Evidence That Foundations of Indus Civilization Older Than Thought

Indus Valley 2,000 years older than thought

By Nivedita Khandekar | Hindustan Times – Sun 4 Nov, 2012

New Delhi, Nov. 4 -- The beginning of India's history has been pushed back by more than 2,000 years, making it older than that of Egypt and Babylon. Latest research has put the date of the origin of the Indus Valley Civilisation at 6,000 years before Christ, which contests the current theory that the settlements around the Indus began around 3750 BC.

 

Ever since the excavations at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro in the early 1920s, the civilisation was considered almost as old as those of Egypt and Mesopotamia.

The finding was announced at the "International Conference on Harappan Archaeology", recently organised by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) in Chandigarh.

Based on their research, BR Mani, ASI joint director general, and KN Dikshit, former ASI joint director general, said in a presentation: "The preliminary results of the data from early sites of the Indo-Pak subcontinent suggest that the Indian civilisation emerged in the 8th millennium BC in the Ghaggar-Hakra and Baluchistan area."

"On the basis of radio-metric dates from Bhirrana (Haryana), the cultural remains of the pre-early Harappan horizon go back to 7380 BC to 6201 BC."

Excavations had been carried out at two sites in Pakistan and Bhirrana, Kunal, Rakhigarhi and Baror in India.

Published by HT Syndication with permission from Hindustan Times.

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Well, I expect this will start a good rip-roaring argument in certain circles!  For myself, I'm open to the idea.  Take a look at this map from Wikipedia:

It is well established that people were living in the Iranian Plateau and making beautiful pottery/clay vessels dating to as early as c. 8000 BCE.  I am no expert in this area, by any means, but I don't find it impossible to imagine migration from the Caspian Sea area to the coast on the Arabian Sea.  Notice the location of the Indus area in relation to the ancient areas of Baluchistan and Sind.  In fact, some late 19th century writers thought that chess originated in Sind (in today's world, southeast Pakistan)

See Art of Pottery in Iran at Iran Review. 

Whenever I see Baluchistan in print, I think of Shar-i Sokhtah (spelled in myriad different ways) and the wonderful miraculously preserved wooden game board of 20-squares that was about 4300 years old.  Notice on the map above the location of Shahr-e-Suchte (a/k/a the Burnt City) and Mohenjo Daro of the Indus civilization.  I blogged about this remarkable gameboard, formed by the bodies of interwoven serpents carved into the wood, back in 2010:

Sorry, not the best photo, but it's right out of a print report from back in the 1970s when the news was first published - unfortunately, the source below did not cite to the original report:

A well-preserved wooden 20-squares gameboard (the serpent gameboard) was excavated from Shar-i Sokhtah near the borderlands of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan in the late 1970's I believe, and dated to about 2400 BCE. Also known as the "Burnt City," Shar-i Sokhtah was a trading hub as well as a center of decorative arts and crafts. Image: "Evidence of Western Cultural Connections from a Phase 3 Group of Graves at Shar-i Sokhta", M. Piperno, S. Salvatori, Mesopotamien und Sein Nachbarn, Band 1, Dietrich Reimer Verlag, Berlin 1997, pgs. 79-84, Tafel XXII. The illustration (Fig. 4) is described as "The wooden gaming board found in grave IUP 731 at Shahr-i Sokhta. The board features an engraved serpent [on a rectangular board] coiling around itself for 20 times, thus producing 20 slots for the game."  From June 10, 2010 blog "Author Fudging on Game Board Fragment in Article on Harappan Site". 
The game of 20-squares was made famous when Woolley excavated the remains of a couple of different boards from the royal tombs of Ur, dated to roughly the same period as the gameboard from Shar-i Sokhtah. 

Gradual Climate Change Led to Collapse of Indus Civilization

From Popular Archaeology.  This article includes many graphics and images that you should take a look at to get a full picture.

March 2012
Vol. 6 March 2012 - Print the March 2012 Issue

Climate Change Contributed to Ancient Indus Civilization Demise, Researchers Say

Using archaeological data and geoscience technology, an international team of scientists has concluded a study that shows that the great Indus Valley civilization, otherwise known as the Harappan civilization, declined and disappeared in large measure due to climatic and landscape changes. The study results suggest that a major, gradual decline in monsoon rains led to a weakened river system, adversely affecting the Harappan culture and leading to its collapse. The ancient culture relied on river floods to sustain its system of agriculture.

