in south-eastern Rajasthan, the Western part of Madhya Pradesh, Western Maharashtra and also in Southern and eastern India. In south-Eastern Rajasthan two sites, one at Ahar and the other at Gilund have been excavated. They lie in the dry zones of the Banas valley. In Western Madhya Pradesh, Malwa, Kayatha and Eran have been exposed. The Malwaware typical of the Malwa Chalcolithic culture of central and Western India is considered the richest among the Chalcolithic ceramics. Some of its pottery and other cultural elements are also found in Maharashtra.
But the most extensive excavations have taken place in western Maharashtra. Several Chalcolithic sites, such as Jorwe, Nevasa, Daimabad in Ahmadnagar district, Chandoli, Songaon and Inamgaon in Pune district, have been excavated. They all belong to the Jorwe culture named after Jorwe, the type-site situated on the left bank of the Pravara River, a tributary of the Godavari, in Ahmadnagar district. The Jorwe culture owed much to the Malwa culture but it also contained elements of the south Neolithic culture.
The Jorwe culture, 1400 B.C. to 700 B.C., covered modern Maharashtra except parts of Vidarbha and the coastal region of Konkan. Although the Jorwe culture was rural, some of its settlements such as Daimabad and Inamgaon had almost reached the urban stage. All these Maharashtra sites were located in semi-arid areas mostly on brown-black soil which had ber and babul vegetation but fell in the Riverine tracts. In addition to these, we have Navdatoli situated on the Narmada. Most Chalcolithic ingredients intruded into the Neolithic sites in south India.
Several Chalcolithic sites have been found in the Vindhyan region of Allahabad district.
In eastern India, besides Chirand on the Ganga, mention may be made of Pandu Rajar Dhibi in Burdwan district and Mahishdal in Birbhum district in West Bengal. Some more sites have been excavated, notable among these are Senwar, Sonpur, and Taradih in Bihar, and Khaitadih and Narhan in eastern Uttar Pradesh.
The people belonging to this culture used tiny tools and weapons made of stone in which the stone-blades and bladelets occupied an important position. In many places, particularly in south India, the stone-blade industry flourished and stone axes continued to be used. It is obvious that such areas were not situated far from the hills. In certain settlements copper objects are found in good numbers. This seems to be the case with Ahar and Gilund, which lay more or less in the dry zones of the Banas River valley in Rajasthan. Unlike the other contemporary Chalcolithic, farming cultures like Ahar practically neither made nor used microlithic tools; stone axes or blades are almost absent here. Its objects include several flat axes, bangles, several sheets, all made of copper, although a bronze sheet also occurs. Copper was locally available. The people of Ahar practised smelting and metallurgy from the very beginning. The old name of Ahar is Tambavati or a place possessing copper. The Ahar culture is placed between c. 2100 and 1500 B.C. and Gilund is considered a regional centre of the Ahar culture. In Gilund only fragments of copper appear. Here, we find a stone-blade industry. Flat, rectangular copper axes are found in Jorwe and Chandoli in Maharashtra, and copper chisels appear at Chandoli.
The people of the Chalcolithic phase used different types of pottery, one of which is called black-and-red and seems to have been widely prevalent from nearly 2000 B.C. onwards. It was thrown on wheel and occasionally painted with white linear designs. This is true not only of settlements in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra but also of habitations found in Bihar and West Bengal. People living in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar produced channel-spouted pots, dishes-on-stand and bowls-on-stand. It would be wrong to think that all the people who used black-and-red pottery possessed the same culture. We can notice differences in their forms of pottery and implements.
The people living in the Chalcolithic age in south-eastern Rajasthan, Western Madhya Pradesh, Western Maharashtra and elsewhere domesticated animals and practised agriculture. They kept cows, sheep, goats, pigs and buffaloes, and hunted deer. Remains of dead camel have also been found. It is not clear whether they were acquainted with the horse. Some animal remains are identified as belonging either to the horse or donkey or wild ass. People certainly ate beef, but they did not take pork on any considerable scale. What is remarkable is that these people produced wheat and rice. In addition to these staple crops, they also cutivated bajra. They produced several pulses such as the lentil, (masur), black gram, green gram, and grass pea. Almost all these foodgrains have been found at Navdatoli situated on the bank of the Nannada in Maharashtra. Perhaps at no other place in India so many cereals have been discovered as a result of digging. The people of Navdatoli also produced ber-and linseed. Cotton was produced in the black cotton soil of the Deccan, and ragi, bajra and several millets were cultivated in the lower Deccan. In eastern India, fish hooks have been found in Bihar and West Bengal, where we also find rice. This suggests that the Chalcolithic people in the eastern regions lived on fish and rice, which is still a popular diet in that part of the country. Most settlements in the Banas valley in Rajasthan are small but Ahar and Gilund spread over an area of nearly four hectares.
