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Human skeleton from Potana (near Sigiriya) |
Prehistory of Sri Lanka (Sinhala: ශ්රී ලංකාවේ ප්රාග් ඉතිහාසය) ranges from ca 250,000 BP to 1,000 BC. The distribution, physical characteristics and way of life of Sri Lankan man in this prehistoric period have been determined and suggested by various archaeological evidence discovered so far in the country. Stone and bone implements, food residues such as mollusc shells, animal bones and human skeletal remains provide some idea about the natural and social environment that prevailed during the prehistoric period.
The places that were periodically or occasionally frequented by the itinerant, foraging hunter-gatherers of the time can be identified as settlements of this period. They consisted of open-air habitations or campsites, factory sites where stone implements were produced in sizeable quantities, and rock shelters used during the rainy seasons or for the disposal of the dead.
Prehistoric Phases
A large number of prehistoric research works in Sri Lanka has identified numerous sites across the island, in every major climatic zone (Perera, 2014). These sites are categorised according to hunter-gatherer communities' technological traits into the Lower Palaeolithic, Middle Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic phases (Perera, 2014).
Lower Palaeolithic Phase
The Lower Palaeolithic spans the inception of stone tool making at over 2.4 million years before the present (BP) in Africa up to ca. 150,000. (Perera, 2014) In the South Asian region, the earliest evidence of the Lower Palaeolithic is found from the Himalayan foothills in Pakistan and it has been dated to ca. 2,000,000 BP (Perera, 2014). Although the evidence from the Lower Paleolithic is not reliably recorded in Sri Lanka, the Ratnapura Beds [the alluvial (gem-bearing) gravels of Ratnapura District) have yielded some man-made chopping and cutting tools which can tentatively assigned to the Lower Palaeolithic Phase (Perera, 2014).
Lower Palaeolithic Phase
The Middle Palaeolithic tools industries evolved from the Lower Palaeolithic into a finer and more refined technological stage in much of Africa, Asia and Europe by 150,000 BP (Perera, 2014). This phase is now known throughout South Asia including Sri Lanka.
Upper Palaeolithic Phase
In several regions of the Old World, the Middle Palaeolithic was succeeded by the Upper Paleolithic phase from ca. 40,000 to 12,000 BP (Perera, 2014). This phase has not been found in Sri Lanka (Perera, 2014).
Mesolithic Phase
The Mesolithic phase is characterised by small stone tools (microliths; less than 2 cm long) fashioned into geometric shapes (Perera, 2014). Some of the earliest evidence of this phase from Sri Lanka's Mesolithic popularly referred to as the Balangoda Culture at ca. 38,000 BP (Perera, 2014). Minihagalkanda, Fa Hien-lena, Batadomba-lena and Beli-lena, Bundala, Alulena, Bellanbendipelessa and Manthei are some of the sites bearing evidence from this phase.
Neolithic Phase
The Neolithic period began with the shift from a mobile hunting and gathering lifestyle to a sedentary one based on herding and the cultivation of plants (Perera, 2014). In Sri Lanka, the beginnings of animal husbandry and the incipient domestication of plants and barley at ca. 17,000 BP in the montane grasslands (Perera, 2014).
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References
Journal Articles
1) Perera, H.N., 2014. Prehistoric Sri Lanka. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Sri Lanka, pp.23-41.