Archaeologists confirm Indian civilization is 2000 years older than previou

[curioususer]

Indian archaeologists now believe the ancient Indian civilization at Harappa dates back as far as 7500 BC.
Jason Overdorf November 28, 2012 06:00

Miniature votive figurines or toy models from the Harappa region of Pakistan, ca. 2500. Recent archaeological findings proove the Indus River Valley civilization is up to 2,000 years older than previously believed. (one_click_beyond/Wikimedia commons)
What do you think?


NEW DEHLI, India — When archaeologist KN Dikshit was a fresh-faced undergraduate, in 1960, a remarkable discovery pushed back the origin of civilization in the Indus River Valley by some 500 years. Now, he claims to have proof that pushes India's origin back even further — making Indian civilization some 2,000 years older than previously believed.

“When Bhirrana [Rajasthan] was excavated, from 2003 to 2006, we [recovered artifacts that provided] 19 radiometric dates,” said Dikshit, who was until recently joint director general of the Archaeological Society of India. “Out of these 19 dates, six dates are from the early levels, and the time bracket is forming from 7500 BC to 6200 BC.”

Since the early excavations at Harappa and Mohenjodaro, in what is today Pakistan, the Indus Civilization has been considered among the world's most ancient civilizations — along with Egypt and Mesopotamia (in what is today Iraq).

In recent times, archaeologists divided the Indus Civilization into the pre-Harappan, mature Harappan and late Harappan periods. The pre-Harappan period was characterized by a primitive, Stone Age culture, while the late Harappan period featured sophisticated brick cities built on a grid system, with granaries, toilets and an as-yet undeciphered written language.

But the six samples discovered at Bhirrana include relatively advanced pottery, known as “hakra ware,” that suggests the ancient Harappan civilization began much earlier than previously believed — and that its epicenter lies in the Indian states of Harayana and Rajasthan, rather than across the border.

As Dikshit and his colleague, BR Mani, current joint director general of the ASI, write in a recent note on their findings:

“The earliest levels at Bhirrana and Kunal yielded ceramics and antiquities ... suggesting a continuity in culture, right from the middle of the eighth millennium BCE onwards ... till about 1800 BCE.”

That suggests the Harappan civilization is nearly as old as sites from West Asia such as Jericho, where evidence of a neolithic city has been found to date from as early as 9000 BC. But it also means that Harappa, with new proof of hakra ware dating to 7500 BC, may have been more technologically advanced — bolstering India's claim to the title of the cradle of civilization.

“When [John] Marshall excavated the Indus Valley Civilization [in 1922], he gave it the date of about 3000 BC,” said Dikshit. “But when [Mortimer] Wheeler came in 1944, he gave a shorter chronology and put the Indus Civilization between 2450 BC and 1900 BC. Those dates were also supported when Carbon-14 dates started to come from other parts of the world.”

More from GlobalPost: Mumbai on high alert with right-wing leader Bal Thackeray in critical condition

“In 1960, in Kalimanga, we were only able to push it back a few hundred years. But with these dates [from Bhirrana] things have entirely changed.”

Both Dikshit and Mani downplayed competition between India and Pakistan for bragging rights over the Indus civilization — where the best archaeological site for tourists is in Mohenjadaro, in Pakistan's Sindh province. But the ancient has a way of bleeding into the modern, as various controversies have shown over the years.

Most prominently, perhaps, the so-called “horse theory,” rooted in N.S. Rajaram's fraudulent claim that he had deciphered the Harappan script, introduced horses into a concocted history of the Harappan period in order to provide a missing link to the Vedic period in which the oldest scriptures of Hinduism were written.

Noted for his ties with the loonier side of Hindu nationalism, Rajaram pieced together a tale that suggested “Babylonian and Greek mathematics, all alphabetical scripts, and even Roman numerals flow out to the world from the Indus Valley’s infinitely fertile cultural womb,” according to Harvard Indologist Michael Witzel and comparative historian Steve Farmer.

But for Dikshit and Mani, manufactured controversies of that kind belong in the realm of politics, not archaeology.