"We reconstructed the dynamic landscape of the plain where the Indus civilization developed 5200 years ago, built its cities, and slowly disintegrated between 3900 and 3000 years ago," said geologist Liviu Giosan of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). "Until now, speculations abounded about the links between this mysterious ancient culture and its life-giving mighty rivers." Giosan is also the lead author of the study report now published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The Harappan civilization was the largest of the "big three" early urban cultures of the world (the others being ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia), but less is known about it. Archaeological exploration over the past century has shed much more light on the culture. Its remains extend more than 1 million square kilometers across the plains of the Indus River from the Arabian Sea to the Ganges River, over what is now Pakistan, northwest India and eastern Afghanistan. Much like ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, the Harappan people built and sustained their urban society along the recurring highs and lows of flowing rivers that provided the basis for the production of agricultural surpluses, vitally important for the development and sustenance of great urban centers.

Where the Harappan civilization thrived over 4,000 years ago, one now mostly sees arid desolation. The remains of many of its settlements and urban centers now dot a vast desert, far from flowing rivers. But in its heyday, it boasted a sophisticated urban culture with vaious trade routes and maritime connections with Mesopotamia, standards for building construction and sanitation systems, the arts, and a writing system that still eludes epigraphers.

Says Giosan, "We considered that it is high time for a team of interdisciplinary scientists to contribute to the debate about the enigmatic fate of these people".

The team conducted the research between 2003 and 2008 in Pakistan, from the coast of the Arabian Sea into the fertile irrigated valleys of the Punjab and the northern Thar Desert. The project included scientists from the U.S., U.K., India, Pakistan, and Romania, consisting of expertise in geology, geomorphology, archaeology, and mathematics. Using satellite photos and topographic information from NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), they devloped and analyzed digital landform maps of the Indus Valley area. Using this information, they probed the area by drilling, coring, and digging test trenches, collecting samples that would help them determine sediment origins and age. They were able to develop a 10,000-year chronology of landscape change.

"Once we had this new information on the geological history, we could re-examine what we know about settlements, what crops people were planting and when, and how both agriculture and settlement patterns changed," says Dorian Fuller, an archaeologist with the University College London and also co-author of the report. "This brought new insights into the process of eastward population shift, the change towards many more small farming communities, and the decline of cities during late Harappan times."

At first, as the story goes based on the research, the declining monsoon rains actually played a salient role in the rise of the Harappan civilization. Adds Giosan: "The Harappans were an enterprising people taking advantage of a window of opportunity – a kind of "Goldilocks" civilization. As monsoon drying subdued devastating floods, the land nearby the rivers - still fed with water and rich silt - was just right for agriculture. This lasted for almost 2,000 years, but continued aridification closed this favorable window in the end."

By about 3900 years ago the river system had dried to the point where the Harappans were compelled to move and disperse eastward toward the Ganges basin, where the monsoon rains were still plentiful and more reliable. The great urbanized Indus civilization, having relied on the bumper crop surpluses along the Indus and the Ghaggar-Hakra rivers to develop and sustain their cities and towns during the earlier, wetter period, thus no longer had the workforce concentration needed to support urbanism.

"We can envision that this eastern shift involved a change to more localized forms of economy: smaller communities supported by local rain-fed farming and dwindling streams," said Fuller. "This may have produced smaller surpluses, and would not have supported large cities, but would have been reliable. Thus cities collapsed, but smaller agricultural communities were sustainable and flourished. Many of the urban arts, such as writing, faded away, but agriculture continued and actually diversified."

In addition, the researchers believe they have discovered the fate of the mythical river, the Sarasvati. The ancient Sanskrit Vedas scriptures portrayed the Sarasvati as "surpassing in majesty and might all other waters", but it has been long considered lost to history. They have uncovered evidence that they suggest supports the current Ghaggar-Hakra river as ancient Sarasvati, based on sedimentary, topographical, and archaeological data of settlement near the river during the Harappan era. Moreover, the findings suggest that the ancient river was actually fed by perennial monsoons, not Himalayan glaciers, as was previously supposed, and that the increasingly arid climate had reduced it to the short seasonal flows of today.

