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Imperial Gazetteer of India, v. 2, p. 90.

90 THE IVDIANV EMPIRE [CHAP. tainly passed in prehistoric times through all these four ages, or stages of civilization; but the course of evolution has often been less regular, and many examples of abrupt transition from the Stone Age to the Iron Age might be cited. Numerous savage tribes were recently, and some, perhaps, still are, igno- rant of the use of metal, and have remained in the stage attained by the ancestors of the civilized races many thousands of years ago. In India generally the Bronze Age is missing, and the transition from polished stone to iron was effected directly, but in some parts of the country tools and weapons were made of pure copper before iron came into ordinary use. The Stone The first clearly recognized discovery in India of an imple- Age in ment belonging to the Stone Age was made by Mr. Le Mesurier in I86I. Since that date numerous writers have accumulated observations, and a considerable mass of material for a sys- tematic account of Indian prehistoric antiquities is now in existence, but the task of writing such an account has not yet been undertaken. The officers of the Archaeological Sur- vey, with the notable exceptions of Mr. Alexander Rea and the late Mr. A. C. Carlleyle, have been too much occupied with the study of historic monuments to devote attention to the obscure relics of a more remote past, and the observations on which a treatise descriptive of prehistoric India might be based remain buried in the pages of technical periodicals. The following sketch, which must necessarily be brief, may perhaps be of service by stimulating interest in the subject, and indicating the lines of future research. Palaeoli- The geological evidence in India, as in Europe, indicates thic imple- the existence of a wide gap of untold centuries between the ments. remains of palaeolithic and those of neolithic men. Between the Neolithic and the Iron Ages no such gap exists. In the prehistoric settlements of the Deccan Mr. Bruce Foote has observed that these two stages of civilization overlap, and has thus obtained direct evidence that the people of the ancient Iron Age were direct descendants of their stone-using prede- cessors. Many of the existing tribes and castes are no doubt descended from the neolithic peoples, but there is no evidence of continuity between the palaeolithic men whose remains are found in the river gravels and any subsequent element of the population. Only two cases in India seem to be known where stone implements have been found in fossiliferous beds associated