“These things should not be raked up,” said Dikshit. “I just don't want to give any statement on this. People are talking. There was an Aryan invasion, then Aryan immigration, then horse theory — this theory, that theory. They are simply wasting their time.”

Archaeologists confirm Indian civilization is 2000 years older than previously believed | GlobalPost

 

[Joe Shearer]

Indian archaeologists now believe the ancient Indian civilization at Harappa dates back as far as 7500 BC.
Jason Overdorf November 28, 2012 06:00

Miniature votive figurines or toy models from the Harappa region of Pakistan, ca. 2500. Recent archaeological findings proove the Indus River Valley civilization is up to 2,000 years older than previously believed. (one_click_beyond/Wikimedia commons)
What do you think?


NEW DEHLI, India — When archaeologist KN Dikshit was a fresh-faced undergraduate, in 1960, a remarkable discovery pushed back the origin of civilization in the Indus River Valley by some 500 years. Now, he claims to have proof that pushes India's origin back even further — making Indian civilization some 2,000 years older than previously believed.

“When Bhirrana [Rajasthan] was excavated, from 2003 to 2006, we [recovered artifacts that provided] 19 radiometric dates,” said Dikshit, who was until recently joint director general of the Archaeological Society of India. “Out of these 19 dates, six dates are from the early levels, and the time bracket is forming from 7500 BC to 6200 BC.”

Since the early excavations at Harappa and Mohenjodaro, in what is today Pakistan, the Indus Civilization has been considered among the world's most ancient civilizations — along with Egypt and Mesopotamia (in what is today Iraq).

In recent times, archaeologists divided the Indus Civilization into the pre-Harappan, mature Harappan and late Harappan periods. The pre-Harappan period was characterized by a primitive, Stone Age culture, while the late Harappan period featured sophisticated brick cities built on a grid system, with granaries, toilets and an as-yet undeciphered written language.

But the six samples discovered at Bhirrana include relatively advanced pottery, known as “hakra ware,” that suggests the ancient Harappan civilization began much earlier than previously believed — and that its epicenter lies in the Indian states of Harayana and Rajasthan, rather than across the border.

As Dikshit and his colleague, BR Mani, current joint director general of the ASI, write in a recent note on their findings:

“The earliest levels at Bhirrana and Kunal yielded ceramics and antiquities ... suggesting a continuity in culture, right from the middle of the eighth millennium BCE onwards ... till about 1800 BCE.”
(1)

That suggests the Harappan civilization is nearly as old as sites from West Asia such as Jericho, where evidence of a neolithic city has been found to date from as early as 9000 BC. But it also means that Harappa, with new proof of hakra ware dating to 7500 BC, may have been more technologically advanced — bolstering India's claim to the title of the cradle of civilization.

“When [John] Marshall excavated the Indus Valley Civilization [in 1922], he gave it the date of about 3000 BC,” said Dikshit. “But when [Mortimer] Wheeler came in 1944, he gave a shorter chronology and put the Indus Civilization between 2450 BC and 1900 BC. Those dates were also supported when Carbon-14 dates started to come from other parts of the world.”

More from GlobalPost: Mumbai on high alert with right-wing leader Bal Thackeray in critical condition

“In 1960, in Kalimanga, we were only able to push it back a few hundred years. But with these dates [from Bhirrana] things have entirely changed.”

Both Dikshit and Mani downplayed competition between India and Pakistan for bragging rights over the Indus civilization — where the best archaeological site for tourists is in Mohenjadaro, in Pakistan's Sindh province. But the ancient has a way of bleeding into the modern, as various controversies have shown over the years.

Most prominently, perhaps, the so-called “horse theory,” rooted in N.S. Rajaram's fraudulent claim that he had deciphered the Harappan script, introduced horses into a concocted history of the Harappan period in order to provide a missing link to the Vedic period in which the oldest scriptures of Hinduism were written.

