There has only been one discovery of an archaic human fossil in South Asia – a partially complete cranium dated to around 250,000 years ago, recovered from Hathnora in Madhya Pradesh’s Narmada valley in 1982. It was first classified as a Homo erectus, then as an ‘archaic’ version of Homo sapiens itself, then as Homo heidelbergensis, and as of now the debate is still unsettled.