Games in Ancient Indus' Mohenjo-daro

Article from Past Horizons
Wednesday, February 16, 2011 | Featured, News

Play was a central element of people’s lives as far back as 4,000 years ago. This has been revealed by an archaeology thesis from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, which investigates the social significance of the phenomenon of play and games in the Bronze Age Indus Valley in present-day Pakistan.

It is not uncommon for archaeologists excavating old settlements to come across play and game-related finds, but within established archaeology these types of finds have often been disregarded. [That sure is right!]

“They have been regarded, for example, as signs of harmless pastimes and thus considered less important for research, or have been reinterpreted based on ritual aspects or as symbols of social status,” explains author of the thesis Elke Rogersdotter.

She has studied play-related artefacts found at excavations in the ruins of the ancient city of Mohenjo-daro in present-day Pakistan. The remains constitute the largest urban settlement from the Bronze Age in the Indus Valley, a cultural complex of the same era as ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. The settlement is difficult to interpret; for example, archaeologists have not found any remains of temples or palaces. It has therefore been tough to offer an opinion on how the settlement was managed or how any elite class marked itself out.

Elke Rogersdotter’s study shows some surprising results. Almost every tenth find from the ruined city is play-related. They include, for instance, different forms of dice and gaming pieces. In addition, the examined finds have not been scattered all over. Repetitive patterns have been discerned in the spatial distribution, which may indicate specific locations where games were played.

“The marked quantity of play-related finds and the structured distribution shows that playing was already an important part of people’s everyday lives more than 4,000 years ago,” says Elke.

Rest of article.

This is the caption from the article:
Chess pieces from Mohenjo-daro.
Photo: bennylin0724, Flickr

Are these chess pieces? As far as I know, there is no concrete evidence that chess was played 4,000 years ago by the people living in the Indus valley city-states/settlements.  But, it has to be admitted that the pieces are suggestive of the Staunton-designed pawns from the 19th century which, perhaps, own their inspiration to just such ancient game pieces.*  But to call them chess pieces?  Blasphemy!  Then again, "if it looks like a duck, and walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck..."

* It is known, for instance, that Staunton modeled his knight pieces on the horses in the Elgin Marbles ensconced in the British Museum.

Unfortunately, we don't know exactly where the pieces in the photograph were excavated, or how old they are.  The use of the photo in the article suggests that they are all from Mohenjo-daro, but it doesn't really say so, does it?  These could be a collection of gaming pieces from any museum in the world, which often seem to lump together without distinguishing ivory Islamic chess pieces together with 4,000 year old Egyptian faience senet pieces, 900 year old hnefatafl pieces and 400 year old bone chess pieces from Russia! 

Dholavira, Indus Valley Civilization

A sort of touristy overview from dnaindia.com:

Dholavira was the lake city of the great Indus Valley civilization
Published: Wednesday, Dec 1, 2010, 14:07 IST
By Hemang Desai | Place: Ahmedabad | Agency: DNA

The Indus Valley civilization existed in India five thousand years ago. This great urban civilization, contemporaneous with those of Egypt and Mesopotamia, covered an expanse that stretched from Baluchistan in the west to the Upper Ganga-Yamuna Doab in the east. Harrapa, Mohen-jo-Daro, Channu Daro, Rakhigarhi, Lothal and Dholavira are among the famous towns of the Indus Valley civilisation that were dug out by archaeologists.

Dholavira, located near Khadir Bet in the Great Rann of Kachchh of Gujarat is an incredible example of this Indus Valley civilization town.

The area of the civilization was larger than that of today's Western Europe. Dholavira perched at one end of it on a small island, possibly surrounded then by the sea. Surrounded by a unique geographical location, Dholavira was literally a paradise in the desert.

Archaeologists believe that the five-thousand-year-old town must have been a lovely city of lakes during its heydays. In fact, the residents of Dholavira who had settled in the town between two water streams, Mansar and Manhar, collected their waters in the monsoon and used that water during the rest of the year. They used clever water storing and collecting techniques.

The New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Technology believes that the ancient Dholavira has a lot to teach the modern water -starved world about water collection, usage and storage.

After Egypt and Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley civilization is one among the four oldest civilisations of mankind. This civilization is shrouded in mystery as very little is known about its social and cultural aspects even today. But the town remains and the qualities of objects found on its sites testify that this must have been a high civilization.