Noted for his ties with the loonier side of Hindu nationalism, Rajaram pieced together a tale that suggested “Babylonian and Greek mathematics, all alphabetical scripts, and even Roman numerals flow out to the world from the Indus Valley’s infinitely fertile cultural womb,” according to Harvard Indologist Michael Witzel and comparative historian Steve Farmer.(2)

But for Dikshit and Mani, manufactured controversies of that kind belong in the realm of politics, not archaeology.

“These things should not be raked up,” said Dikshit. “I just don't want to give any statement on this. People are talking. There was an Aryan invasion, then Aryan immigration, then horse theory — this theory, that theory. They are simply wasting their time.”

Archaeologists confirm Indian civilization is 2000 years older than previously believed | GlobalPost

(1) @Bang Galore: Kindly note the terminal dates ~ 1800 BC or so.
(2) @KS, Rigged Vedic: As succinct as it gets.

 

[Icewolf]

Indians will always try to prove that Indus Valley is in India... Haha... First check where Indus River is, there is no way epicenter of Harrappan civilization could be in Haryana and Rajasthan, the deserts? Why would ancient people pick these deserts instead of the fertile lands of the Indus? This support my theory that Indo-Aryan species are just migrants of the IVC migrating rightwards

 

[Rig Vedic]

(1) @Bang Galore: Kindly note the terminal dates ~ 1800 BC or so.
(2) @KS, Rigged Vedic: As succinct as it gets.

Usual polemics from Wiztel & Farmer, propping up strawmen. A good reporter would have sought a broader set of views.

 

[Joe Shearer]

Indians will always try to prove that Indus Valley is in India... Haha... First check where Indus River is, there is no way epicenter of Harrappan civilization could be in Haryana and Rajasthan, the deserts? Why would ancient people pick these deserts instead of the fertile lands of the Indus? This support my theory that Indo-Aryan species are just migrants of the IVC migrating rightwards

This is an academic subject, Dmitri, not exactly your cup of tea.

Why don't you go away and play with your 'bamb'?

 

[Joe Shearer]

Usual polemics from Wiztel & Farmer, propping up some strawmen.

Ooh, ooh, ouch.

Not much to say about the very sober factual report, Prof?

How's the history re-writing going, btw?? Have you come to the bit where Hazrat Mohammed was actually Maha Madhava, an Indic sage who emigrated to Arabia and converted the poor, camel-worshipping heathen to worship a Narayan shila instead?

PS: It's Witzel, not Wiztel, whikzid.

 

[Bang Galore]

(1) @Bang Galore: Kindly note the terminal dates ~ 1800 BC or so.
(2) @KS, Rigged Vedic: As succinct as it gets.

I believe I had posted this earlier from a different source

http://www.defence.pk/forums/members-club/219076-harappan-civilisation-2000-years-older.html

There is also this to consider.

Climate Change Led to Collapse of Ancient Indus Civilization, Study Finds

A new study combining the latest archaeological evidence with state-of-the-art geoscience technologies provides evidence that climate change was a key ingredient in the collapse of the great Indus or Harappan Civilization almost 4000 years ago. The study also resolves a long-standing debate over the source and fate of the Sarasvati, the sacred river of Hindu mythology.

Once extending more than 1 million square kilometers across the plains of the Indus River from the Arabian Sea to the Ganges, over what is now Pakistan, northwest India and eastern Afghanistan, the Indus civilization was the largest—but least known—of the first great urban cultures that also included Egypt and Mesopotamia. Like their contemporaries, the Harappans, named for one of their largest cities, lived next to rivers owing their livelihoods to the fertility of annually watered lands.

“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 Liviu Giosan, a geologist with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and lead author of the study published the week of May 28 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. “Until now, speculations abounded about the links between this mysterious ancient culture and its life-giving mighty rivers.”

Today, numerous remains of the Harappan settlements are located in a vast desert region far from any flowing river. In contrast to Egypt and Mesopotamia, which have long been part of the Western classical canon, this amazingly complex culture in South Asia with a population that at its peak may have reached 10 percent of the world’s inhabitants, was completely forgotten until 1920’s. Since then, a flurry of archaeological research in Pakistan and India has uncovered a sophisticated urban culture with myriad internal trade routes and well-established sea links with Mesopotamia, standards for building construction, sanitation systems, arts and crafts, and a yet-to-be deciphered writing system.

