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Feature
Palaeolithic
Tools
Handaxes, cleavers, choppers, scrapers, borers, points, blades, microblades, burin
Settlements
No permanent settlement; caves, rock shelters and open camps
Art
Cave paintings, body pigments, beads, engraved bones and shells
Subsistence
(how they got their food)
Hunting and gathering
Worth remembering
In the Indian subcontinent the oldest human settlement dates back about 2 million years - with Attirampakkam in Tamil Nadu at 1.5-1.7 million years.
1. What do
palaeo
and
lithic
mean?
Show answer
Old and stone
2. Why were animal bones cleaved open?
Show answer
To extract the protein-rich marrow inside
3. What is a burin used for?
Show answer
Engraving symbolic features on bones and shells
When
What happened
About 2 million years ago
Oldest human settlement in the Indian subcontinent -
Attirampakkam
, Tamil Nadu (1.5-1.7 million years) and
Isampur
, Karnataka (1.2 million years)
About 1-5 million years
Age of the cleavers and handaxes found in India
Between 50,000 and 12,000 years ago
Homo sapiens spread all over the world, including Australia and the Americas
