The Culture (and Food) of the Mesolithic North Indians
When looking at ancient populations, anthropologists have to look to a wide variety of sources in order to learn about aspects of their daily lives. Bones, teeth, jewelry, and tools can all provide important information about these ancient people. The development of agriculture has been confirmed by the biology of contemporary human skeletal remains, especially by teeth. Excavations of Mesolithic sites such as burial grounds have also given us information and clues as to how the ancient inhabitants of the Indian Subcontinent lived their daily lives.
Two Mesolithic cultures, located near oxbow (U-shaped) lakes within the Ganga Plains of present-day North India, have yielded valuable human remains with well-preserved teeth. These sites were active during the latter half of the Mesolithic, from about 7000 to 5000 years ago. Named Damdama and Mahadaha, the remains they hold come from various types of graves, sometimes with jewelry, artifacts, or multiple burials in the same grave. Burial illuminates many aspects of these cultures’ lives.
In addition, body orientation can tell us quite a bit about how these sites were settled. Many of the bodies are buried in straight positions, in shallow, rectangular graves, with the head either pointing roughly towards the east or the west. The most likely explanation is that the dead were buried pointing away or towards the sunrise or sunset, as this is the primary way that the Ganga Plains cultures would have been able to determine east and west. Variation in these directions could then be attributed to the fact that the directions of sunrise and sunset vary seasonally, and because burial orientation is distributed throughout the year, the Mahadahans and Damdamans likely permanently settled these sites. Solar burial position may represent the importance of the Sun in religious or cultural contexts, but this theory is supported by little more than circumstantial evidence.
One popular hypothesis regarding cemeteries is that they represent a form of territorial, group organization. The more organized an area laid out for burial is, the more likely it is that the people laid there were part of a corporate subgroup of a society, with sole access to important resources such as land. The graves at the Ganga Plains sites may demonstrate a similar societal organization, with 80 graves in total. However, they are not as well-organized as other sites, and the idea of a material society with economic groups is not set in stone.
Physical remains in these locations, particularly human remains, tell us a lot about how they obtained food. Evidence outside of human remains can also tell us about these cultures’ food habits. Diverse types of animal bones are charred, were taken from hearths, or have cut marks, meaning that meat was important. However, grinding stones are also common, so gathered wild grains and roots were just as common. Finally, the remains of many plants, which are used for food or medicine in modern agriculture, are common at Damdama.
Still, observing the teeth of these ancient humans can tell us quite a bit more about what food they ate, and how they ate it. In the latter half of the 20th century, many developments occurred in studying which dental disorders affected agricultural humans, and which affected hunter-gatherers. Because agricultural societies generally live sedentary lifestyles, with refined consumption of food, they experience a high frequency of infectious, parasitic, nutritional, and degenerative dental diseases. In addition, their teeth tend to have a larger number of “caries”, or tooth decay from sugars in a diet which eventually results in cavities. This is because they tended to eat agricultural foods that did not wear the teeth, which meant that locations where tooth decay occurred were not worn away. Hunter-gatherers had lower population densities, moved around more, and ate tougher foods, so they experienced less of these dental diseases and consequently had less caries. In addition, differences between the diets of different hunter-gatherer populations are discernable, although they require close comparison with other populations to do so.
The best comparison for Mesolithic Indian teeth is with other prehistoric teeth, because of inaccuracies that tend to come up when comparing prehistoric teeth to modern teeth. Because of this, the teeth of ancient Indian cultures are often compared to those of contemporary cultures around the world, such as those of Native Americans. Records of Native Americans before the rise of agriculture have well-preserved, relatively consistent dental pathology, even though their methods of hunting and gathering varied. Among preagricultural North American Natives, caries and linear enamel hypoplasia, where tooth enamel only develops partially, in bands, occur infrequently. Alveolar resorption, where the jaw bone decreases in size after tooth loss, and tooth wear, are at moderate to high frequencies. For example, in specimens of preagricultural Natives of the SF Bay Area, 0.57% of teeth have caries. In contrast, Caddoans (an agricultural, prehistoric variant of the Mississippian culture, covering four southern US states), who used wooden mortars to process their agricultural products, had 44 times the frequency of caries compared to the Bay Area Natives.
These populations can provide valuable comparisons to the Indian populations we are analyzing. Across the Ganga Plains sites, 0.94% of teeth had caries, a proportion very similar to that of the preagricultural Natives and vastly smaller than that of the Caddoans. By itself, this suggests that these Northern Indians did not use agriculture by the Mesolithic, as high dental wear is almost constant in agricultural societies from a similar time. We can also compare their dental pathology, and other traits, with those of other Indian cultures.
Western Langhnaj, a Mesolithic site in present-day Gujurat (in Western India), displayed caries in 8.0% of teeth. The Langhnaj figure is greater than those of the hunter-gatherers, but less than that of the agriculturists, suggesting that the inhabitants of Langhnaj used agricultural foodstuffs in a moderate amount, between the North Indians and Caddoans.
This theory is confirmed by other evidence at Langhnaj. The site is within 100 km of Lothal, an ancient town of the Harappan civilization which was definitely technologically and agriculturally advanced. In comparison, Mahadaha and Damdama are more than 900 km from the nearest Harappan sites. At Langhnaj, a copper knife, black and red sherds (broken ceramic pieces), and disk beads have been found; and similar artifacts are scattered throughout Harappa, suggesting that the inhabitants of Langhnaj interacted with agriculturists (likely for trade) and incorporated some Harappan products into their own diet. Some evidence even suggests that the populations mixed genetically, and one can see how the agriculture of certain Indians, and their sedentary lifestyle, might have spread throughout the subcontinent during the Mesolithic. Many societies maintained their lifestyles as nomadic hunter-gatherers, but change was quickly approaching the food of the Mesolithic South Asians.
References
Lukacs, J., & Pal, J. (1993). Mesolithic Subsistence in North India: Inferences from Dental Attributes. Current Anthropology, 34(5), 745–765. Retrieved January 11, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2744287
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How does erosive tooth wear differ from dental caries/tooth decay? (2018, June 15). Erosive Toothwear. https://www.erosivetoothwear.com/patients-2-backup/how-does-erosive-tooth-wear-differ-from-dental-caries-tooth-decay
