Movius Line

The Movius Line is a theoretical line drawn across northern India. This idea was proposed by the American archaeologist Hallam L. Movius in 1948 to show a technological difference between the early prehistoric tool technologies of Africa, Asia, and Europe.

The Movius Line

Movius noticed that the Palaeolithic stone tools from sites east of northern India never contained handaxes. They had less formal implements known as chopping tools.^[1] These were sometimes as extensively worked as the Acheulean tools from further west, but could not be described as true handaxes.

Movius drew a line on a map of India to show where this difference occurred, dividing the tools of Africa, Europe and Western and Southern Asia from those of Eastern and South-eastern Asia.

Fossil evidence also suggests a difference in the evolutionary development of the people who made the two different tool types across the Movius Line. Scientists still do not know why this difference occurred. Scholars still use the idea of the Movius Line to describe that difference.