Neolithic South Asia

The South Asian Stone Age covers the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic periods in South Asia. Evidence for the most ancient anatomically modern Homo sapiens in South Asia has been found in the cave sites of Batadombalena and Belilena in Sri Lanka. In Mehrgarh, in what is today western Pakistan, the Neolithic began c. 7000 BCE and lasted until 3300 BCE and the first beginnings of the Bronze Age. In South India, the Mesolithic lasted until 3000 BCE, and the Neolithic until 1400 BCE, followed by a Megalithic transitional period mostly skipping the Bronze Age. The Iron Age began roughly simultaneously in North and South India, around 1200 to 1000 BCE (Painted Grey Ware culture, Hallur).

Homo erectus lived on the Pothohar Plateau, in upper Punjab, Pakistan along the Soan River (nearby modern-day Rawalpindi) during the . Soanian sites are found in the Sivalik region across what are now India, Pakistan and Nepal.

Biface handaxes and cleaver traditions may have originated in the middle . The beginning of the use of Acheulian and chopping tools of the lower Paleolithic may also be dated to approximately the middle Pleistocene.

Analysis of dates the immigration of Homo sapiens to South Asia to 75,000 to 50,000 years ago. An analysis of Y chromosome haplogroups found one man in a village west of Madurai to be a direct descendant of these migrators. These populations spread further to Southeast Asia, reaching Australia by 40,000 years ago. Cave sites in Sri Lanka have yielded the earliest non-mitochondrial record of modern Homo sapiens in South Asia. They were dated to 34,000 years ago. (Kennedy 2000: 180). For finds from the Belan in southern Uttar Pradesh, radiocarbon data have indicated an age of 18-17kya.

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