Indus Valley Civilisation: The Genesis of Pakistan!

        A sculpted object from the ancient city of Mohenjo-Daro, now placed in the Karachi Museum.

This post precedes our earlier article titled “Boring No More”, the Indus Valley Civilisation, put up on 20th Feb. 2009. Due to paucity of space it wasn’t inserted then, and therefore is being posted now.

“No golden tombs, no fancy ziggurats. Four thousand years ago city builders in the Indus Valley made deals, not war, and created a stable, peaceful, and prosperous culture.”

By Shanti Menon

The link for railway from Lahore to Multan in Pakistan is 4,600 years old. In truth, the rails were laid down in the middle of the nineteenth century, but to build the railway bed, British engineers smashed bricks from crumbling buildings and rubble heaps in a town called Harappa, halfway between the two cities. Back in 1856, Alexander Cunningham, director of the newly formed Archeological Survey of British India, thought the brick ruins were all related to nearby seventh-century Buddhist temples. Local legend told a different story: the brick mounds were the remnants of an ancient city, destroyed when its king committed incest with his niece. Neither Cunningham nor the locals were entirely correct. In small, desultory excavations a few years later, Cunningham found no temples or traces of kings, incestuous or otherwise. Instead he reported the recovery of some pottery, carved shell, and a badly damaged seal depicting a one-horned animal, bearing an inscription in an unfamiliar writing.

That seal was a mark of one of the world’s great ancient civilizations, but mid-nineteenth-century archaeologists like Cunningham knew nothing about it. The Vedas, the oldest texts of south Asia, dating from some 3,500 years ago, made no mention of it, nor did the Bible. No pyramids or burial mounds marked the area as the site of an ancient power. Yet, 4,600 years ago, at the same time as the early civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt, great cities arose along the flood plains of the ancient Indus and Saraswati rivers in what is now Pakistan and northwest India. The people of the Indus Valley didn’t build towering monuments, bury their riches along with their dead, or fight legendary and bloody battles. They didn’t have a mighty army or a divine emperor. Yet they were a highly organized and stupendously successful civilization. They built some of the world’s first planned cities, created one of the world’s first written languages, and thrived in an area twice the size of Egypt and Mesopotamia for 700 years.

To archeologists of this century and last, Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, a neighboring city some 350 miles to the southwest, posed an interesting, if unglamorous puzzle. Excavations revealed large, orderly walled cities of massive brick buildings, with highly sophisticated sanitation and drainage systems and a drab, institutional feel. The streets of Harappa, remarked British archeologist Mortimer Wheeler, “however impressive quantitatively, and significant sociologically, are aesthetically miles of monotony.” The archeologist and popular author Leonard Cottrell, a contemporary of Wheeler’s, wrote in 1956, “While admiring the efficiency of Harappan planning and sanitary engineering, one’s general impression of Harappan culture is unattractive… One imagines those warrens of streets, baking under the fierce sun of the Punjab, as human ant heaps, full of disciplined, energetic activity, supervised and controlled by a powerful, centralized state machine; a civilization in which there was little joy, much labor, and a strong emphasis on material things.” 

                       Indus Valley cities lay along major trade routes.

Superior plumbing and uniform housing, no matter how well designed, don’t fire the imagination like ziggurats and gold-laden tombs. “But there’s more to society than big temples and golden burials,” argues Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, an archeologist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. “Those are the worst things that ancient societies did, because they led to their collapse. When you take gold and put it in ground, it’s bad for the economy. When you waste money on huge monuments instead of shipping, it’s bad for the economy. The Indus Valley started out with a very different basis and made South Asia the center of economic interactions in the ancient world.”

Kenoyer has been excavating at Harappa for the past 12 years. His work, and that of his colleagues, is changing the image of Harappa from a stark, state-run city into a vibrant, diverse metropolis, teeming with artisans and well-traveled merchants.

“What we’re finding at Harappa, for the first time,” says Kenoyer, “is how the first cities started.” Mesopotamian texts suggest that cities sprang up around deities and their temples, and once archeologists found these temples, they didn’t look much further. “People assumed this is how cities evolved, but we don’t know that for a fact,” says Kenoyer. At Harappa, a temple of the glitzy Mesopotamian variety has yet to be found. Kenoyer’s archeological evidence suggests that the city got its start as a farming village around 3300 B.C. Situated near the Ravi River, one of several tributaries of the ancient Indus River system of Pakistan and northwestern India, Harappa lay on a fertile flood plain. Good land and a reliable food supply allowed the village to thrive, but the key to urbanization was its location at the crossroads of several major trading routes.
Traders from the highlands of Baluchistan and northern Afghanistan to the west brought in copper, tin and lapis lazuli; clam and conch shells were brought from the southwestern seacoast, timber from the Himalayas, semiprecious stones from Gujrat, silver and gold from Central Asia. The influx of goods allowed Harappans to become traders and artisans as well as farmers. And specialists from across the land arrived to set up shop in the new metropolis.

