Man and animal relationships during early Holocene times in India

Early Holocene culture in India is largely represented by microlithic tools and is generally called the “Mesolithic”. The culture has a pan-Indian distribution, with a subsistence economy based on hunting & gathering. Although plant remains are scanty, there are a number of excavated Mesolithic sites that have yielded animal remains. These provide important evidence on the ecology & subsistence practices of early Holocene peoples. The Mesolithic way of life continued for a long time in India, with some of the hunting-gathering tribes of the central peninsula still living in much the same way as did their more ancient predecessors. Chronological mapping shows that hunting & gathering existed contemporaneously not only with Neolithic farming and pastoral lifeways but also into later periods as well. There are a number of Mesolithic sites, some as old as 8000 BP, where both wild & domesticated varieties of animals are found. My presentation discusses man-animal relationships among early Holocene hunter-gatherers as well as the importance of such relationships for giving rise to food producing economies, especially animal husbandry. Moreover, I show that some form of symbiotic relationship existed between groups of hunter-gatherers and farming communities in the early Holocene. Standard anthropological methodology is followed for the study. Ethnographic examples from present day tribal communities are also taken into consideration for proper understanding of the relationship.