Bilaspur’s stone age tools link Sivalikcultures

Bilaspur’s stone age tools link Sivalikcultures

What has happened?

• Researchers from the Anthropological Survey of India (AnSI) have discovered a number of Acheulian artefacts (dated to about 1, 500,000–1,50,000 years ago) along with contemporary Soanian ones from an unexplored site at Ghumarwin in Bilaspur district of Himachal Pradesh.
• The site is close to the site where scientists in the 19th century discovered fossil remains of Sivapithecus, the last common ancestor of orangutans and humans.

The Significance

• This is the first time that the AnSI has found a large number of Acheulian artefacts along with the Soanian tools at a same site which opens up the possibility of continuity of the two stone age cultures at the site

Acheulian culture

The earliest known stone tools are simple flakes chipped roughly from a core, called the Oldowan tradition. The more advanced Acheulian culture followed, characterized by leaf-shaped bifaces or ‘hand axes’. The Acheulian is thought of as the signature technology of Homo erectus

• The name “Acheulean” is taken from the name of a site named Saint-Acheul, near Amiens in northern France, and is used to refer to a range of Lower Paleolithictool-making traditions found widely across Afro-Eurasia
• The typical tool is a general-purpose hand-ax

Soanian culture

The Soanian is an archaeological culture of the Lower Paleolithic in the Siwalik region of the Indian subcontinent.

River corridor

Present Achulian discovery from unexplored site at Ghumarwin indicates that the river Sutlej and its tributaries have been a prehistoric corridor for the peninsular Acheulian man into the Sivalik region

Other materials found

• Other than over 100 stone tools, vertebrates and few invertebrates mainly fresh water gastropods have also been recovered
• The indication of gastropods [a large taxonomic class within the phylum Mollusca] suggests the presence of backswamps of the flood plains

Sites under threat

The stretches between Bilaspur and Ghumarwin, that hold answers to how our ancestors survived million of years ago in the Sivalik ranges, are under threat due developmental work such as road and bridges, and also agriculture.