Page:An introduction to Dravidian philology.djvu/29

Rh hills and on the little shallow sloping valleys. They perhaps knew how to smelt iron."

We now enter on the Megalithic age where proto history begins. References to this age occur in the Vedas and the Brahmanas. A rapid survey of the movements of culture in South India has been given above just to show that the advocates of Tamilikkam being the original home of Man, to the exclusion of every other, are claiming too much for their point of view. So far as we know, there have not yet come to light any traces in Tamilikkam of the Pleistocene Man and of the rest also the finds are not 80 abundant as to warrant a theory of the kind advanced by the Tamilikkam advocates. The finds at Adichanallur are made much of by them, but with regard to them, it has been said by scholars that the Megalithic skulls of the kind found there range in India from Neolithic (C. 4000 B. C.) to late.