“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,” added Giosan.

The research was conducted between 2003 and 2008 in Pakistan, from the coast of the Arabian Sea into the fertile irrigated valleys of Punjab and the northern Thar Desert. The international team included scientists from the U.S., U.K., Pakistan, India, and Romania with specialties in geology, geomorphology, archaeology, and mathematics. By combining satellite photos and topographic data collected by the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), the researchers prepared and analyzed digital maps of landforms constructed by the Indus and neighboring rivers, which were then probed in the field by drilling, coring, and even manually-dug trenches. Collected samples were used to determine the sediments’ origins, whether brought in and shaped by rivers or wind, and their age, in order to develop a chronology of landscape changes.

“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,” said co-author Dorian Fuller, an archaeologist with University College London. “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.”

The new study suggests that the decline in monsoon rains led to weakened river dynamics, and played a critical role both in the development and the collapse of the Harappan culture, which relied on river floods to fuel their agricultural surpluses.

From the new research, a compelling picture of 10,000 years of changing landscapes emerges. Before the plain was massively settled, the wild and forceful Indus and its tributaries flowing from the Himalaya cut valleys into their own deposits and left high “interfluvial” stretches of land between them. In the east, reliable monsoon rains sustained perennial rivers that crisscrossed the desert leaving behind their sedimentary deposits across a broad region.

Among the most striking features the researchers identified is a mounded plain, 10 to 20 meters high, over 100 kilometers wide, and running almost 1000 kilometers along the Indus, they call the “Indus mega-ridge,” built by the river as it purged itself of sediment along its lower course.

“At this scale, nothing similar has ever been described in the geomorphological literature,” said Giosan. “The mega-ridge is a surprising indicator of the stability of Indus plain landscape over the last four millennia. Remains of Harappan settlements still lie at the surface of the ridge, rather than being buried underground.”

Mapped on top of the vast Indo-Gangetic Plain, the archaeological and geological data shows instead that settlements bloomed along the Indus from the coast to the hills fronting the Himalayas, as weakened monsoons and reduced run-off from the mountains tamed the wild Indus and its Himalayan tributaries enough to enable agriculture along their banks.

“The Harappans were an enterprising people taking advantage of a window of opportunity – a kind of “Goldilocks civilization,” said Giosan. “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.”

In another major finding, the researchers believe they have settled a long controversy about the fate of a mythical river, the Sarasvati. The Vedas, ancient Indian scriptures composed in Sanskrit over 3000 years ago, describe the region west of the Ganges as “the land of seven rivers.” Easily recognizable are the Indus and its current tributaries, but the Sarasvati, portrayed as “surpassing in majesty and might all other waters” and “pure in her course from mountains to the ocean,” was lost. Based on scriptural descriptions, it was believed that the Sarasvati was fed by perennial glaciers in the Himalayas. Today, the Ghaggar, an intermittent river that flows only during strong monsoons and dissipates into the desert along the dried course of Hakra valley, is thought to best approximate the location of the mythic Sarasvati, but its Himalayan origin and whether it was active during Vedic times remain controversial.

Archaeological evidence supports the Ghaggar-Hakra as the location of intensive settlement during Harappan times. The new geological evidence—sediments, topography— shows that rivers were indeed sizable and highly active in this region, but most likely due to strong monsoons. However, there is no evidence of wide incised valleys like along the Indus and its tributaries and researchers did not find any cut-through, incised connections to either of the two nearby Himalayan-fed rivers of Sutlej and Yamuna. The new study argues that these crucial differences prove that the Sarasvati (Ghaggar-Hakra) was not Himalayan-fed, but a perennial monsoon-supported watercourse, and that aridification reduced it to short seasonal flows.

By 3900 years ago, their rivers drying, the Harappans had an escape route to the east toward the Ganges basin, where monsoon rains remained reliable.

