My Ramblings

CHAPTER II   Primitive Man North India 1.      Like prehistoric Europe, first surviving traces of the man left in the II Interglacial Period (more than 100,000 years BC). 2.      “Traces” = paleolithic pebble tools of the Soan Culture (named after a river in Punjab where they were found in large numbers).     ·       Resemble tools widely distributed all over the Old World, from England to Africa and China. Old World means that part of the world that was known before the discovery of the Americas, comprising Europe, Asia, and Africa. ·       No human remains found in association with the tools (unlike the industries which have shown to be the work of primitive anthropoid types, such as the Pithecanthropus of Java and China). South India (“Madras Industry”) (Industry =  In the  archaeology  of the  Stone Age , an  industry  or  technocomplex   i...

Allegations 1. The Himalayas were a significant cultural divide.          Counter-Evidence  - The  book has reduced the importance of the Himalayas in the context of India to the extent that the implication was rarely more than that it bore two major rivers of the great India. We learn about this over the whole study of books including those of NCERTs. We know how the Himalayas were passable. We know how civilizations and cultures permeated across the mighty terrains. Yet, we succeed in putting the highest currency on the importance of these as a marker that separated rather than integrated. So, the implication of presence of Himalayas was more as a climatic-geographical divide (source of two major rivers in two directions, clouds drifting northwards and westwards than a cultural divide, more as a source of two major rivers.  2.  The 'Indian' character which is many a times alleged to tend to fatalism and quietism, accepting fortune and mis...