Certainly the use of the plant had already spread across an area stretching from Romania to China, secondly south to India and on to south-east Asia, and last, and certainly not least, to western Asia, from where it diffused to Africa, Europe and eventually the Americas.
Central Asia, a vast land of deserts, steppes and oases is, despite its name, usually seen as of marginal historical influence, a kind of cultural vacuum between the great civilisations of China to the east, India to the south and the Middle East to its west.
The anthropologist Weston La Barre was of the opinion that cannabis use goes as far back as the Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) period as part of a religio-shamanic complex.
Lower Palaeolithic Age begins inSouthAsia around 2 million years ago.
The book "Palaeolithic Age" is the first book on Prehistoric Art and Archaeology of SouthAsia.
During 1983-84, he was awarded Commonwealth scholarship and he meritoriously qualified M.A. (Archaeology) with specialization in Palaeolithic and Mesolithic from institute of Archaeology, London.
Certainly the use of the plant had already spread across an area stretching from Romania to China, secondly south to India and on to south-east Asia, and last, and certainly not least, to western Asia, from where it diffused to Africa, Europe and eventually the Americas.
Cannabis is a plant native to Central Asia that has spread all over the world and is probably the most widely used recreational and usually illegal drug in the world, being smoked from the inner cities of America and Europe to the outlying atolls of Micronesia.
The anthropologist Weston La Barre was of the opinion that cannabis use goes as far back as the Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) period as part of a religio-shamanic complex.
Certainly the use of the plant had already spread across an area stretching from Romania to China, secondly south to India and on to south-east Asia, and last, and certainly not least, to western Asia, from where it diffused to Africa, Europe and eventually the Americas.
The anthropologist Weston La Barre was of the opinion that cannabis use goes as far back as the Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) period as part of a religio-shamanic complex.
Finally, in 1937, through the considerable persuasive powers of Harry J. Anslinger, the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, the Marihuana (Marijuana) Tax Act became federal law and in 1956 the drug was incorporated into the more comprehensive Narcotics Act.
Paleolithic - the era of human history which begins with the development of the first recognizable stone tools, 2.6 mya in Olduvai Gorge in the African Rift Valley and which ends, by some accounts, 12,000 ya with the Mesolithic era or, by other accounts, 10,000 ya with the beginning of settled agriculture, the Neolithic era.
Whereas the Paleolithic generally refers to Europe and the Middle East, the Stone Age generally refers to Sub-Saharan Africa and South and South-East Asia.
The Paleolithic era began in the Pliocene epoch with the development of the first stone tools, 2.6 mya.
It is only natural that we observe the first vivid vestiges of this civilisation around 2.300 BC in the northern part of the island, from where it spread south and west.
The new era was introduced by people from Anatolia who came to Cyprus because of disturbances inAsia Minor.
For the first time since the late 13th, 12th and 11th centuries BC a new ethnic element (save the Phoenicians in the 9th century BC) appeared, the Turks, whose religion prevented them from being assimilated by the strong and resolute Greek population, which is what happened earlier with the indigenous Cypriots, the Phoenicians and others.
The second book of this series is on Mesolithic-Neolithic and third book is on Early Bronze and Iron Ages inSouthAsia.
Books on Indian & Southasian Art, Architecture, Archeology, Buddhist Art, Paintings, Ancient Indian History, Modern Indian History, Politics, Religion, Philosophy, Buddhism, Hinduism, Women Studies, Sociology and Anthropology, English Literature from India
About the Book : The book "Palaeolithic Age" is first book on Prehistoric Art and Archaeology of SouthAsia.
Over repeated ice ages during the last million years, Japan was regularly connected by land bridges to the Asian mainland (by Sakhalin to the North, and probably Kyushu to the South), facilitating migrations of humans, animals and plants to the Japanese archipelago from the area that is now China and Korea.
With the end of the Wisconsin glaciation (last ice age) and general warming period, the Jomon culture emerged around 11,000 BCE, characterized by a mesolithic to neolithic semi-sedentary hunter-gatherer lifestyle and the manufacture of the earliest known pottery in the world.
The start of the Yayoi period around 300 BC marked the influx of new technologies such as rice farming, irrigation and iron and bronze-making, brought by migrants from Korea, China, and other parts of Asia.
Increasing knowledge of the Ravi and Kot Diji Phase occupations at Harappa, and of contemporary settlements throughout northwestern SouthAsia, permits glimpses of later Indus Civilization.
Most archeologists dispute this view, arguing that the old and dry river died out during the mesolithic age at the latest, and was reduced to a seasonal stream long before the Vedic period.
A section of scholars claim that this was a major river during the third and fourth millennia BCE, and propose that it may have been the Sarasvati River of the Rig Veda.
The farmers' expansion was not limited to the diffusion of the agricultural practices, but was a 'demic' expansion: that is a substantial replacement of the local dwellers, the mesolithic populations of Europe, by the neolithic from South East Asia.
Archeological findings suggest that this revolution was not initiated by the man hunter and warrior, but by the intelligent observations made by the woman.
The Triticum Turgidum Dicoccoides, progenitor of the actual 'durum' wheat with which pasta is made, had just few seeds encapsulated into a pointed and twilled kernel: at maturation the seeds fell on the soil and penetrated into it with rain, eased by the arrow-shaped structure of the kernel.
SouthAsia was neither then, nor later on, isolated from the rest of the world.
However, the lower Gangetic plains made the change from the Stone Age to settled, agricultural life only very late: the land east of Kausambi/Allahabad became Neolithic around 1500 and Chalcolithic around 700 BCE (V.N. Misra, Journal of Biosciences 26, 2001; http://www.ias.ac.in/jbiosci/nov2001/533.pdf), and some areas near Benares were even in deep in the Mesolithic then.
The same can be seen in people who still live in Stone Age hunting or pastoralist societies.