The Chalcolithic people were generally not acquainted with burnt bricks, which were seldom used, as in Gilund around 1500 B.C. Occasionally their houses were made of mud bricks, but mostly these were constructed with wattle and daub, and seem to have been thatched houses. However, the people in Ahar lived in stone-built houses. Of the 200 Jorwe sites discovered so far, the largest is Daimabad in the Godavari valley. It is about 20 hectares in extent which could contain around 4000 people. It also seems to have been fortified with a mud wall having storie, rubble bastions. Daimabad is famous for the recovery of a large number of bronze goods, some of which were influenced by the Harappan culture.
At Inamgaon, in the earlier Chalcolithic phase in Western Maharashtra, large mud houses with ovens and circular pit houses have been discovered. In the later phase (1300-1000 B.C.) there’s a house with five rooms, four rectangular and one circular. This was located in the centre of the settlements, and may have been the house of a chief. The granary lying close to it may have been used for storing tributes in kind. Inamgaon was a large Chalcolithic settlement. It shows more than hundred houses and numerous burials. This settlement was also fortified and surrounded by a moat.
We know a good deal about the Chalcolithic arts and crafts. They were clearly expert copper smiths and also good workers in stone. We get tools, weapons and bangles of copper. They manufactured beads of semi-precious stones such as carnelian, steatite, and quartz crystal. People knew the art of spinning and weaving because spindle whorls have been discovered in Malwa. Cotton, flax and silk threads made of cotton silk of semal /silk (Cotton tree) have been found in Maharashtra. This shows that these people were well acquainted with the manufacture of cloth. In addition to the artisans who practised these crafts at various sites we find potters, smiths, ivory carvers, lime makers and terracotta artisans at Inamgaon.
Regional differences in regard to cereals, structure pottery etc., appear in the stonecopper phase. Eastern India produced rice; Western India cultivated barley and wheat. Chronologically certain settlements in Malwa and central India such as those in Kayatha and Eran, appeared early; those of Western Maharashtra and eastern India were of a much later date.
We can form some idea about the burial practices and religious cults of these people. In Maharashtra people buried their dead in urns under the floor of their house in the North-to-south position. They did not use separate cemeteries for this purpose, as was the case with the Harappans. Pots and some copper objects were desposited in the graves obviously for the use of the dead in the next world.
Terracotta figures of women suggest that the Chalcolithic people venerated the mother Goddess. Some unbaked nude clay figurines were also used for worship. A figure of the mother goddess similar to that found in Western Asia has been found in Inamgaon. In Malwa and Rajasthan stylized bull terracottas show that the bull was the symbol of a religious cult.
Both the settlement pattern and burial practices suggest beginnings of social inequalities. A kind of settlement hierarchy appears in several Jorwe settlements found in Maharashtra. Some of them are as large as twenty hectares, but others are only five hectares and even less in size. This would imply two-tier habitations. The difference in the size of settlements shows that larger settlements dominated the smaller ones. However, in both large and small settlements the chief and his kinsmen who lived in rectangular houses dominated others who lived in round huts. In Inamgaon the craftsmen lived on the western fringes, and the chief probably in the centre; this suggests social distance between the inhabitants. In the graves at Chandoli and Nevasa in western Maharashtra some children were buried along with copper-based necklaces around their necks; other children had grave goods consisting only of pots. At Inamgaon an adult was buried with pottery and some copper. In one house in Kayatha 29 copper bangles and two unique axes were found. At the same place necklaces of semi-precious stones such as steatite and carnelian beads were found in pots. It is evident that those who possessed these objects were affluent.
Chronologically, a special note may be taken of a site at Ganeshwar which is located close to the rich copper mines of the Sikar-Jhunjhunu area of the Khetri copper belt in Rajasthan. The copper objects excavated from this area include arrowheads, spearheads, fish books, colts, bangles, chisels, etc. Some of their shapes are similar to those discovered at Indus sites; a terracotta cake resembling the Indus type has been also found. It also shows many microliths which are typical of the Chalcolithic culture. We also find the OCP ware which is a red-slipped ware often painted in black and mainly represented in vase forms. Since the Ganeshwar deposits are ascribed to 2800-2200 B.C. they largely predate the mature Harappan culture. Ganeshwar mainly supplied copper objects to Harappa and did not receive much from it. The Ganeshwar people partly lived on agriculture and largely on hunting. Although their principal craft was the manufacture of copper objects they could not develop urban elements of the Harappan economy, which was based on the produce from the wide flood plains. The Ganeshwar assemblage, therefore, cannot be regarded as a proper OCP/Copper Hoard culture. With its microliths and other stone tools much of the Ganeshwar culture can be regarded as a preHarappan Chalcolithic culture, which contributed to the making of the mature Harappan culture.
