The Concept of the Early Humans in India

The early humans in India refer to Homo erectus, who arrived on the Indian subcontinent from Africa. Over tens of millennia, anatomically modern people populated India in many waves of early migrations. The first migrants arrived 65,000 years ago with the Coastal Migration and Southern Dispersal, followed by complex migrations across South and Southeast Asia. After the Last Glacial Period, but before the advent of farming, West-Eurasian hunter-gatherers moved to South Asia. They made up the population of the Indus Valley Civilisation, along with a small number of ancient South Asian hunter-gatherers.

Early humans in India

Hominins are the ancestors of early humans in India. Researchers thought that early humans in India came from Africa around 1.5 million years ago. The first human to reach Asia and Europe was Homo erectus, including the renowned Java Man and Peking Man. Because Homo erectus appears to have evolved in Africa and Homo erectus bones have been discovered in China and Indonesia, it is reasonable to assume that it went through or skirted the Indian subcontinent.

In December 1982, amid the Narmada valley in Hathnora, Madhya Pradesh, a piece of skull, believed to be from a Homo erectus, was unearthed. It is the first and only specimen of its type in India. If it is from Homo erectus, it is the most ancient human remnant discovered in the Indian subcontinent to date. It was discovered in situ, allowing for precise geologic, palaeontological, and cultural context determinations, all of which are dated to the Middle Pleistocene, roughly 500,000 years.

Some researchers believe the skull bone belongs to Homo heidelbergensis, a hominid species that migrated out of Africa around 800,000 years ago. Some people believe it isn’t from a hominin.

Origin of early humans in India

A supervolcano erupted 74,000 years ago near the modern Lake Toba in Sumatra, Indonesia. That eruption is thought to be the greatest in the last two million years, roughly 5,000 times larger than any previous explosion.

The eruption, known as the ‘Toba catastrophe theory’, was so catastrophic that it coated Earth in ash, caused global temperatures to plunge, and killed humanity.

While the super-eruption occurred and was unmistakably severe, the Toba disaster theory’s repercussions are overblown.

When Homo sapiens arrived in India has been the subject of intense controversy among experts. There have been no human fossils excavated in India since the Toba super-eruption. However, this diverse collection of artefacts indicates that humans were already present in northern India before the eruption and continued to be afterwards.

Ancient tools have been discovered in layers of sand dating from 80,000 to 65,000 years old at the Dhaba excavation site in Madhya Pradesh. According to a new study published in Nature Communications, the same tools were used before and after the eruption, implying that one uninterrupted population must have survived the Toba fallout.

Tools by early humans in India

Vast numbers of stone tools used by early humans have been discovered, as well as fascinating fossil record remains of prehistoric animals, ranging from bones of a Stegodon ganesa, an extinct cousin of modern elephants, and Rajasaurus narmadensis, an Indian dinosaur, to Sanajeh indicus, a dinosaur-eating snake, and Himalayacetus, a Himalayan whale discovered in the hills of Shimla.

The majority of the stone tools discovered in India span a wide range of stone ages, ranging from 10,000 years to 800,000 years old. A study team led by Indian archaeologist Shanti Pappu discovered stone tools dating back 1.5 million years in Attirampakkam, an ancient site in Tamil Nadu’s Kortallayar river basin.

According to recent studies, populations of ancient humans utilising Acheulean tool kits existed in India until about 177,000 years ago, soon before the early expansions of our species, Homo sapiens, throughout Asia. The Acheulean tool-making tradition, which dates back to Homo erectus and related species like Homo heidelbergensis, was distinguished by characteristic round and pear-shaped rock hand-axes and cutting tools related to Homo erectus.

Acheulean tools are believed to have been developed in Africa about 1.5 million years ago and migrated throughout Eurasia.

Meanwhile, archaeological discoveries in Dhansi, an ancient site about 3 km south of Hathnora separated by the Narmada River, have discovered stone tools that resemble those of Oldowan, the oldest of all methods of stone tools. Unlike Acheulean tools, which are substantially older, the presence of these simple tools in South Asia has never been ‘fully established’.

Conclusion

An archaeological dig in the trenches of Dhaba in central India’s upper Son river valley has uncovered traces of human occupancy dating back over 80,000 years. Between 80,000 and 65,000 years ago, an international team of researchers discovered evidence of ongoing human habitation in this region. The tools discovered at Attirampakkam are almost 3,85,000 years old. Because this technology is assumed to have been developed by archaic or potentially modern people in Africa around the same period, researchers were able to establish an estimate of when the tools were discovered. The discovery brings the start of the Middle Palaeolithic culture in India thousands of years forward. It places it around the time when Homo Sapiens first arrived in the area. This discovery calls into question the widely held belief that this technology arrived in India only 1,25,000 years ago.