20S FOOTE : GEOLOGY OV THE BELLARY DISTRICT. 



above that particular gravel, of a thickness of full 60 feet of other 

 gravels and loam beds, and of a deposit of from 80 to 150 feet thick 

 of loess. On the surface of this loess, and to a depth of 2 or 3 feet 

 below it occur numerous traces of the existence of a neolithic people. 

 No traces of the neolithic stage were found at greater depths, though 

 many hundreds of sections were examined, but the traces on and near 

 the surface of the loess are distributed far and wide over the country. 

 This evidence of a great break in time between the palaeolithic 

 and neolithic peoples is an almost conclusive argument against there 

 being any connection by descent between them. 



The very earliest traces of man's existence in the Bellary district 



as yet met with are the rude chipped implements 



Palaeolithic imple- above re f erre d to , of which 1 made the first find 



meuts in u talus-fan. ' 



on the surface of one of the great shingle talus- 

 fans lying round the north-eastern end of the Copper Mountain. 

 I got in all about 30, of whose genuinely human origin there could be 

 no doubt, and all were made of haematite-jasper, and all of shapes 

 commonly found among the lateritic gravels of the Madras Coast, 

 such as ovals and pointed ovals, and much more rarely of the hatchet 

 shape, but all found here were of rather smaller size than the average 

 coast laterite specimens. They had been ploughed up out of the sur- 

 face of the fan. I searched many stream sections through the fans there 

 and further west, but nowhere succeeded in finding imp'ements exposed 



in them, but I got two excellent specimens on 

 In the Joga talus-fan. 



the surface of a similar talus-fan at Joga, 22 



miles to the west-north-west. Both of these are of haematite-jasper. 



Another very typical implement of haematite-jasper was found 



by me on a ledge of rock on the side of the bold 

 North of Kunkuppa. J & 



granite hill which rises out of the flat at the 



upper end of the Great Daroji tank, north of Kurikuppa. 



Quartzite implements of palaeolithic type were very rare ; the only 



one I succeeded in finding, despite much hunt- 

 Quartzite implement 



in the old alluvium of ing of the old alluvial shingle beds of the 

 Tungabhadra and the other rivers, was an oval 

 ( 208 ) 