The city had room to expand and an entrepreneurial spirit driven by access to several sources of raw materials. “You had two sources of lapis, three of copper, and several of shell,” says Kenoyer. “The way I envision it, if you had entrepreneurial go-get-’em, and you had a new resource, you could make a million in Harappa. It was mercantile base for rapid growth and expansion.” Enterprising Harappan traders exported finely crafted Indus Valley products to Mesopotamia, Iran, and Central Asia and brought back payment in precious metals and more raw materials. By 2200 B.C., Harappa covered about 370 acres and may have held 80,000 people, making it roughly as populous as the ancient city of Ur in Mesopotamia. And it soon had plenty of neighbors. Over the course of 700 years, some 1,500 Indus Valley settlements were scattered over 280,000 square miles of the northwestern subcontinent.

Unlike the haphazard arrangement of Mesopotamian cities, Indus Valley settlements all followed the same basic plan. Streets and houses were laid out on a north-south, east-west grid, and houses and walls were built of standard-size bricks. Even early agricultural settlements were constructed on a grid. “People had a ritual conception of the universe, of universal order,” says Kenoyer. “The Indus cities and earlier villages reflect that.” This organization, he believes, could have helped the growing city avoid conflicts, giving newcomers their own space rather than leaving them to elbow their way into established territories.

Part of that ritual conception included a devotion to sanitation. Nearly every Harappan home had a bathing platform and a latrine, says Kenoyer, and some Indus Valley cities reached heights of 40 feet in part because of concern about hygiene. Cities often grow upon their foundations over time, but in the Indus Valley, homes were also periodically elevated to avoid the risk of runoff from a neighbor’s sewage. “It’s keeping up with the Joneses’ bathroom,” he quips, “that made these cities rise so high so quickly.” Each neighborhood had its own well, and elaborate covered drainage systems carried dirty water outside the city. By contrast, city dwellers in Mesopotamian cities tended to draw water from the river or irrigation canals and they had no drains.

The towering brick cities, surrounded by sturdy walls with imposing gateways, reminded early researchers of the medieval forts in Lahore and Delhi. But Kenoyer points out that a single wall, with no moat and with no sudden turns to lead enemies into ambush, would have been ill-suited for defense. He thinks the walls were created to control the flow of goods in and out of the city. At Harappa, standardized cubical stone weights have been found at the gates, and Kenoyer suggests they were used to levy taxes on trade goods coming into the city. The main gateway at Harappa is nine feet across, just wide enough to allow one oxcart in or out. “If you were a trader,” he explains, “you wanted to bring goods into a city to trade in a safe place, so bandits wouldn’t rip you off. To get into the city, you had to pay a tax. If you produced things, you had to pay a tax to take goods out of the city. This is how a city gets revenues.”

The identity of the tax collectors and those they served remains a mystery. Unlike the rulers of Mesopotamia and Egypt, Indus Valley rulers did not immortalize themselves with mummies or monuments. They did, however, leave behind elaborately carved stone seals, used to impress tokens or clay tabs on goods bound for market. The seals bore images of animals, like the humped bull, the elephant, the rhinoceros, and the crocodile, which were probably emblems of powerful clans. The most common image is the unicorn, a symbol that originated in the Indus Valley.

Frustratingly, though, those seals carry inscriptions that no one has been able to decipher. Not only are the inscriptions short, but they don’t resemble any known language. From analyzing overlapping strokes, it is clear that the script reads right to left. It is also clear that the script is a mix of phonetic symbols and pictographs. Early Mesopotamian cuneiform, which used only pictographs, was thought to be the world’s first written language, says Kenoyer, but the Indus Valley script emerged independently around the same time — at least by around 3300 B.C.

As long as the language remains a mystery, so too will the identities of the Indus Valley elites. Kenoyer thinks each of the large cities may have functioned as an independent city-state, controlled by a small group of merchants, landowners, and religious leaders. “They controlled taxation, access to the city, and communication with the gods,” he says. While the balance of power may have shifted between these groups, they seem to have ruled without a standing army. Sculptures, paintings, and texts from Egypt and Mesopotamia clearly illustrate battles between cities and pharaonic wars of conquest. But in the Indus Valley, not a single depiction of a military act, of taking prisoners, of a human killing another human has been found. It’s possible these acts were illustrated on cloth or paper or some other perishable and simply did not survive. Yet none of the cities show signs of battle damage to buildings or city walls, and very few weapons have been recovered.

