Place · Palaeolithic stone-tool site · India
Attirampakkam
Also known as Attirampakkam, Attirambakkam, Kortallayar
A site on the Kortallayar river north-west of Chennai with a stratified sequence from Acheulian handaxes dated to around 1.5 million years ago through to a Middle Palaeolithic industry appearing about 385,000 years ago — far earlier than the conventional model for South Asia allowed.
- Function
- Archaeology & heritage
- Confidence
- Qualified / contested
- Location
- 13.223, 79.889
Worth knowing
Robert Bruce Foote identified it in 1863, in the same decade he recognised the Indian Palaeolithic at all. The 2018 dating of the Middle Palaeolithic levels was contentious because it implies either a much earlier modern-human dispersal or an independent development of the technology here.
The 2018 luminescence dates for the Middle Palaeolithic transition are debated, and the hominin species responsible is unknown because no fossils have been found at the site.
Connections (1)
- PrecursorBhīmbetkā
Attirampakkam and Bhimbetka are the two ends of the Indian Palaeolithic: a stratified handaxe sequence beginning around 1.5 million years ago in a Tamil river bed, and shelters in the Vindhyas whose cupules may be Acheulian and whose painting begins in the Mesolithic. Both were first recognised in the nineteenth century, and both have had their dates pushed earlier since 2000.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Attirampakkam”. Shanti Pappu and others, “Early Pleistocene presence of Acheulian hominins in South India”, Science (2011); Akhilesh and others, Nature (2018).
Open Attirampakkam in the repository →