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. 

More Graves Uncovered in Shar-i Sokhtah

From Press TV (Iran)
Ancient graves found in Iran Burnt City
Sat, 24 Apr 2010 09:44:47 GMT

More ancient graves have been discovered at Iran's Burnt City as archeologists were conducting the 13th phase of excavation works at the prehistoric site.

The unearthed tombs at the Burnt City site located in southeastern Sistan-Baluchestan province date back to about 3,000 BC, Rouhollah Shirazi, an official with Iran's Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization told IRNA on Thursday.

Shirazi also added that the archeologists made the discoveries during last winter's excavations around the eastern wing of the city, where its residential buildings, monuments and cemetery were located.

According to the Iranian official who directs the Burnt City excavation works, a number of buried relics were also unearthed along with the graves.

Archeologists have also found a well-preserved building in the residential area, covering around 80 square hectares of the total 151 square hectares of the ancient city.

The 5000-year-old Burnt City is located near the city of Zabol where four civilizations used to live. It was burnt down three times and not rebuilt after the last fire.

The world's oldest animated picture, dice and backgammon set (the miraculously preserved wooden "serpent" gameboard, dated to c. 2400-2300 BCE), the earliest known caraway seed and an artificial eyeball have been found in the Burnt City.

GHN/CS/HRF

Information on Shar-i Sokhtah at Goddesschess:

The Serpent Gameboard of Iran: Much Ado About - Nothing New...

Why is this news?

Oh come on!  Distinctly Indo-European people who wove plaids just like their compatriots to the west, had fair skin, red, brown and even blonde hair, and blue eyes, coupled with unusual height, were in the Tarim Basin at least 4000 years ago.  I think it is pretty well etablished that these peoples migrated from the Iranian Plateau, and perhaps from even further west.  So this article about an Indo-European male showing up in a 2000 year old Mongolian cemetery is news exactly how?  (Image: belt decoration from Duurlig Nars Man's grave, from article.  Okay - intertwined serpents.  Where have we seen this pattern before?  Hint:  The Shar-i Sokhtah (i.e., The Burnt City) gameboard, far southeastern corner of Iran). 

Skeleton of Western man found in ancient Mongolian tomb
DNA from 2,000-year-old skeleton may put Indo-Europeans in East Asia By Bruce Bower Web edition : 4:10 pm

Dead men can indeed tell tales, but they speak in a whispered double helix.

Consider an older gentleman whose skeleton lay in one of more than 200 tombs recently excavated at a 2,000-year-old cemetery in western Mongolia, near China’s northern border. DNA extracted from this man’s bones pegs him as a descendant of Europeans or western Asians. Yet he still assumed a prominent position in ancient Mongolia’s Xiongnu Empire, say geneticist Kyung-Yong Kim of Chung-Ang University in Seoul, South Korea, and his colleagues.

On the basis of previous excavations and descriptions in ancient Chinese texts, researchers suspect that the Xiongnu Empire — which ruled a vast territory in and around Mongolia from 209 B.C. to A.D. 93 — included ethnically and linguistically diverse nomadic tribes. The Xiongnu Empire once ruled the major trading route known as the Asian Silk Road, opening it to both Western and Chinese influences.

Researchers have yet to pin down the language spoken by Xiongnu rulers and political elites, says archaeologist David Anthony of Hartwick College in Oneonta, N.Y. But the new genetic evidence shows that the 2,000-year-old man “was multi-ethnic, like the Xiongnu polity itself,” Anthony remarks.

This long-dead individual possessed a set of genetic mutations on his Y chromosome, which is inherited from paternal ancestors, that commonly appears today among male speakers of Indo-European languages in eastern Europe, central Asia and northern India, Kim’s team reports in an upcoming American Journal of Physical Anthropology. The same man displayed a pattern of mitochondrial DNA mutations, inherited from maternal ancestors, characteristic of speakers of modern Indo-European languages in central Asia, the researchers say.  [Shock!  Was the guy perhaps a Tocharian???]

“We don’t know if this 60- to 70-year-old man reached Mongolia on his own or if his family had already lived there for many generations,” says study coauthor Charles Brenner, a DNA analyst based in Oakland, Calif.

Two other skeletons from the Xiongnu cemetery in Duurlig Nars show genetic links to people who live in northeastern Asia, according to Kim’s team. Other team members include Kijeong Kim of Chung-Ang University and Eregzen Gelegdorj of the National Museum of Mongolia in Ulaanbaatar.

