RAS question
Upper Paleolithic tools in India are characterized by:
Correct answer: (A) Blades and burins.
Upper Palaeolithic tools in India are characterised by blades and burins, with scrapers and some bone tools also appearing in the assemblages.
Explanation
The Upper Palaeolithic in India is best recognised by a blade-based stone-tool tradition. The cited e-PG Pathshala module notes that blade tools do occur in India and that the Indian Upper Palaeolithic includes the major stone-tool types known from comparable Old World traditions. Site evidence makes the point clearer: Renigunta yielded an industry dominated by blades and backed blades, with burins also recorded; Bhimbetka’s Upper Palaeolithic deposit includes long blades, burins and end scrapers; and Muchchentera Chintamani Gavi is noted for bone tools alongside blades, a burin and side scrapers. Therefore, among the options, blades and burins are the most precise marker of the Upper Palaeolithic phase.
Why the other options are wrong
- (B) Polished stone tools are not the marker described for the Upper Palaeolithic here; the explanation and source associate this phase with blades, burins, scrapers and some bone tools.
- (C) Handaxes and cleavers belong to the earlier Lower Palaeolithic Acheulian tradition, while the source contrasts them with the later blade and bone-tool makers.
- (D) Microliths occur at some sites in association with Upper Palaeolithic blades, but the source treats blades and burins as the diagnostic Upper Palaeolithic tool types rather than microliths alone.
Concept
This tests the prehistoric cultural sequence in Indian archaeology, especially how tool types identify Palaeolithic phases. RAS repeatedly asks this because stone-tool markers are a compact way to distinguish Lower, Middle, Upper Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic contexts.