Archaeologist finds Mesolithic-era rock painting in Andhra’s Guntur

Source: The post is based on the article “Archaeologist finds Mesolithic-era rock painting in Andhra’s Guntur” published in The Hindu on 20th June 2023

What is the News?

Archeologists have discovered a Mesolithic period rock painting in Guntur district, Andhra Pradesh.

What have the archaeologists discovered?

Archeologists have discovered a Mesolithic period rock painting in Guntur district, Andhra Pradesh.

The paintings depicted a person tilling a piece of land. This is an indication of a semi-settled life pattern in which members of this community cultivated crops.

Several other paintings depicted a man catching a wild goat with his left hand while wielding a hook-like implement to control it. Another showed two couples standing with their hands raised while a child stood behind them.

The paintings were made with natural white kaolin and red ochre pigments.

Note: Ochre is a pigment composed of clay, sand, and ferric oxide. Kaolinite is a soft, earthy, and usually white mineral produced by the chemical weathering of aluminium silicate minerals like feldspar.

What is the Mesolithic period?

The Mesolithic period also called the Middle Stone Age existed between the Paleolithic (Old Stone Age), with its chipped stone tools, and the Neolithic (New Stone Age), with its polished stone tools.

The technological hallmark of this period are tiny stone tools or ‘microliths’. In addition, the Mesolithic people also used non-microlithic tools made of flakes and blades. 

Mesolithic people made a number of technological innovations like bow and arrow for hunting; querns, grinders and hammer stones for grinding and pulverizing plant foods like roots, tubers and seeds; and regular use of fire for Indian Mesolithic Cultures roasting meat, tubers, etc.