The Duurlig Nars man’s genetic signature supports the idea that Indo-European migrations to northeastern Asia started before 2,000 years ago. This notion is plausible, but not confirmed, says geneticist Peter Underhill of Stanford University. Further investigations of Y chromosome mutation frequencies in modern populations will allow for a more precise tracing of the Duurlig Nars man’s geographic roots, Underhill predicts.

Scholars have long sought to trace the origin and spread of related languages now found in Europe, India and other parts of Asia. One hypothesis holds that Indo-European languages proliferated via several waves of expansion and conquest by nomads known as Kurgans who had domesticated horses and thus could travel long distances. In this scenario, Kurgans left a homeland north of the Black Sea, in what’s now Russia, around 6,400 years ago.

Another view holds that farmers from ancient Turkey spread Indo-European tongues as they swallowed up one parcel of land after another, beginning around 9,000 years ago.

Since 1978, discoveries of 2,400- to 4,000-year-old mummified corpses with European features in northwestern China, not far from Mongolia, have fueled the Kurgan hypothesis (SN: 2/25/95, p. 120). Remains of large wheels found with these blond-haired individuals raise the controversial possibility that these foreigners introduced carts and chariots to the Chinese.

Add to those discoveries a report in the September 2009 Human Genetics. Geneticist Christine Keyser of the University of Strasbourg in France and her colleagues found that nine of 26 skeletons previously excavated at 11 Kurgan sites in northeastern Russia possess a Y chromosome mutation pattern thought to mark the eastward expansion of early Indo-Europeans. That same genetic signature characterizes the Duurlig Nars man.

By 2,000 years ago, the easternmost Indo-European languages were probably spoken in northwestern China, Anthony holds. So an Indo-European speaker could have aligned himself with Xiongnu political big shots and earned an eternal resting place in an elite Xiongnu cemetery, in his opinion.

Kim agrees. The Duurlig Nars man’s tomb lies close to the tomb of an especially high-ranking Xiongnu man whom he may have served in some way, he suggests.

Kim’s group plans to extract and study DNA from additional Duurlig Nars skeletons. For now, Anthony remarks, “this new study from Mongolia is important because it adds one more point of light to a largely dark prehistoric sky.”

Women Ruled in Iran - 5500 Years Ago...

Remember the babe with the Golden Eye Ball? I'm sure I wrote about her somewhere - maybe at Random Round-up. She was, according to the latest, a personage of some importance in the ancient scheme of things. Here's more about the ancient history of "The Burnt City" a/k/a Shar-i Sokhtah (various spellings), where was exacavated an amazing wooden game board of 20 squares, carved in the classical shape of those game boards recovered from the Royal Tombs of Ur by Woolley dated to about 2600 BCE, but with the "squares" (playing cases) composed entirely by the intertwined bodies of two serpents! Serpents, as we've seen here in numerous posts, are ancient symbols of The Goddess. 5000 years ago women in control of Burnt City Tuesday, August 12, 2008 - ?2005 IranMania.com [Does this mean this story dates back originally to 2005?] LONDON, August 12 (IranMania) - Recent studies of a team of archeologists have shown that 5000 years ago (3200 BC) women had the economic control of the Burnt City. Some paleo-anthropologists believe that mothers in the Burnt City had social and financial prominence, director of the team working at the Burnt City in Sistan-Baluchestan Province, southeastern Iran said recently. Addressing the archaeology students at Zabol University, Seyed Mansour Seyed Sajjadi said that 5000 year-old insignias, made of river pebbles and believed to belong only to distinguished inhabitants of the city, were found in the graves of some female citizens. "Some believe the female owners of the insignias used them to place their seal on valuable documents. Others believe the owners may have used the seal to indicate their lofty status in society", he added. In December 2006, archaeologists discovered the world's earliest artificial eyeball in the city's necropolis, thought to have been worn by a female resident of the Burnt City. The artificial eye is a hemisphere with a diameter of just over 2.5 cm (1 inch). It consists of very light material, probably bitumen paste. The surface of the artificial eye is covered with a thin layer of gilding and is engraved with a circle at its center to represent the iris. The eye includes gold lines patterned like the rays of the sun. A hole has been drilled through the eyeball, through which a golden thread is thought to have held the eyeball in place. Microscopic research has revealed that the eye socket of the female remains bear clear imprints of the golden thread, suggesting that the woman must have worn the eyeball during her lifetime. With her shining golden eye she must have been a striking figure, perhaps a soothsayer or an oracle. The woman with the artificial eye was 1.82 m tall (6 feet), much taller than the average women of her time. She was aged between 25 and 30 and had dark, exotic skin. Her Africanoid cranial structure suggests her origins were the Arabian Peninsula. [Interesting - a business woman who set up shop far from home? Or an imported bride?] Experts say that her skeleton dates to between 2900 and 2800 BC, when the Burnt City was a bustling, wealthy city and trading post at the crossroads of the East and the West. It is thought that the woman may have arrived at the city on a caravan from Arabia. Archeologists have not yet revealed the cause of the woman's death. Paleopathological studies on 40 teeth unearthed in the Burnt City's cemetery show that the inhabitants of the city used their teeth as a tool for weaving to make baskets and other handmade products. "More than 40 teeth lesions have been identified, the most prominent of which belongs to a young woman who used her teeth as a tool for weaving baskets and similar products," said Farzad Foruzanfar, director of the Anthropology Department of Iran's Archeology Research Center (ICAR) in an interview with CHN. The use of teeth as a tool in the Burnt City is seen in both males and females of different age groups. Evidence shows that weaving was more than a hobby in the prehistoric city. It was one of the most common professions in the city which required a special skill. Residents made a variety of weaved products such as carpets, baskets and other household items. The city, called Shahr-e-Sookhteh, sits on the banks of the Helmand River along the Zahedan-Zabol road in the southeast province of Sistan. The excavations at the Burnt City also suggest that the inhabitants were a race of civilized people who were both farmers and craftsmen. No weapon has ever been discovered at the site, suggesting the peaceful nature of the residents. The Burnt City has been continually excavated since the 1970s by Iranian and Italian archaeological teams, with new discoveries periodically reported. Covering an area of 151 hectares, the city was built around 3200 BC and abandoned over a millennium later in 2100 BC. The city experienced four stages of civilization and was burnt down three times. It took its eventual named because it was never rebuilt after the last fire. Learn more at Goddesschess.