Human remains show no signs of violence either. Only a few cemeteries have been found, suggesting that burial of the dead may have been limited to high ranking individuals (others may have been disposed of through cremation or river burials). The bones from excavated burials show few signs of disease or malnourishment. Preliminary genetic studies from a cemetery in Harappa have suggested that women were buried near their mothers and grandmothers. Men do not seem to be related to those near them, so they were probably buried with their wives’ families. There is evidence that people believed in afterlife: personal items like amulets and simple pottery have been recovered from a few burials. But true to their practical, businesslike nature, the Harappans didn’t bury their dead with riches. Unlike the elites of the Near East, Harappans kept their valuable items in circulation, trading for new, often extraordinary ornaments for themselves and their descendents.

In spite of this practice, excavators have turned up some hints of the wealth an individual could accumulate. Two decades ago, in the rural settlement of Allahdino, near modern Karachi in Pakistan, archeologists stumbled upon a buried pot filled with jewelry, the secret hoard of a rich landowner. Among the silver and gold bands, beads, and rings was a belt or necklace made of 36 elongated carnelian beads interspersed with bronze beads. Shaping and drilling these long, slender beads out of hard stone is immensely difficult and time-consuming. Indus craftsmen made a special drill for this purpose by heating a rare metamorphic rock to create a superhard material. Even these high-tech drills could perforate carnelian at a rate of only a hundredth of an inch per hour. Kenoyer estimates that a large carnelian belt like the one at Allahdino would have taken a single person 480 working days to complete. It was most likely made by a group of artisans over a period of two or three years.

Such intensive devotion to craftsmanship and trade, Kenoyer argues, is what allowed Indus Valley culture to spread over a region twice the size of Mesopotamia without the trace of military domination. Just as American culture is currently exported along with goods and media, so too were the seals, pottery styles, and script of the Indus Valley spread among the local settlements.

Figurines from the Indus Valley also testify to a complex social fabric. People within the same city often wore different styles of dress and hair, a practice that could reflect differences in ethnicity or status. Men are shown with long hair or short, bearded or clean-shaven. Women’s hairstyles could be as simple as one long braid, or complex convolutions of tresses piled high on a supporting structure.

Eventually, between 1900 and 1700 B.C., the extensive trading networks and productive farms supporting this cultural integration collapsed, says Kenoyer, and distinct local cultures emerged. “They stopped writing,” he says. “They stopped using the weight system for taxation. And the unicorn motif disappeared.” Speculation as to the reasons for the disintegration has ranged from warfare to weather. Early archeologists believed that Indo-Aryan invaders from the north swept through and conquered the peaceful Harappans, but that theory has since been disputed. Most of the major cities don’t show evidence of warfare, though some smaller settlements appear to have been abandoned. There is evidence that the Indus river shifted, flooding many settlements and disrupting agriculture. It is likely that when these smaller settlements were abandoned, trade routes were affected. In the Ganges river valley to the east, on the outskirts of the Indus Valley sphere of influence, the newly settled Indo-Aryans, with their own customs, grew to prominence while cities like Harappa faded.

But the legacy of the ancient Indus cities and their craftspeople remains. The bead makers of the region continue to make beads based on Harappan techniques — though carnelian is now bored with diamond-tipped drills. Shell workers still make bangles out of conch shells. And in the crowded marketplaces, as merchants hawk the superiority of their silver over the low-quality ore of their neighbors, as gold and jewels are weighed in bronze balances, it’s hard to imagine that a 4,000-year-old Harappan bazaar could have been terribly different.

Courtesy> Indus Valley Inc.  / www.harappa.com

Mehrgarh…The Lost Civilization (Part-IV)

 Mehrgarh Saga: The Drift towards Main Indus Valley Civilisation

 mahmood Mahmood 

One amazing bit of info about this town is that in 7000 BC it had a population of 25000 people, which was the number of people living in the entire Egypt in 7000BC. [8] 

During excavations, the archaeologists discovered clay female figurines associated with fertility rites, and believed to have been worshipped by the natives. Similar figurines have surfaced in other archaeological sites in the province. Several of these statues are carved with necklaces, and have their hands on their breast or waist. Some have children on their laps. 

The people of that era used to wear woolen or cotton clothes. Some of the deities had their braid on their back and shoulders. Most of the male statues wore turbans, which is still in vogue in Baluchistan. While the opinion of several archaeologists that several of the statuettes discovered at the site might have been children, there are many who link these terracotta figures to the religious beliefs of Mehrgarh people and the eon-old concept of the power of nature and female deities. 