The first town of the Indus Valley to be discovered by archaeologists was Harrapa in 1921, followed by Mohenjo Daro in 1922.

Each town of this civilization, at times two thousand kilometres away from the other, had a similar plan: there was a palace in each town; the town area was divided on a grid pattern and wide streets that ran north to south and east to west.

The curator of the Pennsylvania University Museum, Gregory Posehal, says, "Dholavira is a planned city. Exactly like the planned modern cities, Dholavira was made based on a design. Mohenjo Daro too was built like this."

Like other towns of the Indus Valley civilization, Dholavira too is a parallelogram. The wall of the "citadel" is eighteen metres thick.

Buildings in Dholavira were made ofsun-dried mud bricks and stone and some of them stand in good condition even today.

The refinement of buildings and materials used reveals a high knowledge of civil engineering that must have been prevalent among the Dholavirans. Ornaments made in lapis lazuli, agate, carnelian, shells, silver and gold, as well as utensils and toys made from clay, also reveal a high artistic and technological sense.

The water wells and street remains of the town speak of the technological sophistication of the Indus Valley people. Unfortunately, the script of the Indus Valley civilisation remains yet to be deciphered. But this civilisation continues to fascinate and intrigue even after five thousand years of its existence.

Ancient Trade: New Evidence for Third Millennium BCE Trade

Unfortunately this is a pay for view article at Science unless you have a subscription.  Here is a summary:

Science 28 May 2010:

Vol. 328. no. 5982, pp. 1092 - 1097
DOI: 10.1126/science.328.5982.1092

A Forgotten Corridor Rediscovered
Andrew Lawler

Recent digs in Iran and Central Asia have uncovered a plethora of ancient cities that traded goods and technologies overland with one another and their more famous neighbors. Now discoveries in Oman and the neighboring United Arab Emirates (UAE) are beginning to show that there was a southern sea route as well, which funneled raw materials such as copper and manufactured goods such as textiles across the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf. Those links reached deep into the eastern Arabian Peninsula. Much is still unknown, including whether Indus traders actually penetrated deep into Arabia, the identities of the sailors who first plied the Indian Ocean, and just how extensive that contact was. But clues continue to emerge from numerous archaeological digs in Oman and the UAE, a region that has become a hotbed of excavation. Work here and in the western Persian Gulf, Iran, Pakistan, and India reveals that this early Arabian culture was a nexus point for the far-flung civilizations of the 3rd millennium B.C.E. This special Focus package also discusses a bevy of archaeological surprises being discovered in Omani soil and fortified coastal settlements that suggest that the Indus Civilization, once considered an insular society, shipped goods to the east.


Er - would that be Indus cities shipping their goods to the west (Persia) and southwest (Arabian peninsula)???   Pakistan (home to most of the Indus sites) is located to the east of Iran and northeast of Arabia.   But I guess I'm just being picky :)

Gujarat Forged Trade with Harappans

I'm glad to see this kind of research coming out of India. For too long, the Harappan civilization has been under-explored by its own descendants!

From The Times of India
Gujarat exported jewellery to Harappan cities
Parth Shastri , TNN, Mar 22, 2010, 03.39am IST

AHMEDABAD: A large quantity of seals and beads used in making jewellery during the Harappan civilisation were recently found at Kanmer near Bhachau. The archaeology experts in the state were elated as the discovery proved that Kutch region those days had a production capacity and also a trade link with other parts of India and world, like Himalayan regions and parts of Pakistan, where similar beads have been found.

Studies taken up by state and central archaeology institutes have also shown a trade route covering central Asia, Himalayan areas and Gujarat.

A research paper on the economy of Harappan civilisation and development of smaller centres published in a British journal this month shows how the civilisation spread from Gujarat plains to Himalayan regions and parts of Pakistan in Indus-Saraswati river valley. The research was carried out jointly by YS Rawat, director of State Department of Archaeology; DP Agarwal of Lok Vigyan Kendra, Almora; JS Kharakwal, department of archaeology, Rajasthan Vidhyapeeth, Udaipur; and T Osada, Institute of Humanity and Nature, Kyoto, Japan.

The paper also tries to define the specific regions producing items of trade. According to the researchers, the flourishing ports gave a huge boost to the region's development.

