Palaeoliths - Hand Axes

     The Palaeolithic Age of South India is said to be roughly 1,25,000 to 5,00,000 years old. During this age man was essentially a hunter and food gatherer wandering in search of game and collecting fruits and digging up edible roots. This was the age of crude and unpolished stone tools, roughly flaked and chipped. In South India, such tools have been obtained in numerous localities from beds of laterite where thousands of years must have been required, after the tool makers had left them, for the thick deposits overlying them to be laid down.

     Among the Palaeoliths, the most commonly known are the so-called hand-axes, bifaces, bouchers or coup-de-poings. These are made from pebbles of suitable size by removing large flakes from the upper and lower surface, especially at the narrow end. On some of the tools, parts of the original pebble surface can be seen. These were not provided with a handle, but were held in the hand when used, hence their name hand-axes or coup-de-poings. Simpler types of tools made from rounded pebbles by removing very few flakes are the pebble tools and these when worked further gave rise to the chopper  tools of the Soan industries. These chopper types are seen not only in the Madrasian localities but also throughout South East Asia. Another common type of palaeolith, which is characteristic of Madras is the cleaver. It is a  flat axe-like tool, with a broad cutting edge, formed by the intersection of two flaked surfaces inclined to one another at a small angle. Cleavers were ordinarily made from flakes rather than from pebbles. They can only be made from quartzite and not from flint, and are characteristic of the quartzite users of Africa and India.

The Old Stone Age

Microliths, Cores, Neoliths & South Indian Mesoliths

    Towards the close of the Palaeolithic Age ancient man began the art of working small flake tools of agate, chalcedony, chert, carnelian, jasper, obsidian and quartz. The tools were attached in series to a handle and were used for cutting. On account of their small size, they  are called pigmy flakes or microliths. Large numbers of waste cores from which such flakes have been removed show how these small tools were made. These fine tools are found in a wide range of forms called blade, burin, lunate,  triangle, etc. Microliths have a wide distribution in India and are dated to about 10,000 BC. As these small tools come to occupy a position midway between the old and the new stone ages they are said to belong to the middle or Mesolithic Age though they survive in the later Neolithic phases. Thus there is no hiatus between the Old Stone Age and the New Stone Age.

Celts

     The Neolithic Age is represented by tools and weapons made by chipping and subsequently grinding and polishing hard and tough stones suitable for the purposes. The stone axes and adzes are well shaped and polished and their edges sharpened by grinding. After centuries and millenia of experience gained in the preceding age, Neolithic man perfected the art of stone tool making. The polished stone axes or celts have a very wide distribution showing that the human population had increased considerably since the Palaeolithic Age. The celts were hafted or provided with handles of wood or bone. Most aboriginal people of the world over, regard  these celts as thunderbolts from heaven and   worship them, as they do not know their use. Among Neolithic celts, there are various types ranging from thick axes almost circular in cross section to flat chisel like tools which are  sharp at both the cutting edge and at the butt end. They were made of hard rocks such as diorite and basalt or more rarely with fine-grained sandstone. Some of the Neolithic axes were merely chipped in a more or less careful manner and then slightly polished along   the cutting edge only. But in the making of a fine celt there were many stages. A piece of  rock was first selected and roughly chipped into form. Then it was first pecked, that is, angularities due to chipping were broken down. Then the implement was ground and all the roughness smoothened away when it was ready for inserting the handle. The typical Neolithic celt has a broad rounded cutting edge and pointed butt with oval cross section.