Moreover, terracotta figures of bulls have also been discovered at Mehrgarh pointing to the possible worship of animals or their exalted status as life-givers for the food they yielded. The figurines reveal the attire women possibly put upon; lace-like material round their waists and adorned their upper bodies with necklaces. Archaeologists are still clueless as to how they wove the material and whether they used cotton or wool to make their garments. [9] 

The first use of cotton in the history of mankind has been found at Mehrgarh. This shows the deep rooted affiliation of Pakistan’s geography and economy to cotton since old ages. The local cotton which is the present day white gold for Pakistan’s economy has roots in the ancient past. Even today whenever there is good rain in the Suleman range, excellent quality of cotton is grown in the areas adjoining the Baluchistan range over the Suleman range. 

The knowledge gained from Mehrgarh excavation is supported further by the nearby discoveries of Nausharo situated on the Kachi plain approximately 10 kilometers southwest of Mehrgarh, Nausharo… was excavated by the French team from 1980 to 1998. This site was first occupied at around 2800 BC before the Harappan period under an influence of the early farming culture of Baluchistan. The material culture of the site indicates that the site fell under Harappan influence or occupation by circa 2500 BC and reverted to the Baluchistan cultures by 2100 – 2000 BC. This is the period when new summer crops such as rice were introduced into the Kachi plain in peripheral regions where the Indus Civilization had formerly flourished. 

Additionally, farming in this region involves domestication of the native cattle rather than sheep and goat, and the early layers are a ceramic, at odds with the arrival of a “package” from Southwest Asia. This region’s Neolithic probably developed locally.

The statements cited above show the tendency of the scholars to create confusion as the majority of the scholars are Western trained and interestingly whenever there is a mention of some historical evidence of the age old civilizations, they add a lot of ifs and buts. Same idea was floated by Mortimer and Wheeler in their book Indus Valley civilization written in 1950’s where they attributed the rise of Indus Valley Civilization to the Middle Eastern influences. The research at Mehrgarh was done decades later but the old passions die hard, the new evidence in Mehrgarh is not taken independently and the real place of Mehrgarh is denied due to lack of knowledge and wrong frames of reference. 

Recent archaeological evidence especially from Mehrgarh has established that the Indus Civilization was essentially an indigenous development growing out of local cultures in an unbroken sequence from the Neolithic at the end of the eighth millennium BC, through the Chalcolithic (about 5000-3600 BC) and Early Harappan (about 3600-2600 BC) to the commencement of the Mature Harappan period in about 2550 BC.[10] 

Mehrgarh has all the ingredients of indigenous and local civilization and symbolic expression of its originality, uniqueness to be placed as foremost place of human heritage and human endurance and struggle to survive in a permanently changing universe and globe. 

That the domestication of animals began at Mehrgarh; the artifacts excavated from Mehrgarh fully substantiate this fact. The first pottery evidence is found in Mehrgarh.

The originality and the local and indigenous nature of Mehrgarh is beyond any doubt and there is need to accept it as such not on the bases of nationalistic or ethnic point of view but upon the bases of rational and logical scientific evidence which is in abundance in Mehrgarh. The continuous flow and development of Mehrgarh was entirely local in its scope, development, technological and symbolic expressions. No doubt around 6000 BC there was human activity in Middle East and some areas of Turkey but the developmental level of Mehrgarh in art, symbolism, nature control, and technology was far more developed and continuous as compared to the pastoral, grazing communities of the Middle East and Turkey. 

From Mehrgarh the flow of civilization travelled to other areas of Pakistan in the fertile plains of Indus with more hospitable environment and relatively more refined conditions of the civilization taking inspiration and innovation to new heights from the local and independent source of Mehrgarh to its unique contours and expressions. 

Indus civilization was most scattered and had a different scope and point of climax, but the uniqueness, originality of Mehrgarh will always hold the crown of being the pioneer in the journey of civilization in present day Pakistan’s past and hidden heritage!

Footnotes:

1. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7085/pdf/440755a.pdf
2. The development of the technique of carbon dating is the most scientific method to gauge the age of the artifacts. It determines the age of old artifacts as per the proportion of carbon in the artifacts
3. Personal observation and experience in Punjab, Pakistan.
4. Walker and Erlandson 1986.
5. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7085/pdf/440755a.pdf
6. This is proven by the examples quoted above in the article
7. http://www.answers.com/Mehrgarh
8. This is the first urban civilization of the world see

http://www.harappa.com/indus/indus4.html

9. http://varnam.org/history/2004/10/mehrgarh.php
10. http://www.harappa.com/script/maha1.html

 Concluded.

Courtesy: www.chowk.com

Mehrgarh…The Lost Civilization (Part-III)

                                       Mehrgarh figurines

     Link between our Past and Present

mahmood Mahmood  

 There are indications that bones were used in making tools for farming, textile, and there is good amount of evidence on use of cotton even in that period. The skeletons found at the site indicated that the height of people of that era was larger than that of the later periods. The architecture of the area at that time was well developed. Rice was the staple food for those people and there were also indications of trade activities. 