"Since the very beginning of Harappan civilisation, procurement and distribution of natural resources was a focal point of the people. Due to geographical distances, it led to development of small and medium-sized towns on the route that took shape of accepted trade highways," said Rawat.

"The Harappan elite needed ornaments made of gold, silver, agate, chalcedony, steatite, copper, shell, lapis lazuli and sodalite, many of which were taken from Gujarat to areas in northern Himalayan region. The requirements led to development of sites like Makran, Surkotada, Bagasara, Dholavira, Kuntasi, Kanmer and Shikarpur in Gujarat," said Rawat.

According to archaeology experts, various artefacts found in Himalayan and sub-Himalayan regions such as Manda (Jammu), Kotla Nihang and Ropar (Punjab), and Kashipur in Kumaon region are believed to have been manufactured in Gujarat.

"Most importantly, jewellery made of semi-precious stones, clay capsules and shells were the main items of trade from Gujarat. Agate also formed a large part of export from this state," said Rawat.

In Gujarat, sites like Kanmer yielded a large amount of bead-making material as more than 20,000 steatite beads were found at an excavation site in the area, indicating their industrial importance.

"Several small sites in Gujarat like Surkotada, Desalpur, Gola Dhoro, Kuntasi, Rajpipla, Kanmer and Shikarpur have disproportionately large fortifications compared to their settlement size. Such massive expenditure of energy and material on fortifications could be justified for economic protection," said Rawat.

More on Discovery of Harappan Burials

From The Times of India Harappan-era cemetery found 4 Mar 2009, 0239 hrs IST, Deepender Deswal, TNN FARMANA(Rohtak): In an extraordinary archaeological finding, a big housing complex that matured during the Harappan era has been discovered in this little known village about 40 km from Rohtak. A cemetery belonging to the same civilization which existed about 3500-3000 BC has also been found at an adjacent site, where nearly 70 skeletons have been unearthed so far. The team of archaeologists from Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, Kyoto Japan, Deccan College, Pune and Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak, discovered the habitation site spread over 18.5 hectare. It has four big complexes and a cemetery spread over about three hectare. "This is easily among the largest habitation locality of the Harappan era. We have so far excavated one complex which has 26 rooms, 3 to 4 kitchens, an equal number of bathrooms and a courtyard in the centre. The size of the rooms vary from 6x6 to 16x20," said Prof Manmohan Singh of MD University. The excavations indicate that this region was part of the 5,000 years old Indus Valley culture, considered one of the most advanced urban civilizations in ancient times. The digging of the burial ground has revealed many facts which would help in studying the lives of the Harappan people. Vivek Dangi, a research scholar associated with graveyard excavation, categorized the burials into three types. In the Indus Valley tradition, people used to bury the dead with things that belonged to them. In secondary burial, they were interred with a few bones and other articles. In the third type of burials, only stuff like pots, goblets, bakers, studs, miniature pots, plates, bowls were found that indicates they used to perform symbolic burial of the missing people. He says the skeleton of a middle-aged woman had three shell bangles, two copper bangles, copper earrings, beads and ornaments on the feet, indicating her wealthy status. Nilesh, a research scholar from Deccan College, Pune, says they had been working on the site for last three years. "We work for about three months in a year and our present phase is likely to end next month."