“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.”

Such a system was not favorable for the Indus civilization, which had been built on bumper crop surpluses along the Indus and the Ghaggar-Hakra rivers in the earlier wetter era. This dispersal of population meant that there was no longer a concentration of workforce to support urbanism. “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,” said Fuller.

“An amazing amount of archaeological work has been accumulating over the last decades, but it's never been linked properly to the evolution of the fluvial landscape. We now see landscape dynamics as the crucial link between climate change and people,” said Giosan. “Today the Indus system feeds the largest irrigation scheme in the world, immobilizing the river in channels and behind dams. If the monsoon were to increase in a warming world, as some predict, catastrophic floods such as the humanitarian disaster of 2010, would turn the current irrigation system, designed for a tamer river, obsolete.”

This work was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Leverhulme Trust, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the University of Aberdeen, and Louisiana State University.

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is a private, non-profit organization on Cape Cod, Mass., dedicated to marine research, engineering, and higher education. Established in 1930 on a recommendation from the National Academy of Sciences, its primary mission is to understand the oceans and their interaction with the Earth as a whole, and to communicate a basic understanding of the oceans’ role in the changing global environment.

Climate Change Led to Collapse of Ancient Indus Civilization, Study Finds : Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

 

[Yogi]

Indians will always try to prove that Indus Valley is in India... Haha... First check where Indus River is, there is no way epicenter of Harrappan civilization could be in Haryana and Rajasthan, the deserts? Why would ancient people pick these deserts instead of the fertile lands of the Indus? This support my theory that Indo-Aryan species are just migrants of the IVC migrating rightwards

Bcoz Idiots like u don't know about Ancient Saraswati River which used to run parallel to Indus. First go n educate urself a bit before u start ranting again...

Here is a thread which might help u n ur likes....



www.defence.pk/forums/members-club/217168-ivc-sites-india.html

 

[for truth]

Ooh, ooh, ouch.

Not much to say about the very sober factual report, Prof?

How's the history re-writing going, btw?? Have you come to the bit where Hazrat Mohammed was actually Maha Madhava, an Indic sage who emigrated to Arabia and converted the poor, camel-worshipping heathen to worship a Narayan shila instead?

PS: It's Witzel, not Wiztel, whikzid.

what do you mean by this part?

 

[Icewolf]

Bcoz Idiots like u don't know about Ancient Saraswati River which used to run parallel to Indus. First go n educate urself a bit before u start ranting again...

Here is a thread which might help u n ur likes....



www.defence.pk/forums/members-club/217168-ivc-sites-india.html

I dont believe in Hindu beliefs, there is no proof there was ever a Sarasvati river

 

[Bang Galore]

(1) @Bang Galore: Kindly note the terminal dates ~ 1800 BC or so.

Good point. What does that do to the AIT considering that the date for the Sarasvati dying out has been further pushed back?

 

[Developereo]

there is no way epicenter of Harrappan civilization could be in Haryana and Rajasthan, the deserts?

Unfortunately, despite claims to the contrary, the Indian archaeologists couldn't resist a bit of chest thumping.

its epicenter lies in the Indian states of Harayana and Rajasthan, rather than across the border.
[...]
Both Dikshit and Mani downplayed competition between India and Pakistan for bragging rights over the Indus civilization

 

[A1Kaid]

Just keep this Indian Dikshit leech out of Pakistan's rich ancient historical sites and cities, let him dig in his desert Rajasthan and be humbled with broken pots.

“When Bhirrana [Rajasthan] was excavated, from 2003 to 2006, we [recovered artifacts that provided] 19 radiometric dates,” said Dikshit, who was until recently joint director general of the Archaeological Society of India. “Out of these 19 dates, six dates are from the early levels, and the time bracket is forming from 7500 BC to 6200 BC.”

 

[Developereo]

I'll ask the mods to clean up the thread...

 

[blackops]

Dik ****

as some one said earlier on his posts this thread is about knowledge rather than your poor attempt at humour