Most of the ruins at Mehrgarh are buried under alluvium deposits, though some structures could be seen eroding on the surface. Currently, the excavated remains at the site comprise a complex of large compartmental mud-brick structures. Function of these subdivided units, built of hand-formed plano-convex mud bricks, is still not clear but it is thought that many were used probably for storage, rather than residential purposes. A couple of mounds also contain formal cemeteries, parts of which have been excavated. 

Though Mehrgarh was abandoned at the time of the emergence of the literate urbanized phase of the Indus civilization [6] around Moenjodaro, Harappa etc., the development illustrates its synchronization with the civilization’s subsistence patterns, as well as its craft and trade. It also shows that the sequence of civilization was not broken and the flow of civilization kept moving into the Indus Civilization. The similarity of Indus Civilization to Mehrgarh in many respects shows the linkages and relationships among the Mehrgarh and later periods, but the important thing is that between the Mehrgarh and Indus civilization in Punjab and Sind side respectively, Suleman Range and Kirthar Range separate the Baluchistan Plateau and the other geographical areas. 

Though the idea to consider them as one geographical unit appears to be premature at this time, yet the geography and terrain of the area are contributory factors in the development of the patterns of civilization. Another fact which needs serious consideration is that in Suleman and Kirthar Range there are some historical passes which are still used by the people to cross the range to move from one side to other sides. The most famous in the Suleman range is the route between Kandahar and India from times immemorial and it was the same route adopted by Babur, the Founder of Mughal dynasty in India in 1520’s.There are still some minor passages between Baluchistan and Punjab scattered over the long area of Suleman Range. In Rajanpur district near Atari there is a passage which locals still use to go towards the other side of the mountains.

The habitation of Mehrgarh has been divided into seven periods, the first being the Pre-Pottery (aceramic) Neolithic period that dates to circa 7000 B.C. or even earlier. The site was abandoned between 2000 and 2500 B.C. during a period of contact with the Indus Civilization and then reused as a burial ground for some time after 2000 BC. 

Perhaps the most important feature of Mehrgarh is the fact that one can witness its gradual development from an early village society to a regional centre that covered an area of 200 hectares at its height. In the course of this development, a huge platform that may reflect some form of authority was constructed at the site. Mehrgarh was also a centre of manufacture for various figurines and pottery that were distributed to surrounding regions.

The Mehrgarh periods are technically divided for the ease and understanding of the cultural and civilization’s way of development with reference to the site under study. Usually they are not linked to the overall way of the development of the other areas; the terms are localized and technical one. This is the reason the alluvial levels at Mehrgarh describe the different levels of the different phases of the Mehrgarh civilization showing a long period of habitation. 

The presence of bison (wild ox) in Mehrgarh and resembling terracotta artifacts in the Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa bears great similarities. This indicates the possible transfer of technological and symbolic knowhow from Mehrgarh to later Indus civilization. This bison and its related cart are still used in the areas of Sindh and Punjab for transportation at local level. The bison carts terracotta toys were also found in other Indus civilization sites. The gypsies still make these Indus like bison carts and in childhood, I used to buy them when the gypsies came in our area to sell these toys and bison of shapes just like found in Mehrgarh and other Indus valley sites. 

Some specific details of the different periods of Mehrgarh are: [7] 

Mehrgarh Period-I 

Mehrgarh Period-I started in 7000BC and goes up to 5500 BC. It was Neolithic and aceramic (i.e., without the use of pottery). The earliest farming in the area was developed by semi-nomadic people using plants such as wheat and barley and animals like sheep, goat and cattle. The settlement was established with simple mud buildings with four internal subdivisions. Numerous burials have been found, many with elaborate goods such as baskets, stone and bone tools, beads, bangles, pendants and occasionally animal sacrifices, with more goods left with burials of males. 

Ornaments of sea shell, limestone, turquoise, lapis lazuli, sandstone and polished copper have been found, along with simple figurines of women and animals. A single ground stone axe was discovered in a burial, and several more were obtained from the surface. These ground stone axes are the earliest to come from a stratified context in  South Asia. 

 Mehrgarh Period-II and Period-III 

Mehrgarh Period II: 5500 – 4800 BC and Mehrgarh Period-III: 4800 – 3500 BC were ceramic Neolithic (i.e., pottery was now in use) and later. 

The bison chalcolithic: Much evidence of manufacturing activity has been found and more advanced techniques were used. Glazed faience beads were produced and terracotta figurines became more detailed. Figurines of females were decorated with paint and had diverse hairstyles and ornaments. Two flexed burials were found in period-II with a covering of red ochre on the body. The amount of burial goods decreased over time, becoming limited to ornaments and with more goods left with burials of females. The first button seals were produced from terracotta and bone and had geometric designs. Technologies included stone and copper drills, updraft kilns, large pit kilns and copper melting crucibles. There is further evidence of long-distance trade in period-II, important as an indication of this is the discovery of several beads of lapis lazuli originally from Badakshan.

