(a) Describe the distinctive features and distribution of Upper Palaeolithic of India. 20 (b) Examine the environmental and…

(a) Distinctive Features and Distribution of the Upper Palaeolithic of India

The Indian Upper Palaeolithic is the Late Pleistocene blade-and-burin (and late microlithic) horizon, conventionally placed between about 40,000 and 10,000 BP, after the Middle Palaeolithic and before the full Mesolithic. It is the phase in which laminar technology, bone/antler tools and the first portable art appear.

Distinctive features

• Prismatic-core blade production; backed blades, burins, points and scrapers on blades.
• Increasing use of bone, antler and ostrich eggshell (beads and an engraved fragment at Patne, dated about 25,000 BP).
• A bone figurine from Lohanda Nala in the Belan valley.
• Late in the phase, geometric microliths that grade into the Mesolithic.
• Occupation of rock-shelters and river valleys; hunter-gatherer economy on Late Pleistocene fauna.
• Early rock art in shelters such as Bhimbetka is often assigned in part to this horizon (linear animals; later Mesolithic painting is more “dynamic”).

Distribution (not a single “Narmada–Soan” belt)

• Western and central India: Patne (Jalgaon, Maharashtra; S.A. Sali) — stratified Middle Palaeolithic → Upper Palaeolithic → Mesolithic, with ostrich-eggshell beads and engraving.
• Kurnool caves (Andhra Pradesh / now Andhra–Telangana; M.L.K. Murty) — stone plus bone tools and Late Pleistocene fauna (Muchchatla Chintamanu Gavi and neighbours).
• Belan and Son valleys (Uttar Pradesh / Madhya Pradesh) — blade industries and the Lohanda Nala figurine; rich associated fauna.
• Bhimbetka and other Vindhyan shelters (Madhya Pradesh).
• Visadi (Gujarat), Renigunta / Chittoor, parts of the Shorapur Doab.
• Jwalapuram (Kurnool district) and Mehtakheri (Madhya Pradesh), where microblade industries appear by about 45,000–35,000 years ago, suggesting an early microlithic tradition linked to modern humans.
• Bagor (Rajasthan) is a type-site of the early Mesolithic rather than a classic Upper Palaeolithic camp like Patne or Kurnool.

The phase documents modern human behaviour — blades, ornaments, art — on the subcontinent before the Holocene microlithic fluorescence.

(b) Environmental and Biocultural Factors in Tribal Health in India

Tribal health is not a generic “rural health” problem. It sits at the junction of ecology and culture.

Environmental factors

• Forest and terrain: malaria in forested central India (Gond, Baiga, Santhal tracts) after deforestation changes breeding sites; Japanese encephalitis and diarrhoeal disease where water is unsafe; kala-azar in parts of Jharkhand–Bihar tribal belts; TB in crowded hamlets and mining belts.
• Altitude and cold in Himalayan and north-eastern groups; heat and water scarcity among Bhils and Sahariya.
• Mining, industrial pollution and displacement (Jharia, Bailadila, Narmada submergence) raise respiratory disease and cut access to forest foods.
• Climate shocks and crop failure produce seasonal hunger.

Biocultural factors

• Diet: shift from diverse forest foods, millets and pulses to rice/wheat and market snacks → anaemia, stunting and hidden hunger. Alcohol use in some groups worsens nutrition.
• Social norms: delayed care-seeking, reliance on local healers first, restrictions on diet in pregnancy and the puerperium, early marriage and high fertility.
• Genetic traits: sickle-cell trait is common in several Gond and other central Indian groups — protective against falciparum malaria in endemic zones, dangerous as sickle-cell disease where health services are thin.
• Contact and displacement: Jarawa and other Andaman groups suffered influenza and measles after contact; loss of land is loss of the food system.

Examples. Santhal and other Chhotanagpur groups: malaria, TB, anaemia, fluoride. Gond of central India: malaria plus sickle-cell. Bhil of western India: malnutrition and water-borne disease. Government response (NHM tribal components, Ayushman Bharat, and the National Sickle Cell Anaemia Elimination Mission launched in 2023 with screening in tribal districts) works best when it respects local foodways and does not replace the forest economy with a cash-only one.

(c) Contributions of B.S. Guha, Irawati Karve and S.R.K. Chopra

B.S. Guha (1894–1961) was a pioneer of physical anthropology in India. After a PhD at Harvard, he conducted the racial survey for the 1931 Census, measuring thousands of individuals, and classified the Indian population into six racial elements: Negrito, Proto-Australoid, Mongoloid (Palaeo-Mongoloid and Tibeto-Mongoloid), Mediterranean (Palaeo-Mediterranean, Mediterranean and Oriental), Western Brachycephals (Alpinoid, Dinaric and Armenoid) and Nordic, summarised in Racial Elements in the Population (1944). He studied human skeletal remains from Mohenjodaro and Harappa, and he was the founding Director of the Anthropological Survey of India, set up in 1945, which he built into a national institution for biological and cultural research. His racial scheme is now of historical interest only, but his survey methods and institution-building shaped Indian anthropology.

Irawati Karve (1905–1970), a student of G.S. Ghurye with a doctorate from Berlin, worked at Deccan College, Pune, and was among the first Indian women anthropologists. Kinship Organization in India (1953) identified four kinship zones (northern, central, southern and eastern), relating kinship terms and marriage rules to language and region. Hindu Society: An Interpretation (1961) treated caste as a cluster of endogamous groups with separate histories rather than a single all-India hierarchy. She also carried out anthropometric and serological studies of Maharashtrian castes, linking biological and social anthropology, and her Yuganta (Sahitya Akademi Award) read the Mahabharata characters as social persons.

S.R.K. Chopra (1931–1994) founded the Department of Anthropology at Panjab University, Chandigarh, and its museum, and made it a centre of palaeoanthropology. He led fieldwork on Siwalik primate fossils, co-describing Gigantopithecus bilaspurensis with Elwyn Simons (1969) and describing other Siwalik primates such as Pliopithecus from Haritalyangar, and he worked on primate functional anatomy. He placed Indian Siwalik fossils within the international debate on hominoid evolution and trained a generation of physical anthropologists.