Chronologically there are several series of Chalcolithic settlements in India. Some are pre-Harappan, others are contemporaries of the Harappan culture and still others are post-Harappan. Pre-Harappan strata on some sites in the Harappan zone are also called early Harappan in order to distinguish them from the mature urban Indus civilization. Thus the pre-Harappan phase at Kalibangan in Rajasthan and Banawali in Haryana is distinctly Chalcolithic. So is the case with Kot Diji in Sindh in Pakistan. Pre-Harappan, post-Harappan Chalcolithic cultures and those co-existing with the Harappan are found in Northern, Western and central India. An example is the Kayatha culture c.2000-1880 B.C., which is a junior contemporary of the Harappa Culture. It has some Pre-Harappan elements in pottery, but it also shows Harappan influence. Several Post-Harappan Chalcolithic cultures in these areas are influenced by the post-urban phase of the Harappan Culture.
Several other Chalcolithic cultures, though younger in age than the mature Harappan culture, are not connected with the Indus civilization. The Malwa culture (1700-1200 B.C.) found in Navdatoli, Bran and Nagda is considered to be non-Harappan. So is the case with the Jorwe culture (1400-700 B.C.) which covers the whole of Maharashtra except parts of Vidarbha and Konkan. In the southern and eastern parts of the country, Chalcolithic settlements existed independently of the Harappan culture. In south India they are found invariably in continuation of the Neolithic settlements. The Chalcolithic settlement of the Vindhya region, Bihar and West Bengal are also not related to the Harappan culture.
Evidently various types of pre-Harappan Chalcolithic cultures promoted the spread of farming communities in Sindh, Baluchistan, Rajasthan, etc., and created conditions for the rise of the urban civilization of Harappa. Mention may be made of Amri and Kot Diji in Sindh, Kalibangan and even Ganeshwar in Rajasthan. It appears that some Chalcolithic farming communities moved to the flood plains of the Indus learnt bronze technology and succeeded in setting up cities.
Out of all the Chalcolithic cultures in central and western India only the Jorwe culture continued until 700 B.C. However, in several parts of the country the Chalcolithic black-and-red ware continued into historical times till the second century B.C. But by and large a gap of about four to six centuries appears between the Chalcolithic culture and the early historic culture at Kayatha, Prabhas, Prakash, Nasik andNevasa in central and Western India. The eclipse of the Chalcolithic habitations is attributed to a decline in rainfall f rom about 1200 B.C. onwards. It seems the Chalcolithic people could not continue for long with digging the stick in the black clayey soil area which is difficult to break in the dry season. In the red soil areas, especially in eastern India, however, the Chalcolithic phase was immediately followed, without any gap, by the iron phase which gradually transformed the people into full fledged agriculturists. Similarly, at several sites in Southern India Chalcolithic culture was transformed into megalithic culture using iron.
3.2 Importance of the Chalcolithic phase
Except for the alluvial plains and the thickly forested areas, traces of Chalcolithic cultures have been discovered almost all over the country. In this phase people mostly founded rural settlements on river banks not far removed from the hills. As stated earlier, they used microliths and other stone tools supplemented by some use of copper tools. It seems that most of them knew the art of copper smelting. Almost all Chalcolithic communities used wheel turned black-and-red pots. Considering their pre-Bronze phase of development, we find that they were the first to use painted pottery. Their pots were meant for cooking, eating, drinking and storing. They used both lota and thali. In south India, the Neolithic phase imperceptibly faded into the Chalcolithic phase, and so these cultures are called Neolithic-Chalcolithic. In other parts, especially in western Maharashtra and Rajasthan, the Chalcolithic people seem to have been colonisers. Their earliest settlements appear in Malwa and central India, such as those in Kayatha and Eran; those in western Maharashtra appeared later; and those in West Bengal emerged much later.
The Chalcolithic communities founded the first large villages in peninsular India and cultivated far more cereals than is known in the case of the Neolithic communities. In particular they cultivated barley, wheat and lentil in Western India, and rice in Southern and eastern India.
