Teeth tell story about people buried at Harappa

[Kabira]

Teeth tell story about people buried at Harappa
Posted by Past Horizons, on April 30, 2015

Much of what modern researchers have gleaned about our common ancestors, particularly those from Egypt and Mesopotamia, comes from well-studied tombs and burial sites. Discovering the narrative of peoples from the Greater Indus Valley — which comprises much of modern-day Pakistan and northwest India — is more challenging. The text of the Indus Valley Civilisation remains undeciphered, and known and excavated burial sites are rare. Recently, researchers have illuminated the lives of some individuals buried more than 4,000 years ago in those grave sites by providing a comparison of the dental enamel and chemical analyses of the water, fauna and rocks, using isotope ratios of lead and strontium.

The study is published in PLOS ONE (Open Access).

In its heyday, Harappa held a population of 50,000, although the number of individuals represented by skeletal remains across the entire culture area totals in the hundreds.

Migrated to Harappa
When tooth enamel forms, it incorporates elements from the local environment such as food, water and dust. When the researchers looked at remains from the ancient city of Harappa, located in what is known today as the Punjab Province of Pakistan, individuals’ early molars told a very different story than their later ones, meaning they hadn’t been born in the city where they were found.

The University of Florida research team was led by Benjamin Valentine, biological anthropologist John Krigbaum, and geological sciences professor George Kamenov, an isotope geologist.

“The idea of isotope analysis to determine the origin of individual migrants has been around for decades. But what people haven’t been doing is looking at the different tooth types, essentially, snapshots of residents during different times of individuals’ lives,” said Valentine. “We didn’t invent the method, but we threw the kitchen sink at it.”

The researchers discovered that the people in the Harappa must have migrated there from the hinterlands. Said Krigbaum, “Previous work had thought the burial sites represented local, middle-class people. There was no notion that outsiders were welcomed and integrated by locals within the city. It’s not clear why certain young hinterland people were sent to the city.”

Teeth tell story about people buried at Harappa | Archaeology News from Past Horizons

 

[ArsalanKhan21]

Even today the urban centers attract rural population to the cities. The IVC cities were planned and the inhabitants were probably chosen to live there due to their skills. Probably they they were political-religious-military administrative centers with officials from different part of modern Pakistan.

 

[Kabira]

Tooth Enamel Shows Young People Moved to Harappa

GAINESVILLE, FLORIDA—Analysis of the isotope ratios of lead and strontium in tooth enamel from people who lived 4,000 years ago in the Indus Valley shows that they had not been born in Harappa, where they had been buried. This study looked at different tooth types in order to get an idea of where the people were living at different times in their lives, and the chemical signatures of water, fauna, and rocks of the time, and found that they had been born in the hinterland. “Previous work had thought the burial sites represented local, middle-class people. There was no notion that outsiders were welcomed and integrated by locals within the city. It’s not clear why certain young hinterland people were sent to the city,” biological anthropologist John Krigbaum of the University of Florida said in a press release. To read in-depth about a contemporary civilization in Iran, see "The World in Between."

Tooth Enamel Shows Young People Moved to Harappa - Archaeology Magazine

 

[Indus Pakistan]

@save_ghenda Thanks - This is a great article which fit's in nicely with what I have been reading. The precursor to Harappa Civilization appears to have been in the highlands west of Indus. That would be Balochistan, going into Iranian Sistan Va Balochistan, going up north into Afghanistan as far as Turkmenistan. This all is not good news for the Indian's because the embyronic stage of IVC seems to be firmly linked with Central Asia something that Prof. Ahmad Hasan Dani always maintained.


"In the first stage of bronze technology land trade between sites in Soviet Central Asia is amply evidenced and at the same time trade links are noted with the sites in Iran, Afghanistan and the Indus valley, Pakistan. Sites such as Altyn-depe in Turkmenistan, Shahr-i-Sokhta in eastern Iran, Mundigak in southern Afghanistan and Mehrgarh in Pakistan trace the beginning of Bronze Age communities and provide material for the transition stage from simple food production to a gradual growth of complex societies having multifarious craft specialization."

http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rc...faaLWKhi2ArJo-AMA&sig2=WUScADUjaBt3AnShxwSbbg

 

[ArsalanKhan21]

We can also look at Mehrgarh in Balochistan where a 7,000 year old culture was precursor to IVC. According to some historians the Dravidians and Elamites in modern Iran were close. The Vedic Aryan invasion from modern Ukraine pushed the Dravidian culture to the south.

 

[Kabira]

@save_ghenda Thanks - This is a great article which fit's in nicely with what I have been reading. The precursor to Harappa Civilization appears to have been in the highlands west of Indus. That would be Balochistan, going into Iranian Sistan Va Balochistan, going up north into Afghanistan as far as Turkmenistan. This all is not good news for the Indian's because the embyronic stage of IVC seems to be firmly linked with Central Asia something that Prof. Ahmad Hasan Dani always maintained.


