How do we know today that ostriches were found in India during the…
2019
How do we know today that ostriches were found in India during the Palaeolithic period?
- A.
We have a vivid description of these birds in the writings of that time.
- B.
Large quantities of ostrich egg shells were found at Patne in Maharashtra.
- C.
We have archived oral memories on ostriches in Delhi's National Museum.
- D.
These are described in the accounts of foreign travellers.
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: B
For any period before the invention of writing, historians and archaeologists must rely on material remains recovered from excavated sites — tools, bones, shells, and other physical debris — since no textual record can exist from before writing was invented, and no oral record can reliably survive across the tens of thousands of years back to such a period.
The Palaeolithic period in India is exactly such a pre-literate era. Excavations at Patne in Maharashtra recovered large quantities of ostrich eggshell fragments from Palaeolithic layers there, giving direct, datable physical proof that ostriches lived in India during that period.
Checking this against the other kinds of "evidence" on offer confirms why only excavated material qualifies:
Written descriptions cannot exist for this period because writing itself had not yet been invented anywhere at the time.
An oral tradition preserved today cannot span the tens of thousands of years back to the Palaeolithic — spoken memory does not survive that long.
Foreign travellers' accounts belong to much later, literate historical periods, long after the Palaeolithic period had already ended.
So it is the excavated eggshell remains at Patne — physical archaeological evidence — that let us know ostriches were present in Palaeolithic India.