Important Conference on Indus Civilization

Reappraisal of the Indus /Vedic Civilization Tuesday, 02.10.2009, 03:41am (GMT-7) Â LOS ANGELES: An international conference on the Sindhu-Sarasvati Valley Civilization will be held on Feb 21 and 22 at Loyola Marymount University, in Los Angeles. Prominent scholars particularly archaeologists, linguists, anthropologists, historians, religious specialists and geneticists will discus the nature of the interrelation between the Indus or Sindhu and the Sarasvati or Vedic culture(s) from about 3000 BC to 1000 BC. They will attempt to bridge the chronological, linguistic and racial gap between the material and literary cultures of the Indus and Vedic. A few fundamental questions raised are: Who were the people of Ancient India Civilizations? Were they Vedic Aryan or Indo- Aryan, Indo- Iranian or Dravidians? Has archaeological evidence confirmed the existence of common features of Vedic and Indus culture(s)? Is there an indigenous continuity of the culture in India and Pakistan or did the people come from outside the subcontinent? How does the scientific evidence of the drying of the River Sarasvati play a role in the interpretation of the history and chronology of the civilization. How is the genetic evidence corroborated with archaeological evidences especially regarding the antiquity of the Indian gene? Prominent scholars who examine the issues include Jonathan Mark Kenoyer (University of Wisconsin), Carl C. Lamberg-Karlovsky, Dr. B.B. Lal (Archaeological Survey of India), R.S. Bisht (Archaeological Survey of India), Louis Flam (City University of NY), S.R.Rao (Archaeological Survey of India, National Institute of Oceanography), Edwin Bryant (Rutgers University) Shiva Bajpai (CSUN) , Vijendra Kumar Kashyap (India's National Institute of Biologicals), Subhash Kak (Oklahama State University), Ashok Aklujkar (University of British Columbia) , Jim G. Shaffer (Case Western Reserve University, Dennis Frenez (University of Bologna) and Nicholas Kazanas (Omilos Meleton Cultural Institute, Athens). The interpretations by scholars in the conference will be rooted in scholarship and presented with clarity and brevity for the sake of the educated public. They will touch upon areas of consensus and contentions with a temporarily conclusive interdisciplinary understanding upon the topics: Indus and Sarasvati: ecology and culture, Indus and Aryan: Race and Language, The Indus Script/Language, Population: Migration and Settlement, Sociopolitical Organizations and DNA and Astronomical evidences. The conference enhances our historical understanding of the period in the Sindhu-Sarasvati area. The overlapping evidences and ambiguities will be confronted by scholars who examine their inter-relationships, and arrive at a consensus. It will be of significant intellectual and educational interest to all students and scholars of science, humanities and social sciences, and more importantly, the educated public.

New Discoveries at Mojendaro

Mojendaro was excavated around the same era that King Tut's tomb was discovered in the Valley of the Kings and Woolley was excavating Ur in Iraq. I think it's high time today's archaeologists went back and took a hard second look! Archaeologists made new discoveries at Moenjodaro Irish Sun Monday 2nd February, 2009 (IANS) Archaeologists cleaning a drain to flush out rainwater from an explored part of the ancient Indus Valley city of Moenjodaro have been pleasantly surprised to come across artefacts and other objects of much cultural value at the World Heritage site. 'We had gone just half a metre down the level of surface of the old structures in the DK-G area and found the material of cultural value,' Dawn Monday quoted Moenjodaro director Qasim Ali Qasim as saying. Well-defined structures of old drains were discovered along with certain old artefacts during the digging, which was necessitated to prevent rainwater stagnating at the world heritage site. An object called an 'elliptical lid' that might have been used for keeping 'holy water' or 'ceremonial water' was also found. Moenjodaro curator Irshad Rid said this was something new for archaeologists.Prior to the current digging, no such object had been found at any site of the Indus Valley Civilisation, he added. 'A miniature used for keeping medicines was also discovered at the site,' the curator said. According to Qasim, pieces of charcoal were found that would help establish the age of the structures.At the same time, he said that Pakistan needed fine and delicate technology to analyse the new finds without which it would be difficult to determine the age and utility of the objects. Asked why the new digging was being undertaken, Qasim said it was for constructing a drain and to study the phenomenon of the 'First Street' of the site. 'The presence of old remains and structures in the area under study showed that it was a congested area, compelling the people to encroach upon the main street and construct houses,' Dawn said. Qasim also said that Unesco wanted to undertake a new phase of excavations at Moenjodaro to understand different aspects of the gigantic pre-historic city. He said he had on Saturday received a letter from Unesco and was now preparing a comprehensive plan for a new phase of excavation. According to Qasim, many questions related to Moenjodaro were yet to be discussed and answered and it was, therefore, necessary to continue work on the site. Curator Rid said E.J.H. Mackay of the Archaeological Survey of India had conducted the last excavation at the present site between 1927 and 1931.

