In the rest of India, not only handaxes but pebble tools, similar to those in the Punjab, have been found from several sites in large numbers. Such a phenomenon would imply that similar conditions might give rise to similar results.

        The real home of the Handaxe Culture seems to be according to our present knowledge, Peninsular India, the country south of the Ganga plain.

Since the type tools of this culture, this is a purely regional name which should be given up, as the latest research show that the Handaxe Culture covered almost the whole of India – Andhra Pradesh, Madras, Mysore, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Eastern Rajasthan and the plateau regions of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and West Bengal – except Western Rajasthan, Sind, Kashmir, Assam, and the coastal strips of Andhra, Madras and Kerala. Such a distribution pattern may be due to geographical or ecological reasons. Assam, for instance, is so heavily forested even now that it would have been impossible for the Early Stone. Aged man to eke not a living.

        Altitudes higher then 750 m. and heavily forested regions would also appear to have been avoided by man. No Early Stone Age tools have been found at Mount Abu (Rajasthan), Mahabaleshwar (Maharashtra) and the Nilgiris (Madras and Mysore) – ranging from 1,350-2100m.)

        The handaxes and other associated tools first occur in the deposits of the Second Interglacial Age in Western Punjab, whereas in Peninsular India they occur in the earliest pebble conglomerate bed in the Narmada, which overlies the basal rock or laterite.

        Recent studies in The Mahi and Narmada Basin indicate that this period could not be later than early Upper Pleistocene.

        The Early Stone Age tools in the Peninsula include, besides the various forms of handaxes, cleavers, choppers and chopping tools made out of pebbles or pebble-halves and scrapers, some with a regular, well-made place to facilitate holding, picks and a few two-ended, and beaked tools which could have been used for engraving or cutting only. The last-mentioned tools occur in the Krishna basin in Karnataka (Northern Mysore).

        The handaxe was an all-purpose tool, which assumed various forms. That is true also of cleavers, which could have been used for cutting wood and chopping meat.

        So far, nowhere in India anything but single or groups (some amazingly large) of tools have been found. These are but assemblages which give some insight into the art and industry of their makers but throw very little light on man and his culture as a whole. The reason, of course, is that so far man’s relics namely tools have been found in secondary deposits and his likely habitation sites have to be searched. It is still customary to call these assemblages. Handaxe Culture.

        Except in very few cases, the association of the tools and contemporary animals in not proved, so that we can only tentatively say that certain animals whose remains have been found mostly in the Narmada and Godavari valleys were hunted by man. These animals, however, suggest the environment in which man lived – comparatively thick forest, as we find around Hoshangabad and other places in Madhya Pradesh in which Teak, Banyan, Pipal, Pala’s (Butea Frondosa) grew in abundance.

        This is but a faint picture of Early Man and his environment in the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent. In the absence of precise date, except for the two major geographical divisions (the Himalayan foothills which were often affected by peri-glacial conditions and Peninsular India which seems to have experienced heavier rainfall) in the middle Pleistocene with their district tool traditions, nothing definite can be said about various regions – their climate, flora and fauna.