Their cereal food was, supplemented by non-vegetarian food. In western India we have more of animal food, but fish and rice formed important elements in the diet of eastern India. More remains of structures have been found in western Maharashtra, western Madhya Pradesh and south-eastern Rajasthan. The settlements at Kayatha and Eran in Madhya Pradesh and at Inamgaon in western Maharashtra were fortified. On the other hand, the remains of structures in Chirand and Pandu Rajar Dliibi in eastern India were poor, indicating post holes and round houses. The burial practices were different. In Maharashtra the dead body was placed in the north-south position, but in south India in the east-west position. Almost complete extended burial prevailed in western India, but fractional burial prevailed in eastern India.
3.3 Limitations of Chalcolithic cultures
The Chalcolithic people domesticated cattle -sheep/goats - which were tethered in the courtyard. Probably the domesticated animals were slaughtered for food and not milked for drink and dairy products. The tribals such as the Gonds of Bastar think that milk is meant only to feed the young animals and therefore, they do not milk their cattle. Because of this the Chalcolithic people could not make full use of the animals. Further, the Chalcolithic people living on the black cotton soil area of central and western India did not practise cultivation on any intensive or extensive scale. Neither plough nor hoe has been found at Chalcolithic sites. Only perforated stone discs were tied as weights to the digging sticks which could be used in the slash-bum or jhum cultivation. It was possible to sow in the ashes with the help of such a digging stick. Intensive and extensive cultivation on the black soil required the use of iron implements which had no place in the Chalcolithic culture. The Chalcolithic people living in the red soil areas of eastern India also faced the same difficulty.
The general weakness of Chalcolithic cultures is evident from the burial of a large number of children in western Maharashtra. In spite of a food-producing economy the rate of infant mortality was very high. It might be attributed to lack of nutrition, absence of medical knowledge or outbreak of epidemics. At any rate the Chalcolithic social and economic pattern did not promote longevity.
The stone-copper culture had an essentially rural background. During its phase the supply of copper was limited and as a metal, copper had its limitations. By itself a tool made of copper was pliant. People did not know the art of mixing iron with copper and thus forging the much stronger and useful metal called bronze. Bronze tools facilitated the rise of earliest civilizations in Crete, Egypt and Mesopotamia and also in the Indus valley.
The people of the Stone-Copper Age did not know the art of writing; nor did they live in cities as the people of the Bronze Age did. We notice all these elements of civilization for the first time in the Indus region of the Indian subcontinent. Although most Chalcolithic cultures existing in the major part of the country were younger than the Indus valley civilization, they did not derive any substantial benefit from the advanced technological knowledge of the Indus people.
3.4 The Copper Hoards and the Ochre Coloured Pottery phase
More than forty copper hoards consisting of rings, celts, hatchets, swords, harpoons, spearheads and human-like figures have been found in a wide area ranging from West Bengal and Orissa in the east to Gujarat and Haryana in the west, and from Andhra Pradesh in the south to Uttar Pradesh in the North. The largest hoard comes from Gungeria in Madhya Pradesh; it contains 424 copper tools and weapons and 102 thin sheets of silver objects. But nearly half of the copper hoards are concentrated in the Ganga-Yamuna doab; in other areas we encounter stray finds of copper harpoons, antennae swords and anthropomorphic figures. These artefacts served several purposes. They were meant not only for fishing, hunting and fighting but also for artisanal and agricultural use. They presuppose good technological skill and knowledge on the part of the coppersmith, and cannot be the handiwork of nomadic people or primitive artisans. In excavations at two places in the Western Uttar Pradesh some of these objects have been discovered in association with ochre-coloured Pots and some mud structures. At one place stray baked brick fragments are also found. Stone tools have also been found in excavations. All this suggests that the people who used the implements of the copper hoards supplemented by stone tools led a settled life, and were one of the earliest Chalcolithic agriculturists and artisans to settle in a good portion of the doab. Most ochre-coloured pottery sites are found in the upper portion of the doab, but stray copper hoards are found in the plateau areas of Bihar and the other regions. Many copper celts have been found in the Khetri Zone of Rajasthan.