Contd….

Courtesy: www.chowk.com

Mehrgarh: The Neolithic Period (From 7th Mill. BC)

These houses were builyt by Mehgarh dwellers c. 8000 years BC

Here follows an account of Mehrgarh by pioneer French archeologist who explored the area from time to time, and was first to excavate the Mehrgarh site. Let us now see what does world’s top most researcher on Mehrgarh say about the archeological excavations at Mehrgarh — a breakthrough that bestows a totally singular position to Indus Valley Civilisation — the first civilized, urban settlement on face of this earth.

by C. Jarrige

In the fourth millennium and in the first half of the third, the Mehrgarh potters and those from other parts of Balochistan alike became known for producing very high quality ceramics which were either exported or copied in eastern Iran, southern Afghanistan, and even as far as present-day Tadjikistan, notably at the Sarazm site. These periods are also distinguished by the manufacture of human figurines of a high aesthetic quality, whose attributes seem to suggest references to an underlying mythology still unclear to us.

Nausharo

The Nausharo excavation, 6 km from Mehrgarh as the crow flies, revealed a dwelling-site contemporaneous and identical to the Mehrgarh, one between 3000 and 2500 BC and another, divided into three periods between 2500 and 1900 BC, characteristic of the urban civilization of the valley of the Indus, which is also referred to as the Harappan civilization, from the name of the eponymous site of Harappa. This excavation of Nausharo allows the Indus civilisation to be linked to the cultures which preceded it since the Neolithic and the ancient Chalcolithic times. The excavation of the Harappan layers led to the uncovering of a settlement which met the criteria of the urban civilization of the Indus, with discrete rectangular zones, and with the existence of baths and hydraulic features. The study of Harappan ceramics in Naushara has brought to light a clear stylistic evolution over time, thus contradicting the theories claiming that Harappan pottery had remained static for several centuries.

Starting from a period of about 2100 BC, which corresponds to phase-IV of Nausharo, ceramics and other objects begin to appear in the Bolan basin which are comparable to those from sites in Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and the east of Iran. Some of these objects had been found previously, notably on the upper levels of the great civilization sites of the Indus, such as Mohenjo-daro and Chanhu-daro. It had been thought that these were in fact remains which indicated the arrival of invaders from the West and from the North-West. Thanks to the Nausharo dig and to the discovery of necropolises (the Mehrgarh VIII cemetery) and of various sites on the edge of Nausharo or Mehrgarh, it is now clear that the “exotic” objects belong to groups who have co-existed with the “Harappan” populations, evidently peaceably. It can even be asserted that all these objects are an indication of the development of very important trading activities whose agents between the Indus valley and Mesopotamia were groups who controlled the routes for inter-Iranian exchanges around 2000 BC.

Pirak

Between 1800 and 1900 BC, the urban civilization of the Indus disappeared to survive, in derivative forms, only in the territory of present-day India. The excavation of Pirak, a settlement of about ten hectares inhabited between 1800 and 600 BC, reveals the beginning of a new age. Several miniatures of horsemen and horses and of two-humped camels – animals unknown in the Indus civilization – symbolize important changes in society. The emergence of horsemen at Pirak, just like the discovery of horse skeletons at the time in the Swat in the north of Pakistan, is to be considered in the context of the arrival of new populations belonging, perhaps, to the very first Indo-Aryan groups mixing with a local community with an increasingly diversified agricultural economy. It has been noted that in fact the cultivation of rice, which demands the use of irrigation techniques, became predominant.

As for the structures where the interior walls are punctuated with rows of symmetrical marks, sometimes on four levels: these represent a style which was still found a few years ago in houses, particularly in Hindu areas, in this region. About 1200 BC, iron utensils and weapons would emerge.

Since the end of the expedition in 2000 to the Neolithic part of the Mehrgarh site, fieldwork has been halted to allow for deeper analysis of date and to write up publications. In 2003 there was an expedition to study the material at Mehrgarh, and the dig was scheduled to resume in 2004.

Concluded.

Courtesy: Guimet.com

Mehrgarh… The Lost Civilisation

                PART-II- INNOVATION RIGHT FROM THE START

        Female figurine from Mehrgarh excavation (6000-3000 BC)

• The artifacts from Mehrgarh are far more advanced and developed as compared to those obtained from excavations in Turkey and Middle East especially Jericho.

• The most unique discovery is the first known origin of the dental surgery and related medicinal activities exercised in Mehrgarh area. The discovery proves the great innovative mind and developmental level of those people about 9000 years ago.

