Pre-history and Proto-history: Geographical factors

Prehistory is concerned with the period for which there are no written sources, (as  history is
basically based on written material).
Prehistoric sites differ from historical sites in several respects.
Generally they are not in the form of prominent habitation remains, but principally of
fossils of humans, plants, and animals.
They are found on the hill slopes of plateaus and mountains, and on the banks of nearby
rivers with terraces, and comprise sundry fauna and flora.
Numerous stone tools from the Stone Age have been found at these sites.
The remains of tools, plants, animals, and humans from the pre-ice age indicate the
climatic conditions that prevailed at the time.
Proto-history:
Although writing was known in India by the middle of the third millennium BC in the Indus
culture, it has not so far been deciphered.
Thus, though the Harappans knew how to write, their culture is placed in the proto-
historic phase.
Protohistoric may also refer to the transition period between the advent of literacy in a
society and the writings of the first historians.
Proto-history is also considered as a period between prehistory and history during which a
culture or civilization has not yet developed writing, but other cultures have already noted
its existence in their own writings.
The same is the case with the Chalcolithic or copper–Stone Age cultures which had no
writing. Decipherable writing was known in India only in the third century BC with the
Ashokan inscriptions providing solid evidence for historical reconstruction from that time.
Geographical Factors

Geographical factors influence the human settlement and subsistence pattern in the pre-historic
times.

Geographical determinism

It is the theory that human habitats and characteristics of a particular culture are shaped by the
geographical conditions.
The theory encompasses all environmental and geographical conditions and their impact on
the socio-economic and political forces of a society.
Physical features and the environmental conditions that may appear unfavorable at one time
may prove to be potentially useful later.
Greographical factors in Paleolithic age
Paleolithic age saw the evolution of Homo-sapien.
ethnographic studies have shown that many hunting-gathering groups do not fully exploit the
natural resource potential of their area and that they consciously practise sensible restraint in
their exploitation of the environment in order to conserve its resources.
Most of the Paleolithic sites are located throughout India, except for Gangetic basin and Kerala
coast, due to presence of rocky hills and caves. Ex: Belan valley (UP).
This age man was food hunter and food gatherer because of Pleistocene age that did not
facilitate abundant growth of fauna and flora. He lived in small bands consisting close-knit
family and led a nomadic life.
The sites are densely concentrated in the central India and the southern part of the Eastern
Ghats as this area received adequate rainfall, have perennial rivers, a vegetation cover and are
rich in wild plant and animal food resources.
Palaeolithic Tools/ Palaeolithic Culture has been divided into three phases on the basis of the
nature of stone tools made by human beings as well as due to the changes in the climate
and environment.
The trend was towards smaller tools during upper palaeolithic phase must have been due
to adaptations to environmental changes.
Factory sites are generally located close to the sources of raw materials.
Middle Palaeolithic era is that in comparison to the lower Palaeolithic era, the distribution of
sites is sparse.
The reason for this is that the middle Palaeolithic culture developed during the upper
Pleistocene, a period of intense cold and glaciation in the northern latitudes. In those
times, the areas bordering glaciated regions experienced strong aridity.
Changes in the Upper-Palaeolithic environment had impact on the distribution and living
ways of the humans. Some of them were as follows:
There was extremely cold and arid climate in the high altitude and northern latitudes.
There was extensive formation of deserts in North west India
The drainage pattern of western India became almost defunct and river courses shifted
“westwards”.
Vegetation cover over most of the country thinned out during this period.
Coastal areas of south-eastern Tamil Nadu, Saurashtra and Kutch developed quartz and
carbonate dunes as a result of the lowering of the sea level.
During terminal Pleistocene south-westerly monsoons became weak and the sea level
decreased by scores of metres.
In north India, the Kashmir upper palaeolithic coincides with the onset of a milder climate.
In the Thar, the number of upper palaeolithic sites is fewer than those of the preceding
phase, due to increasing aridity. 
The Upper Palaeolithic settlements also show a distinct trend of being associated with
permanent sources of waters. The use of grinding stones might have been for processing
plant foods such as wild rice.
 Due to the harsh and arid climate, the vegetation was sparse though the faunal fossils show
presence of grasslands.
The human population faced rusticated food resources and that is the reason that the
number of Upper Palaeolithic sites is very limited in the arid and semi-arid regions.
One important discovery is of the ostrich egg shells at over 40 sites in Rajasthan, Madhya
Pradesh and Maharashtra, which shows that ostrich, a bird adapted to arid climate, was widely
distributed in western India during the later part of the upper Pleistocene.
Greographical factors in Mesolithic age