The period covered by the ochre-coloured pottery culture may roughly be placed between 2000 B.C. and 1500 B.C., on the basis of a series of eight scientific datings. When the ochre-coloured settlements disappeared, the doab does not show much habitation until about 1000 B.C. We learn of some habitation by people using black-and-red ware, but their habitational deposits are so thin and antiquities so poor that we cannot form a clear and distinct idea of their cultural equipment. In any case, in the upper portion of the doab, the settlement begins with the advent of the ochre-coloured pottery people. Jodhpura on the border of Haryana and Rajasthan shows the thickest OCP deposits accounting for 1.1 metre. It seems, however, that at no place did these settlements last for more than a century or so; nor were they considerable in size and spread over a very wide territory. Why and how these settlements came to an end is not clear. A suggestion has been made, that inundation followed by water-logging in one extensive area may have rendered the area unfit for human settlements. The present soft texture of the ochre-coloured pottery is, according to some scholars, the result of its association with water for a considerable period of time.
The OCP people were junior contemporaries of the Harappans, and the ochre coloured pottery area in which they lived was not far removed from that of the Harappans. We may, therefore, expect some give-and-take between the OCP people and the bronze using Harappans.
4.0 THEORIES OF HUMAN EVOLUTION
For the past few decades, scientists have debated 3 main models to explain the origin of modern humans: the Recent African Origin or Out of Africa model, the Multiregional model, and the Assimilation model. Accumulating fossil, archaeological and genetic evidence meant that, by the beginning of this century, the Recent African Origin model had become the dominant view.
Recent African Origin model: The Recent African Origin model was given a huge boost in 1987, when a paper published in the scientific journal Nature, ‘Mitochondrial DNA and Human Evolution’, rocked the palaeoanthropology world. It showed that part of our genome, inherited only through mothers and daughters, derived from an African ancestor about 2,00,000 years ago. This female ancestor became known as Mitochondrial Eve.
Although the paper was contested, the results strongly supported the views that the Natural History Museum’s human origins expert Chris Stringer and others had been developing that we had a recent African origin.
In the following decade, more genetic data both from recent human people and Neanderthal fossils were collected supporting the Recent African Origin model. The idea gained momentum and with it the view that when modern humans began to leave Africa around 60,000 years ago they largely or entirely replaced other archaic human species outside the continent.
Multiregional model: The Multiregional model, by contrast, put forward parallel lines of evolution in each inhabited region of Africa, Europe, Asia and Australasia, glued together by interbreeding across the human range.
Reconstructed skull of a modern human, Homo sapiens: Under this model, there was no real ‘origin’ for the modern form of Homo sapiens. A feature like a chin might have evolved in a region such as Africa and spread through interbreeding, followed by selection if it was an advantageous characteristic. Another feature, like our high forehead, might have evolved elsewhere and then spread through interbreeding.
Assimilation model: Another group of scientists embraced a third theory – the Assimilation model. Like the recent African origin model, this gave Africa a key role as the place where modern human features evolved, but it imagined a much more gradual spread of those features. Under this view, Neanderthals and archaic people like them were assimilated through widespread interbreeding. This meant that the establishment of modern human features occurred via a blending of populations rather than a rapid replacement.
New insights from DNA evidence: In recent years, enormous advances in techniques for the recovery and analysis of ancient DNA have unlocked new secrets about our human evolutionary family tree. Two studies in particular have had a dramatic impact on our thinking about where our species evolved.
Neanderthal genome: In 2010, about 60% of the entire genetic code of several Neanderthal fossils was revealed for the first time and led to surprising insights into the evolution of our own species. When the Neanderthal genome was compared with those of modern humans from different continents, it showed that modern populations from Europe, Asia and New Guinea shared more genetic information with Neanderthals than present-day Africans do, with around 2.5% Neanderthal DNA in their genetic make-up.
The most likely explanation is that a small number of Neanderthals interbred with the ancestors of today’s Europeans, Asians and New Guineans soon after they left Africa around 60,000 years ago. DNA recovered from an ancient molar tooth found in Denisova Cave, Siberia, revealed a connection to some present-day human populations.
In the same year, a fossil finger and molar tooth found in Denisova Cave, Siberia, yielded some remarkable findings. Genomic data revealed that they belong to a previously unrecognised Asian offshoot of the Neanderthal line. However, the data also showed something that was even more startling. It revealed that present-day Melanesians in southeast Asia are related to the Denisovans, as they have become known, sharing about 5% of their genetic code, and this finding has now been extended to native Australians. This provides further evidence of interbreeding.
The Neanderthal and Denisovan genetic studies have given our understanding of our ancient past an exciting twist. Both indicate that modern humans did not completely replace other human species, as had once been suggested. Instead there was some interbreeding. This model has become known as replacement-hybridisation, ‘leaky replacement’, or ‘mostly out of Africa.’
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