• Mehrgarh was also a centre of manufacture for various figurines and pottery that were distributed to surrounding regions. These products are of a high quality given the circumstances and the time they were fabricated.

• No other civilisation in any other part of the world existed then; what to speak of a level of perfection in the art and craft elsewhere. 

by Mahmood Mahmood

 The archaeological sequence at the site of Mehrgarh is over 11 meters deep, spanning the period between the seventh and third millennium BC. The site represents a classic archaeological tell site that is an artificial mound created by generations of superimposed mud brick structures. Its excavators have proposed the following chronology:

 I-A: Aceramic Neolithlic c.6500-6000 BC Mound MR3
I-B: Ceramic Neolithic c.6000-5500 BC Mound MR3
II: c.5500-4500 BC Mound MR4
III: Early Chalcolithic c.4500-3500 BC Mound MR2
IV-VII: Late Chalcolithic c.3500-2500 BC Mound MR1

The earliest Neolithic evidence for occupation at the site has been identified at mound MR3, but during the Neolithic-Chalcolithic period the focus shifted to mound MR4. The focus continued to shift between localities at the site but by 2600 BC it had relocated at the site of Nausharo, some six kilometers to the south. During this period the settlement was transformed from a cluster of small mud brick storage units with evidence of the on-going domestication of cattle and barley to a substantial Bronze Age village at the centre of its own distinctive craft zone.

The absence of early residential structures has been interpreted by some as further evidence of the site’s early occupation by mobile groups possibly travelling every season through the nearby pass.

Although Mehrgarh was abandoned by the time of the emergence of the literate urbanized phase of the Indus Civilization, its development illustrates the development of the civilization’s subsistence patterns as well as its craft and trade specialization. Following its abandonment it was covered by alluvial silts until it was exposed following a flash flood in the 1970s. The French Archaeological Mission to Pakistan excavated the site for thirteen years between 1974 and 1986, and they resumed their work in 1996. The most recent trenches have astonishingly well preserved remains of mud brick structures proving the urban streak of this civilization.

Mehrgarh is a Neolithic (7000-3200 BC) site on the Kachi plain of Balochistan, Pakistan, and one of the earliest sites with evidence of farming (wheat and barley) and herding (cattle, sheep and goats) in south Asia. The site is located on the principal route between what is now Afghanistan and the Indus Valley.

The earliest settled portion of Mehrgarh was in an area called MR.3, in the northeast corner of the 495-acre occupation. It is a small farming and pastoralist village dated between 7000-5500 BC, with mud brick houses and granaries. The early Mehrgarh residents used local copper ore, basket containers lined with bitumen, and an array of bone tools. They grew six-row barley, einkorn and emmer wheat, jujubes and dates.

Sheep, goats and cattle were herded at Mehrgarh beginning during this early period.

Later periods included craft activities like flint knapping, tanning, and bead production; also, a significant level of metal working. The site was occupied continuously until about 2600 BC, when it was abandoned.

Mehrgarh was discovered and excavations begun by a French team led by Jean-François Jarrige; the site was excavated continuously between 1974 and 1986.

Mehrgarh is the centre of the first known developed place of civilization in its advanced form as compared to the contemporary and the predecessor human settlements around the world. The town of Jericho, mentioned earlier, has not got the level of sophistication and developmental level attained as that in Mehrgarh. The symbolic artifacts retrieved from Mehrgarh are far more advanced and more developed as compared to the artifacts retrieved from Turkish sites and Middle Eastern sites especially Jericho.

The Mehrgarh site has the unique tradition of burying the dead with the pitchers being used as the supporting material along with the dead person’s body. This is the most unique cultural legacy of the Mehrgarh civilization for the area of Pakistan as I myself saw in late 1980’s in a village Kalyan near Lahore in district Kasur, that, while burying the dead person, about 8-10 pitchers of average size were placed over the dead body and thus the  burial process was completed.[3] This unique similarity to 8000 years old tradition is the direct proof of the deep rooted traditional affinity of the Pakistani area, which is quite in contrast to the   later Hindu and Magian periods when the dead were burnt and placed under the sun respectively. (These are still followed in the Hindu and Parsi community of the subcontinent).

It is interesting to note, however, that the male figurines have turbans — much like those worn by the inhabitants of Balochistan today. These turbans are not only found in Baluchistan, they are still worn in the rural areas of Punjab.

One of the most unique discoveries of the Mehrgarh civilisation is the first known origin of dental surgery and related medicinal activities in the area. This medicinal and different aspect of Mehrgarh shows the great innovative and developmental level of the people of the area about 9000 years ago. According to a report in the April 6, 2006 issue of Nature, Italian researchers working at a cemetery site in the Neolithic town of Mehrgarh discovered drill holes on at least eleven molars from people buried in the MR3 cemetery. Light microscopy showed the holes were conical, cylindrical or trapezoidal in shape. A few had concentric rings showing drill bit marks; and a few had some evidence for decay. No filling material was noted; but tooth wear on the drill marks indicate that each of these individuals continued to live on after the drilling was completed.

