a recent discovery of fragments of fossilised bones from the Narmada basin has once again brought to the fore the question of the antiquity of the first humans on the Indian subcontinent. Anek Ram Sankhyan, a senior anthropologist with the Kolkata-based Anthropological Survey of India (asi), had unearthed collarbones and a lower rib from Hathnora, a Madhya Pradesh village located in the Narmada valley in 1998. Following a preliminary study, it has now been found the bones belong to a woman about 135 centimetres tall who lived in central India in the early Stone Age (Current Science, Vol 88, No 5).

"The bones are believed to be up to 500,000 years old and could be that of an archaic Homo sapiens,' Sankhyan told Down To Earth. He says there is not enough evidence to say whether the bones belonged to a true pygmy or a dwarf. "She would have been shorter than the shortest pygmy female among the Jaravas or Onges today,' he says after comparing the fossilised bones from Narmada with skeletons of Jaravas and Onges preserved in the asi museum.

Sankhyan believes she probably had an injured shoulder or arm because morphological changes in the collarbones suggest an overuse of the right hand and a sparing use of the left. The asi scientists estimated the age of the bones indirectly by locating and dating prehistoric animals and objects found next to the specimens at the same soil depth.

Sankhyan and other experts believe the specimen is probably of an archaic H sapiens (The modern humans