Agricultural communities
By at least 3500 BCEcultivation was occurring in many parts of the sub-
continent. Certain grains and fruit were being cultivated; some animals
were domesticated, including cattle and fowl; pottery was an increasingly
important part of the economy; and small settlements had become a part of
the landscape.
There appear to have been at least three broad areas of neolithic culture
- each somewhat autonomous.^2 In the northeast, in the lower Ganges and
in other river valleys there were settlements skilled in the use of polished
stone, but where no pottery was in use; in the south, esspecially in the
Southern Deccan where such settlements as Utnur and Brahmagiri have
been excavated, cattle had become an important part of the economy
(and the religious use of cattle may have been developing).^3 Here too such
grains as millet and wheat were being cultivated by 3500 BCEand pottery
was being made by hand. In the northwest, one finds polished stone and a
type of pottery made on wheels. The culmination of the northwestern
culture was to be found in the Indus Valley.
These agricultural communities seem to have resulted from indigenous
development and from further migrations. It is possible that the devel-
opment of agriculture and cultivation skills owed something to its women
who had been food-gatherers (the collecting of wild fruits, etc. which had
not needed cultivation). (It is interesting to note that to this day most of
the people who work on the land are women.) Some of the settlements may
have been matrilineal suggesting women had a significant role in the social
and economic life of agricultural peoples, and contributed something to the
religious imagery associated with agricultural production.^4
This period also witnessed several migrations. Peoples sometimes referred
to as Australoids (c. 2000 BCE?) may have come in from Southeast Asia,
perhaps first as hunters but eventually developing skills in cultivating such
fruit as the banana. A migration of megalithic peoples reached the south by
about 800 BCE.^5 This was a culture characterized by the construction of large
stones over graves: these are known as menhirs (a single large rock, placed
erect) or cairns (piles of large rock). These peoples also practiced urn burial,
remnants of which are found in such disparate places as the Indus Valley and
the Palni Hills of South India. Irrigation was another of the skills attributed
to these peoples. Yet another complex of civilizations ranging from Iran to
Baluchistan, sometimes called the “Turkmenistan Circle,” may have formed
something of a matrix of which the Indus Valley civilizations were a part.^6
It is possible that this mélange of cultures emerged into what is sometimes
known as the “Dravidian” culture. “Dravidian” is an umbrella term for those
16 Sources of Indian Religion