Goddess Murkum

CHTHO's Cultural Blunder and Documentary Production on World’s Oldest Animation (Check out the graphic at the link - it shows the "animation" spoken of in the article and it's really cool) March 4, 2008 LONDON, (CAIS) -- The Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts Organization (CHTHO) announced on Monday that it has recently completed the production of a documentary about the ancient Iranian earthenware bowl bearing the world’s oldest example of animation. Directed by Mohsen Ramezani, the 11-minute film gives viewers an introduction to the bowl, which was discovered in a grave at the 5200-year-old Burnt City by an Italian archaeological team in late 1970s. The artefact bears five images depicting a wild goat jumping up to eat the leaves of a tree, which the members of the team at that time had not recognised the relationship between the pictures. Several years later, Iranian archaeologist Dr Mansur Sadjadi, who became later appointed as the new director of the archaeological team working at the Burnt City discovered that the pictures formed a related series. Nonetheless, according to English daily Mehr, during a ceremony held on Sunday to promote the production, CHTHO's cultural authorities claimed the image is a depiction of ‘Assyrian Tree of Life’: “the earthenware bowl, which is wrongly known as ‘The Burnt City’s goat’, depicts the myth of ‘The Assyrian Tree of Life’ and a goat.” Depiction of ‘The Assyrian Tree of Life’ on this bowl which was made at least 1000 years before the Assyrian civilisation even appear in historical records is one of the most preposterous claims by the new-breed of experts in post-revolutionary Iran. The image is a simple depiction of a tree and wild-goat (Capra aegagrus) also known as 'Persian desert Ibex', and since it is an indigenous animal to the region, it would naturally appear in the iconography of the Burnt City. The wild goat motif can be seen on Iranian pottery dating back to the 4th millennium BCE, as well as jewellery pieces especially among Cassite tribes of ancient Luristan. However, the oldest wild goat representation in Iran was discovered in Negaran Valley in Sardast region, 37 kilometers from Nahok village near Saravan back in 1999. The engraved painting of wild goat is part of an important collection of lithoglyphs dating back to 8000 BCE. However, wild goat representation with a tree is associated with Murkum, a mother goddess who was worshipped by all the Indo-Iranian women of the Haramosh valley in modern Pakistan, [emphasis added] which culturally had closer ties with Indus and subsequently the Burnt City civilisations, than Mesopotamia, which could had influenced the ancient potter who made this unique piece. *********************************************************************************** I found this information online about the Goddess Murkum, at noteaccess.com, citing: Porada, Edith [With the collaboration of R. H. Dyson and contributions by C.K. Wilkinson]. The Art of Ancient Iran, Pre-Islamic Cultures. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc. Art of the World. 1962. Chapter 4 The Art of the Akkad and Post-Akkad Periods in Western Iran; Contemporary Art Works of North-Eastern Iran . . . Of the rich metal finds from Hissar III we reproduce [p. 43] here only a drawing of a moufflon head, one of five, made of gold foil and intended to be sewn on to some sort of textile. These precious objects were part of a hoard buried at the end of Hissar III, probably shortly before the site was attacked and destroyed by fire. [12] The powerful sweep of the horns, the eyes staring out of the head, suggest a more than decorative significance for this object. One would like to know whether there was any connection between the frequent representations of moufflon and ibex on the one hand and of female figurines on the other. Tentatively we may suggest here that attention to be focused on some rites and concepts which Karl Jettmar was able to observe in