New Ruins Discovered in Pakistan

Not sure about this - it might just be politically motivated propaganda; you know, "we're better than you (India) because our ruins are older than your ruins, blah blah blah... What we DO know is that a very ancient civilization flourished for about 1,000 years in Baluchistan along the courses of the Indus River and its tributaries, roughly concurrent with the rise of the civilizations in Egypt and Sumer/Mesopotamia. When the climate changed/the rivers shifted (why do rivers shift? how does this happen? Do they just suddenly decide one day, hey, I'm going 20 miles to the south? Seems a very strange business to me...), the original area of settlement was abandoned. It has been a matter of controversy ever since whether any elements of that civilization survived by moving further south. Are the people who live in southern India today the descendants of that ancient Baluchistan civilization??? Anyway, here is the article: Site older than Moenjodaro found in Sukkur By Waseem Shamsi SUKKUR, Jan 22: An archaeological site, about 5,500 years old, has been found in Lakhian Jo Daro near Goth Nihal Khoso in the district of Sukkur. The find is said to be of the era of Kot Diji. A team of 22 archaeologists headed by the chairman of Shah Abdul Latif University’s archaeology department and Lakhian Jo Daro project director Ghulam Mustafa Shar found some semi-precious and precious stones and utensils made of clay, copper and other metals during excavation on Thursday. The remains are said to be older than those of Moenjodaro. Mr Shar told Dawn that remains of a ‘faience’ mirror factory had been found at the project’s second block. It was believed to be of the era of mirror factories of Italy which dates back to some 9,000 years. [I've never heard of any faience factories in Italy dating back to 7,000 BCE - hell, not even in Egypt dating back that far, so I'll be interested to learn more about what he's talking about - if any further information is published.] He said a painting had also been found and discovery of more such items could establish the site as 9,000 years old, like the remains found at Mehar Garh in Balochistan and Jericho in Palestine. [No photos - in this day and age, that always makes me suspicious]. “At present, we can say that it is older than Moenjodaro,” he said. Mr Shar said that archaeology professors and students from Punjab University, Peshawar University and Islamabad would join the team in a couple of days. He said the work on the second block would continue for a month and more items could be found. Sukkur District Nazim Syed Nasir Hussain visited the site on Thursday and asked the project director to prepare proposals for a museum.

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Well, after thinking about it and in light of the recent news about what has been going on in Pakistan and the never civilized "tribal regions," I can't say I blame any of the archaeological experts for playing their cards close to their vests. With the Taliban running rampant throughout Baluchistan and the Pakistani government either not able or not willing to rein them in, it's possible that publishing photos of the area would tip off the Nazi Islamists to the site which they would then destroy as "against Allah."

This just pisses me off so much! How is it possible that the forces of darkness and evil are gaining more and more control over more and more of the world?

Indus Valley Article in Science Magazine

Just came across this blog - All Things Pakistan:

Science Unmasks New Knowledge about the Indus Civilization
Posted on July 20, 2008 Filed Under Adil Najam

It reports on an Andrew Lawler article in the June, 2008 issue of Science Magazine - available online only by subscription. I will probably subscribe just to get access to the full article.

The Indus Civilization is a fascinating connumdrum. We can't figure out the written language - heck, as far as I'm aware there isn't even a consensus that those symbols found on seals and pottery ARE actually writing.

This article looks to be the most comprehensive treatment in a popular science magazine to date - written in understandable terminology (no "terms of art" by archaeologists clouding things up) and this map which really shows how widespread the Indus influence was - and how close some of the Indus sites were to such cities as Shar-i Sokhtah in the border area where modern-day Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran all meet.

It is sad, silly and frustrating that scientists on either side of the borders of India and Pakistan cannot work together and combine their efforts in collaboration to advance knowledge of the Indus civilization because of religion and politics! Why can't people realize that in the flow of history, gods come and go; the gods of thousands of years ago are dead to us today, and thousands of years from now (if we manage not to destroy all life on this planet in the meantime), the gods of today will be dead, too. But knowledge - that is something that can live forever.

