Dikshit, then the Director-General of Archaeology in India. The scene of operation was Northern Gujarat, mainly the territory comprised within the Indian State of H.H. The Gaekwad of Baroda. During the first season a rich new microlithic site was discovered a t Langhnaj,' a village in Mehsana Taluka of the Baroda State. Small trial diggings yielded hundreds of chips, flakes and cores of agate, chalcedony, chert, jasper and other silicate stones, all imported into the stoneless, sandy soil of Northern Gujarat. This large mass included some genuine microliths as shown below. A large microlithic factory was on the mound, as the subsequent digging proved.But besides the microlithic material there was an equally large semifossilized or completely calcified mass of splintered bones. These fortunately comprised a few well-preserved end limbs of animals. Among these my colleague Dr. (Mrs.) Kame recognized not only remains of the dog, sheep or goat, cow or ox, cattle, pig, and horse, but also those of man. If the microlithic industry and the animal remains were contemporary, then it was not improbable that the man who worked the stones and splintered the bones also lay there, as the discovery of a fragment of a human skull suggested.With the small funds provided by the Government of India and the University of Bombay, a few weeks were spent in 1944 and in 194445 in search of the "Microlithic Man." And we did find him. Three complete human skeletons and one of a dog lying in a microlithic layer were discovered in February, and four more, one of them almost complete, were found in December the same year. Some remarkably large-sized animal remains had also been found together with these human remains.The association of human and animal remains with the microlithic mass a t a depth of about five feet from the surface of the mound, and the total absence o€ pottery and metals had been observed year after year. But is it not possible that the human beings were buried later into the microlithic, semifossilized bone layer? Such questions were raised. They were indeed natural, though our field observations of regular excavations on the top of the mound at Langhnaj and elsewhere, as also on the plain ground, and of other digs such as wells, had shown us that the real microlithic level was that mentioned above.
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