villages of Dardistan, situated in north-western India, where 'the three most eminent mountain chains of Asia meet--the Hindukush, Himalaya and Karakoram. Most of this area is inhabited by Indo-Aryan or Iranian peoples'. [13] In the remote valleys of this region ancient religious traditions maintained themselves without interference by the Muhammadan zealots who had destroyed such traditions in neighbouring Kafiristan. Only the wood carvings of Kafiristan still manifest today a similarly tenacious retention of ancient traditions [see p. 18]. The most interesting tradition of Dardistan concerns the cult of a goddess Murkum who was worshipped by all the women of the Haramosh valley. 'She helped in delivery and protected mother and child; yet she was also the chief owner of all ibexes and wild goats denoted by the collective term of mayaro. Therefore she was venerated by hunters, too, who brought her horns'. [14] Jettmar describes a sanctuary of Murkum, which was still in use, as lying almost three thousand metres above sea-level just in front of the Haramosh; this was 'no accident as the mountain was considered the proper home of the Murkum. On the steep slope there is an altar built of boulders dominated by a cliff as big as a house with a juniper tree growing beside it. Next to it is a spring. Below the altar crude benches of stone were erected for the annual meeting of the women. Nut-trees grow between them. Even they are considered holy and no branches were ever broken off.' In the rites performed at the annual meeting of the women at the sanctuary, the goddess was to send the sacrifice, a she-ibex. A male priest is said to have participated in the ceremony by performing a dance and by killing the ibex and dividing it up. The ministry of this priest 'is now abolished but women anxious about the welfare of their families still come to the altar table and put leaves of juniper between the boulders.' Similar concepts concerning a deity, 'owner-goddess of the animals', also prevailed in some districts of the Caucasus. There, as in the Haramosh valley, a hunter can capture his prey only with her consent. Sometimes the goddess appears in the shape of a "pure" animal. The precise idea that a slaughtered animal may be revived from its bones occurs in both areas. Even the detail that a missing bone can be replaced by a rod is identical. Here, as there, the belief is connected with wild goats and this must be a very old affinity, because Thor, the Germanic god, plays the same trick on his bucks. 'Today there is a vast empty distance between the two centres, the Caucasus and the Hindukush/Karakoram, but once perhaps similar beliefs existed on the Iranian plateau and were destroyed in the course of the violent history of this area.' The possibility here suggested of using the complex of ideas discovered in Dardistan and known from the Caucasus for the interpretation of early works of art from Iran is very tempting but must unfortunately remain a hypothesis without documentary proof. [p. 44] Notes: 12. For the hoard on the Treasure Hill where these ornaments were found, see E. R. Schmidt, Excavations at Tepe Hissar Damghan [The University Museum, Philadelphia, 1937], pp. 171-173 and 189. 13. See K. Jettmar, 'Ethnological Research in Dardistan 1958; Preliminary Report,' Proceedings of the American Philosohical Society 105 [February 1961], p. 79. 14. See Jettmar, op. cit. in note IV/13, pp. 88-91 for this and the following quotations. In note 58 he pointed out that at some places the urial, the wild sheep, is also included in the 'mayaro'. ************************************************************************************ "Owner goddess of animals" - isn't that a title for Artemis? Of course, the most ancient goddess was known by many different names and encompassed many different attributes, and as the eons passed and populations grew and moved about the world, she changed as she was carried from place to place; she took on new names, and new attributes.