Mesolithic Lake Cultures in the Ganga Valley, India

Abstract

The explorations conducted by the Institute of Archaeology, Allahabad University, in the last few years in the alluvial plain of the Central Ganga Valley, bounded by the Ganga on the south and the Sarju on the north, have brought to light extensive traces of Stone Age occupation in an area completely devoid of rocks. The work has also revealed the connection between this appearance of early man and the morphological features brought about by the changing course of the Ganga in the Pleistocene. The Gangetic alluvial is clearly divided into two distinct formations, the older known as Bhagar, and the younger as Khadar. The terminal of the Bhagar constituted the bank of the Ganga when it was actually forming this area and gradually receding southwards to form the deposit of the Khadar. Over a very wide area the exposed sections of the Bhagar (fig. 1) consist of four layers having a thickness of 8 to 10·5 m. On the top there is a sandy soil (30 cm to 1·50 m) overlying a plastic clay deposit (90 cm to 2 m in thickness). The third layer is constituted by blackish soil (1·50 m to 3 m) full of small kankar nodules. The bottommost exposed layer or the fourth (2 m to 4 m) from the top, containing kankars, is yellowish in colour. There is no doubt that the sandy deposit capping the old formation marks the end of an epoch in the life of the Ganga, and it was deposited by the river with a flood-plane higher by at least 10 metres than its highest flood-plane subsequently recorded.