Post-Pleistocene Adaptations

Climatic and geological events marking the termination of the last glacial period some 10,000 years ago resulted in major ecological changes in south Asia. As plant and animal species adapted to newly established environ­mental settings, so did the post-Pleistocene hunting-foraging human communities seize opportunities to pioneer a broader range of habitats. As these nomadic bands followed migrating game animals, they recognized the nutritional and economic potential of different plant species. Survival of these late Pleistocene and early Holocene populations was reinforced technologically by developments involving min­iaturization of stone tools. These small-blade implements have stylistic parallels with the lithic products known in Europe and western Asia as microliths; these became the hallmark of a post-paleolithic tradition called Mesolithic. Among south Asia's contributions to world prehistory is the augmentation of the archaeological evidence that there was cultural con­tinuity between the paleolithic and neolithic traditions. It was once assumed that cultural discontinuity was apparent, that a hiatus sepa­rated the end of the European prehistoric cultures of magnificent cave paintings and sculptures from the time of emergence of agriculture and pastoralism.

South Asia now holds the record for the place of one of the earliest appearances of tools of Mesolithic manufacture; Europe's Mesolithic tool assem­blages appear much later in time. Although Western concepts of a mesolithic cultural tradi­tion forming a link within an assumed progres­sion of cultural stages have been accepted by interpreters of the south Asian archaeological data, recent studies demonstrate that earlier notions of a paleolithic-neolithic hiatus are in­valid, just as are Western theories that a meso­lithic period, once admitted to exist, was a Dark Age of cultural stagnation. The south Asian Mesolithic tradition is distinguished by vivacious technological and artistic advances, as represented by cave paintings, early experi­mentations with plant and animal domestica­tion, and adaptations to a broad spectrum of habitats in different econiches. This chapter describes the ancient environments of the Holocene epoch in south Asia and the cultural developments of human inhabitants adapting to this post-Pleistocene realm.

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