Harrappan Sites to be Excavated

From news aggragator Archaeology News, from The Hindu.com: Harappan sites to be excavated after 50 years April 18, 2008 Varanasi (PTI): After a gap of 50 years, a team of archaeologists will be excavating two sites near Noida and Meerut to determine when exactly the "eastern limit" of the Indus Valley civilisation flourished. Alamgirpur village in Meerut-Baghpat and Bulandkhera village in Gautam Buddh Nagar districts "are believed to be the eastern most limits of the Harrappan culture" and the last time the area was surveyed was in 1957-58. "We expect the excavation to throw light on this aspect as well as others of the ancient civilisation. Archaeological Survey of India last conducted a dig at Alamgirpur and Bulandkhera in 1957 and 1958," professor Parasnath Singh, head of the department of Ancient Indian History, Culture and Archaeology at Banaras Hindu University, told PTI. Over the years, local residents have stumbled upon artefacts like coins, pottery and other items besides a mummified body of a woman wearing bangles in villages on the cusp of Meerut and Baghpat districts - home to Hastinapur detailed in the epic Mahabharata. The artefacts found are believed to date between 1500 BC and 700 BC, but have not been carbon dated. Prof Singh said a team of experts in archaeology, geology and zoology besides supporting staff would be conducting the digs and analyse the findings. He said the ASI had been informed about the project and its approval was expected shortly. ******************************************************************************************** How does one happen to "stumble" across a mummy? It seems more likely that wholesale looting of these sites has been going on for the past 50 years and there may not be much of anything left in context for the archaeologists to discover, which is a true national tragedy.

Traders of the Plain

From the archives of Saudi Aramco World online, a fine article about the Harappan civilization, the roots of which date back to at least 7000 BCE. At it height, it covered more territory than either the Egyptian or Mesopotamian civilizations, and yet it is not remembered today because of the absence of great preserved ruins and spectacular treasures recovered from burials.

Here is an excerpt regarding the mysterious Harappan script, which has yet to be deciphered:

The Indus Enigma

It's the greatest single mystery of the Indus Valley civilization," says Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, field director of the Harappa Archeological Research Project. He's talking about the Harappans' still-undeciphered script, an example of which may be what's inscribed on two pottery shards found at Kenoyer's dig, at a level that dates to 3200 BC. The three groups of symbols on the shards look like matchsticks and tiny forks attached at the handles.

The marks may simply have indicated ownership, and perhaps had no meaning in themselves, but they bear a close resemblance to, and may be precursors of, elements of the writing system that came into regular use in the Indus Valley around 2700 BC, and disappeared completely, along with the rest of Harappan civilization, between 1900 and 1700 BC.

Depending on whether one interprets similar-looking signs as variants or separate symbols, the Indus Valley script apparently consisted of about 400 characters that depict human and animal figures, and additional geometric shapes and symbols. By analyzing overlapping strokes and observing crowding toward the left ends of lines, archeologists have gathered that the symbols were almost always written from right to left.

More than 4200 objects bearing the script have been found, including seals, bangles, pottery, tools, utensils and small tablets of copper, steatite or clay—but these are only objects that have survived the millennia: The Harappans may have written prolifically on less durable materials like papyrus or cloth that are unlikely to be excavated. About 80 percent of the inscriptions are on seals or seal impressions, suggesting that the symbols may have been used primarily for commercial purposes, such as stamping bales of goods with an identifying mark.

Despite nearly 50 independent attempts to decipher the Harappan script in the past 80 years, including some recent ones using computers, it remains stubbornly enigmatic. It is distinctively different from the scripts of Mesopotamia or Egypt, and it bears no resemblance to writing systems, such as those used in Sanskrit or other Indo-Aryan languages, that later appeared in the region. Some scholars believe that the script's closest link is with writing of the Dravidian languages of southern India, such as Tamil and Malayalam, but there are no traces of other aspects of the Indus Valley civilization in that part of the subcontinent, and it seems unlikely that, if the Harappan script migrated there, no other aspect of the culture should have accompanied it.

Part of the decoding problem is that no bi- or multilingual inscription, like the famous Rosetta Stone, has ever been found. And the Harappan texts are short: None is longer than 26 signs, and the average length is only five, which does not give much opportunity for the development of recurring patterns of signs that might be discerned. Furthermore, the script may have served to express more than one language, as Roman, Arabic and many other forms of writing still do.

The undecoded script continues to lock up most of the secrets of the Indus civilization and of the Harappans' social and religious lives—the second great mystery, says Kenoyer. If the inscriptions could be read, scholars surmise, we'd be much closer to knowing how and what the Harappans worshiped, who their leaders were, what role religion played in their lives, and what the source was of their far-reaching organization and cultural uniformity.

Related post - the Artifacts of Lothal

For more on the Harappan script, check Wikipedia's entry