Upper Palaeolithic Culture

Upper Palaeolithic Culture
Upper Palaeolithic culture developed during the later part of the upper Pleistocene The Upper Palaeolithic period has recorded a rich panorama of fossils in the peninsular rivers of India 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 There were very important changes in the Palaeolithic-environment which had its own 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
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 The most opulent archaeological evidence of this period comes from the Belan and Son valleys in the northern Vindhyas , Chota Nagpur plateau in Bihar , upland Maharashtra, Orissa and from the Eastern Ghats in Andhra Pradesh