With the onset of Holocene Age, Mesolithic culture began and icecaps melted forming Rivers as
an effect of global warming.
The Pleistocene geological era made way for the Holocene about 10,000 years ago. Many
environmental changes took place during this transition.
There was rise in temperature and the climate became warm and dry and in some
places humid.
For instance, soil from the site of Birbhanpur in West Bengal shows a trend of
increasing aridity.
Salt lake sediments and pollen grains at Didwana in Rajasthan suggests higher rainfall
at this point of time.
The climatic changes affected human life and brought about changes in fauna and flora.
There was expansion of flora and fauna contributed by increased rainfall.
This led to availability of new resources to humans and thus the human beings moved
to new areas.
The favourable climate, better rainfalls, warm atmosphere and increased food security
led to reduction in nomadism to seasonally sedentary settlement.
This period is marked with increased population.
As the climate became favorable, Mesolithic man started domestication of
animals and a partially settled life enabled by superior technology microliths
tools.
Though core economy of this period continued to be based on hunting and
gathering.
The technology of producing tools underwent change and the small stone tools were used Man
was predominantly in hunting/gathering stage but there was shift in the pattern of hunting
from big game to small game hunting and to fishing and fowling.
People started making and using very small tools caled microliths.
Changes in tool kits must have been related to changes in environmental factors.
These material and ecological changes are also reflected in rock paintings.
One of the features of the Indian mesolithic phase is the spread of settlements to new
ecological niches.
This is generally seen as a result of an increase in population due to more favourable
environmental conditions as well as technological innovations.
Many of these species continued during the range of Mesolithic tradition. However, wild sheep,
wild goat, ass, elephant, bison, fox, hippo, sambar, chinkara, hare, porcupine, lizard, rat, fowl
and tortoise are absent at the sites falling in the category of Mesolithic tradition.
The appearance and disappearance of the animals has to be understood in the context of
changing climatic and environmental conditions.
Mesolithic people lived in the following environment:
Mesolithic people inhabited coastal areas, rock shelters, flat hilltops, river valleys, 
lakesides, sand dunes, alluvial planes.
Sand-dune:
In Gujarat and Marwar hundreds of dunes of varying sizes are found on the alluvial
plain.
Some of them enclose a shallow lake or pond, which were the great sources of getting
aquatic creatures.
The dunes themselves were covered with thorny scrub bushes; many animals used to
live there. Naturally the Mesolithic inhabitants in sandy dune faced no difficulty in
collection their food.
Rock-shelter:
The Vindya, Satpura and Kaimur hills of Central India are very rich in caves and rock-
shelters. The place was therefore favorite to the Mesolithic people.
Not only that, as Central India received ample rainfall, the hills had grown a thick
deciduous forest, which provided a variety of plants and animals.
Some of the rock-shelters have been found to be occupied as early as the Acheulean
times.
Alluvial plain:
From early Palaeolithic period man has preferred to live in riverbanks because of the
availability of water and games.
Numerous Mesolithic sites therefore have been recovered from the alluvial plains. The
Birbhanpur site, for example, is located at Damodar’s alluvial plain in West Bengal.
Rocky plain:
On Deccan Plateau, many microlithic sites are found. Some are on the hilltops and
others are on flat rocky soil.
Such occupations must be the seasonal or of short duration, except where there is no
river nearby.
Lake-shore:
A few Mesolithic settlements are centered round the shore of the lakes as found in the
Gangetic Valley of District Allahabad and Pratapgarh.
The settlers perhaps used to get the food supply from the respective lake and the
dense primeval forest of the fertile alluvial land.
Coastal environment:
A large number of microlithic sites have been recovered from coasts, for example, from
the Salsetle Island and from the teri dune in District Tirunevelli. The inhabitants used
 to feed upon the marine resources.
Since Mesolithic produced the micro-blades by pressure technique, beautifully fluted
cylindrical or conical cores as well as thin parallel-sided blades are common in the
sites.
Greographical factors in Neolithic and Chalcolithic age

In many parts of the world, the Holocene was marked by the onset of a milder, warmer, wetter
climate.
Such changes may have led to an expansion of the natural habitat area of wild cereals
that had the potential for domestication.
Village settlements emerged as the neolithic man led a settle life.
The pit dwellings found at Burzahom, Kashmir indicate that extreme cold conditions
prevailed in Kashmir valley.
Cultivation of rice, wheat and barley by slash and burn methods is observed in Neolithic
sites generally.
V. Gordon Childe:
He suggested that environmental changes at the end of the Pleistocene were the impetus
towards food production.
He argued that about 10,000 years ago, the climate in parts of West Asia became drier due
to a northward shift of the summer rains.
This desiccation led to a concentration of people, plants, and animals close to water
resources such as rivers and oases.
This enforced closeness eventually led to new relationships of dependence between
humans, plants, and animals, resulting in domestication.
Lewis R. Binford:
In the context of the origins of agriculture, he emphasized external demographic stress.
He argued that at the end of the Pleistocene era, as a result of a rise in sea levels,
people living along the coasts migrated to less populated inland areas.
This upset the people–food equilibrium in inland areas and gave an impetus to the
search for new strategies to increase food supplies.
Not much evidence of agriculture at South Indian neolithic sites.
occasional discoveries of charred grain and the indirect evidence of grinding stones, but
cattle rearing seemed to dominate.
argument that the terrain, soil, and dry climate of the area made it unsuitable for
agriculture.
Health:
Studies of nutrition and disease based on an analysis of human bones suggest that hunter-
gatherers had a high-protein diet, more varied, balanced, and healthy compared to that of
early farmers, whose diet tended to be high in carbohydrates, with an emphasis on cereals
or root crops.
 Sedentary people were also more vulnerable to infectious diseases and epidemics than
nomadic groups.
Hence high incidence of disease reflected in the bones of early farming communities.
Dental health:
A low rate of dental cavities in the early levels. This may have been due to the high
fluoride levels in the drinking water available in the area.
The chalcolithic culture is characterized by the copper-stone tools and existence of large village
settlements.
A variety of food crops were grown and along with domestication of more animals.
The pastoral farming even gained more importance. Potteries of delicate artistic versions
were manufactured.
The rise and decline of human habitats since ages has been predominantly influenced by the
geographical factors. The limits set by the nature may be conquered by the human experience and
technology.

Note: Further chapters of Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic and Chalcolithic cultures has more details
with examples about Geographical factors.