To a layman like myself, history of India started from the era of Indus Valley civilization, i.e., bronze age civilization. That was as far as my high school history book could go in terms of Indian history. However, when it came to European history, I remember reading about the cave paintings of Altamira (Spain) and I was really fascinated by it. I read about some ancient cave paintings in Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay's Aranyak. He mentioned about the ancient tribal paintings in the Chotnagpur range and regretted the lack of initiative to save those ancient paintings. The time period of those paintings were not known to the author.
Recently I went to Bheembetika in Madhya Pradesh. I was amazed to see the cave paintings there. Some of them are over 10000 years old! These are some of the pictures taken by me.
TVishnu Wakankar discovered the Bhimbetka rock shelters in 1957. Those rock shelters dated back to Mesolithic and even to the late Palaeolithic (old stone age) period. The rock arts belong to the Mesolithic (middle stone age - circa 10,000 before present [BP]) period. I am not a historian and not an expert in rock art. So instead of daring to write too much, I am going to add the relevant links.
Wikipedia has a nice concise summary of the art and its history:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhimbetka
