List of Illustrations .......................................... xi
Preface ...................................................... xiii
Chapter 1 This Land of Bharata ................................. 1
Landscapes and Inhabitants Today ..................... 1
Gondwanaland ......................................... 5
Chapter 2 Establishing the Archaeological Record .............. 11
Treasures in the Laterite ........................... 11
The Legacy of Oriental Jones ........................ 13
Background of European Prehistory ................... 17
Celts, Haches, and Rude Chipped Stone Implements .... 23
Chapter 3 Paleontology and Evolution .......................... 32
Was Adam an Only Child? ............................. 32
"The Bones of Man or Those of the Monkey Tribe?" .... 37
First, Let's Sort out the Skulls .................... 44
Then We Can Sort out the "Races"! ................... 49
The Fossil Hominid Worldwide Web .................... 55
Getting It Together ................................. 62
Chapter 4 The Aryan Hordes .................................... 67
Vedic India ......................................... 68
Jungle Folk of the Hilly Tracts ..................... 70
European Ethnogenesis ............................... 80
Chapter 5 The God-Apes of the Siwalik Hills ................... 86
The Siwalik Group ................................... 86
First Discoveries of Siwalik Fossil Primates ........ 90
Prince Rama's Ape ................................... 93
Gigantopithecus ..................................... 99
Coronation ......................................... 103
Dethronement no Postmortem and Resurrection ........ 115
Chapter 6 The Earliest Evidence of Hominid Settlement in
Pleistocene South Asia ............................. 121
Pleistocene Geology and Paleoecology ............... 121
Earliest Stone Tools ............................... 131
Chapter 7 Mileposts in the Paleolithic Journey ............... 137
South Asia Enters World Archaeology ................ 137
The Soan Tradition ................................. 141
The Lower Paleolithic .............................. 148
The Middle Paleolithic ............................. 161
The Upper Paleolithic .............................. 165
Chapter 8 Fossil Hominids of the South Asian Pleistocene ..... 172
Exordium ........................................... 172
Narmada Man: Homo erectus or Homo sapiens? ......... 173
Earliest Anatomically Modern
Homo sapiens from South Asia ....................... 180
Chapter 9 Post-Pleistocene Landscapes and Cultural
Chronology Paleoenvironments of the Holocene ....... 189
Antiquity and Development of Microlithic
Technologies
Chapter 10 Mesolithic Hunter-Foragers ......................... 200
Archaeological Sites and Mesolithic Lifeways:
North and Central India ............................ 200
Archaeological Sites and Mesolithic Lifeways:
Peninsular India ................................... 212
Archaeological Sites and Mesolithic Lifeways:
Eastern India ...................................... 216
Archaeological Sites and Mesolithic Lifeways: Sri
Lanka .............................................. 218
Chapter 11 The Skeletal Record of Mesolithic Populations ...... 224
The Anemic Woman from Baghai Khor .................. 224
Cro-Magnons in the Ganges Valley? .................. 226
Too Many Cooks: So Few Bones ....................... 231
Denizens of the Dune of Darkness ................... 233
Balangodese and "Wild" Veddas ...................... 235
How to Survive the Mesolithic ...................... 239
Chapter 12 Early Farmers and Pastoralists ..................... 242
Why Would a Free-Ranging
Hunter Become a Sedentary Farmer? .................. 242
Antiquity of the South Asian Neolithic ............. 246
Indo-Iranian Borderlands ........................... 251
Early Farmers in Baluchistan ....................... 253
Villages in the Shadows of the Himalaya ............ 259
The Southeast Asian Frontier ....................... 261
Hill and Plains Farmers of North India ............. 263
Enigmatic Ashmounds, Pots, and House Burials ....... 265
Impact of the Food-Producing Lifeway ............... 276
Chapter 13 The Skeletal Record of Early
Farming and Pastoral Populations ................... 278
Teeth, Babies, and Some Holes in the Head .......... 279
Meanwhile, Back on the Peninsula ................... 282
How Much Did the Neolithic Cost? ................... 287
Chapter 14 The Harappan Civilization .......................... 290
Between Prehistory and History ..................... 290
Assemblage of the Harappan Skeletal Series ......... 293
Form and Diversity of the Harappan Cultural
Achievement ........................................ 295
"A Group of Jumbled up Skeletons" .................. 299
A New Look at Harappan Phenotypic Attributes ....... 302
Chapter 15 The Harappan Heritage .............................. 308
Hard Times with Aryans, Floods, and Mosquitoes ..... 308
Mystery of the Copper Hoards ....................... 310
Chalcolithic Skeletons - Footless and Flexed ....... 315
Scenes of Pastoral Life ............................ 323
Chapter 16 The Megalith Builders .............................. 326
"Jove ... with Bronze, Then Iron, Stamped the
Age" ............................................... 326
Discovery of the Megalith Builders ................. 328
Gandhara: Holy Land of Buddhist Pilgrims ........... 337
The Painted Gray Ware People and the Asuras ........ 340
A Tomb with a View: Portholes and Capstones ........ 341
The Ghosts of Adittanalur 343 Vidarbha and the
Deep South ......................................... 350
Megalithic and Early Historic Populations .......... 353
Chapter 17 Where Did All the Races Go? ........................ 358
The Indian Three Race Theory ....................... 358
Decline and Fall of the Race Concept ............... 363
But Did Aryans Exist? .............................. 365
Genetic Histories, Allele Distributions, and
Ancient DNA ........................................ 377
Chapter 18 Conspectus ......................................... 381
References ......................................... 387
Author and Name Index ......................................... 455
Subject Index ................................................. 469
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