"In the first stage of bronze technology land trade between sites in Soviet Central Asia is amply evidenced and at the same time trade links are noted with the sites in Iran, Afghanistan and the Indus valley, Pakistan. Sites such as Altyn-depe in Turkmenistan, Shahr-iSokhta in eastern Iran, Mundigak in southern Afghanistan and Mehrgarh in Pakistan trace the beginning of Bronze Age communities and provide material for the transition stage from simple food production to a gradual growth of complex societies having multifari-ous craft specialization."

Lots of interesting bits in latest scientific study.

Indus Mortuary Practice in Context

Though peoples of the Indus Tradition were connected by trade routes since at least 5500 BC, it was not until ca. 2600 BC that diverse regional cultures developed a common repertoire of ceramic forms, settlement organization, urban infrastructure, and administrative practices [1, 7]. Emerging elites sought to consolidate their advantages through the control of exotic resources and sophisticated craft technologies [8]. At the major urban center of Harappa, for example, mercantile groups acquired a wide range of resources from adjacent mineral-rich regions including the Potwar Plateau to the northwest [9] (Fig 1). Farmana was a much smaller settlement near the eastern limit of the Indus culture area and relatively close to the Khetri copper belt of the northern Aravalli mountain range, a region known for ancient copper production [10]. Indus peoples likely acquired raw materials from these and other regions through trade, as there is little archaeological evidence for large-scale militarization [9]. Furthermore, Indus artifacts and stylistic influences at hinterland sites suggest relationships of reciprocity [9, 11].

PLOS ONE: Evidence for Patterns of Selective Urban Migration in the Greater Indus Valley (2600-1900 BC): A Lead and Strontium Isotope Mortuary Analysis

 

[Indus Pakistan]

We can also look at Mehrgarh in Balochistan where a 7,000 year old culture was precursor to IVC. According to some historians the Dravidians and Elamites in modern Iran were close. The Vedic Aryan invasion from modern Ukraine pushed the Dravidian culture to the south.

Not quite. The Dravidian connection is almost a religious belief by Dravidian's in India. To me this appears to be the desire of insecure people to claim heritage when they have no heritage themselves like the Sub Saharan Africans making pathetic attempts at claiming Ancient Egypt. Read Prof. Ahmad Hasan Dani's thoughts on this subject.

1. A Dravidian Language?

Q: What do you think about the theory today that the Indus language was a Dravidian language and that there is a connection between the Indus culture and today's South Indian culture?

This is generally believed by those who are now working, particularly my friends like Asko Parpola, Professor Mahadevan, and the Russians Professors who have worked on this subject. They have all been working on the assumption that the language of the Indus people was Dravidian, that the people who build the Indus Civilization are Dravidian. But unfortunately I, as well as my friend Prof. B.B. Lal in India, have not been able to agree with this.

Today the Dravidians are living in South India and we always say if they were the builders of the Indus Civilization and if they migrated from here because of some reason or the other, then something of that civilization they should carry into the south except just the language. But so far we have not been able to find any trace of the Indus Civilization in the whole of South India. It is there is Gujarat, it is there in Malabar, but not in the area where Dravidian is spoken today. Not a single evidence has been found.

Recently when Asko Parpola came about three months ago to Pakistan, he said no Professor, what about Gujarat? Certainly in Gujarat we have got the Indus Civilization, right about to the mouth of the Narmada, right up to the mouth of the Tanti we have got this civilization. There is one more place on the Narmada we have got the Indus civilization, but not south of it. He said that this shows that people have been there. I said even then I will not agree.

Ancient Indus Valley Script: Dani Interview Text Only

 

[ArsalanKhan21]

Not quite. The Dravidian connection is almost a religious belief by Dravidian's in India. To me this appears to be the desire of insecure people to claim heritage when they have no heritage themselves like the Sub Saharan Africans making pathetic attempts at claiming Ancient Egypt. Read Prof. Ahmad Hasan Dani's thoughts on this subject.

Good points. Dravidians have better argument on IVC compared to Vedic Aryans as Hindutva believe.

 

[Kabira]

where is our resident hindutva @levina?

 

[Levina]

where is our resident hindutva @levina?

Excellent and a very thought provoking article!!
Thanks for posting it. Can't thank you enough for proving that some young inhabitants of Harappa were migrants.
What a revelation!!
5000 yrs back there lived a civilisation which could attract ppl from different parts of the world. Isn't that amazing!!
And before I sign off from this thread, I had read that all human beings alive today can trace their roots back to some homosapiens who lived in Africa.
Alas! This tale of migration which had its genesis in Africa, still remains a dark continent.