Revision summary
The Palaeolithic is the Old Stone Age of chipped tools and foraging. Lower, Middle, and Upper mark handaxe, flake, and blade kits. Attirampakkam and Hunsgi are Indian Lower Palaeolithic type areas. Upper Palaeolithic blades and beads appear at sites such as Patne. Read it as adaptation to monsoon landscapes, not as one people.
Model answer
Introduction
Palaeolithic culture is the Old Stone Age of chipped tools, hunting, and gathering. It covers most of human time before farming.
Body
Divisions
- Lower Palaeolithic handaxes and cleavers: Acheulian at Attirampakkam, Hunsgi, and Isampur.
- Middle Palaeolithic prepared cores and flakes, often on chert, as in central Indian river gravels.
- Upper Palaeolithic blades, bone tools, and art in Europe; Indian blades at Renigunta and Patne, with ostrich-eggshell beads.
Way of life
- Foote, de Terra, and later Misra and Paddayya mapped Indian sequences onto monsoon rivers, not Alpine ice alone.
- Fire, mobility, and small bands are inferred from hearths, kill sites, and tool workshops.
- It is a culture of adaptation, not a single tribe named ‘Palaeolithic man’.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD PAL[Palaeolithic] --> L[Lower Acheulian] PAL --> M[Middle flakes] PAL --> U[Upper blades]
Conclusion
Palaeolithic culture is the long chipped-stone foraging world. Indian Acheulian and blade sites sit in that world without copying Europe’s cave-art climax.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Next question in the 2015 paper (Q5). View answer →
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Did Palaeolithic people farm?
No. Farming is Neolithic. Palaeolithic subsistence is hunt and gather, with some later management elsewhere.
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Is the three-age split the same everywhere?
The labels travel poorly. Indian sequences follow local stone and monsoon more than French type-sites.
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