We recently posted about Neanderthal presence in China some 55 ky ago, and mentioned a site in India, Attirampakkam as one of the possible sources of Levallois stone knapping know-how, that could have flowed into Southern China and the Longtan site.
This archaeological site on the Southeastern side of the Indian subcontinent is particular. It has produced Acehulian stone tools that are 1.5 million years old, a tool type used by Homo erectus and also thousands of tools made with Levallois technique.
The map below shows the sites in this area, and the lithic technology and ages. Regarding the ages: MIS 5 is ~130,000 to 70,000 years ago, MIS 4 ~74,000 to 57,000 years ago, and MIS 3 ~60,000 to 29,000 years ago.
A 2018 paper published in Nature (Akhilesh, K., Pappu, S., Rajapara, H. et al. Early Middle Palaeolithic culture in India around 385–172 ka reframes Out of Africa models. Nature 554, 97–101 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature25444) reported that it shows a transition between "the end of the Acheulian culture and the emergence of a Middle Palaeolithic culture... at 385 ± 64 thousand years ago (ka), much earlier than conventionally presumed for South Asia. The Middle Palaeolithic continued at Attirampakkam until 172 ± 41 ka."
The article points out that the location in India, distant from Europe and Africa, the gradual replacement of the large-flake Acheulean tools by smaller Levallois tools "document a process of substantial behavioural change that occurred in India at 385 ± 64 ka and establish its contemporaneity with similar processes recorded in Africa and Europe. This suggests complex interactions between local developments and ongoing global transformations. Together, these observations call for a re-evaluation of models that restrict the origins of Indian Middle Palaeolithic culture to the incidence of modern human dispersals after approximately 125 ka... suggest[ing] a succession of population dispersals across South Asia during the Middle Pleistocene, which perhaps involved interactions with other archaic species."
This site suggests that a group of humans with advanced behavioral skills lived in this area before the accepted age for an Out of Africa event.
There is another site further north, along the eastern side of India, knwon as Hanumanthunipadu in Andhra Pradesh reported in a 2022 paper, that states it is old "dated to > 247 ± 32 ka" and which produced "Middle Palaeolithic artefacts that imply South Asian Middle Palaeolithic assemblages may be a part of local innovations that emerged from the preceding Late Acheulian technologies"
Then there is a more recent site, Dhaba-1 set in the Middle Son Valley, located in the central part of northern India. This spot also has a trove of ancient Acheulean tools and overlying them, Middle Palaeolithic stone tools (source).
Could modern H. sapiens have left Africa 200 thousand years earlier than currently accepted? Or were they Denisovans or Neanderthals?
Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall ©
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