Agriculture
The Balangoda Man appear to have been responsible for creating Horton Plains, in the central hills, by burning the trees in order to catch game. However, discovery of oats and barley on the plains dating to about 15,000 BCE suggests that they also may have engaged in agriculture.
The skeletal remains of dogs from Nilgala cave and from Bellanbandi Palassa, dating from the Mesolithic era, about 4500 BCE, suggest that Balangoda Man may have kept domestic dogs for driving game. It was suggested that Sri Lankan dogs, such as Sinhala Hound and Kadar Dog, have a common prehistoric ancestor. It is also possible that Balangoda Man have domesticated jungle fowl, pig, water buffalo and some form of bos (possibly the ancestor of the Sri Lankan neat cattle which became extinct in the 1940s).
Read more about this topic: Balangoda Man
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“But the nomads were the terror of all those whom the soil or the advantages of the market had induced to build towns. Agriculture therefore was a religious injunction, because of the perils of the state from nomadism.”
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