Dental caries (or cavities) are the result of sugars and starches in the food we eat. Hunter-gatherers, who rely on animal protein, do not generally have cavities; cavities associated with the use of roots and tubers, or starchy grains.[4]. Researchers point out that only four of the eleven teeth contained clear evidence of decay associated with drilling; however, the drilled teeth are restricted to molars in the back of both lower and upper jaws, and thus are not likely to have been done for decorative purposes. Flint drill bits are known from Mehrgarh, long associated with the bead industry there. The researchers conducted experiments and discovered that using a flint drill bit attached to a bow-drill, it required under a minute to produce similar holes in human enamel.

Drilled, maxillary left second molar from an adult male (MR3 90) from Neolithic Mehrgarh.
L. Bondioli (Museum L. Pigorini, Rome) & R. Macchiarelli (Univ. of Poitiers).

The dental techniques have only been discovered on about .3% of the population (11 teeth out of a total of 3880 examined from 225 individuals studied to date), hence it was a rare occurrence, and, appears to have been a short-lived experiment as well. Although the MR3 cemetery contains younger skeletal material (into the Chalcolithic), no evidence for tooth drilling has been found later than 6500 BC. [5]

Jarrige carried out extensive archaeological explorations and investigations under the French Archaeological Mission in Kachi area.
The mission has been doing exploratory work in Balochistan for nearly three-and-a-half decades. According to Jarrige, Mehrgarh and its associated sites provide irrevocable evidence of considerable cultural development in early antiquity as far back as 8,000 years.

The Bird shaped Figurines from Mehrgarh

Many beautiful ceramics were found at the site in Baluchistan, continues Jarrige, and were believed to be of the era as early as eighth millennium BC. The French archaeologist further said that the studies suggested the findings at Mehrgarh linked this area to the Indus civilization.

Contd…

Courtesy: www.chowk.com

Origin of Civilisation

          Man’s Journey From Mehrgarh toMoenjo Daro  & Harappa

The Preist King from The Indus Valley Civilisation

by Nayyar Hashmey

          Samuel Huntington, (who died last year) in his treatise ‘Clash of Civilisations’ propounds a hypothesis of two different worlds, two civilizations opposing each other, and who, said he, sooner or later are going to clash against each other. Western civilization with its democratic institutions, liberalism and a respect of law is bound to come into conflict with Islamic civilization. A civilization based on tenets of Islam or the followers of Islam according to Huntington will be the next enemy of the West. Consequent to this hypothesis, a new charter for NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) which was principally constituted to fight out Communism, was chalked out. How far this concept is relevant in today’s world, is a debatable question. No wonder it’s being contested all over, but my present post is not about this clash of civilisations but civilisation itself.

         ‘Civilisation’ is derived from the word ‘civil’ which itself means development of humanity’s social life during different periods of history.  From the very start, man’s life as Homo sapiens, in the Old Stone Age, was more on ‘animalistic’ patterns than human. No written language had he, living in caves, stone was the only element he knew; the element that played a deciding role in its existence. Knowledge of fire and metals came much later.

         Civilisation brought the stone man from a sate of savagery and ignorance to a higher one by giving education, in methods of moral standards and governance.

        ANTHROPLOGY

        Earliest human development started about 2 million years ago. Generally termed as the Old Stone Age, the Paleolithic period had the longest phase in human history.  Roughly coextensive with the Pleistocene Geological Era, its most outstanding feature was development of Homo sapiens (the man). The Pleistocene Geological Era is spread over 65-37 million years; the time our earth and its habitat started taking a shape suitable for early human life. A monumental withdrawal of seas from the major part of this planet took place, various volcanic forms came up and the Rockies emerged in Americas. Archaic life forms like animals, birds and plants developed. In such habitat the Paleolithic people generally lived as nomadic hunters and gatherers who sheltered in caves, used fire and fashioned stone tools.

      The Old Stone Age was followed by Middle Paleolithic, associated with Neanderthal man (type of early man existing 100,000 to 40,000 years ago). The Middle Stone Age or Mesolithic Period Culture included gradual domestication of plants and animals, formation of settled communities, use of the bow, development of delicate stone microliths and pottery making emerged.

      The Mesolithic period was followed by the Neolithic Period or the New Stone Age. The time period and cultural content of the Neolithic Period or the New Stone Age (which started with the retreat of the glaciers (ca. 10, 000 years ago) vary with geographic location. The earliest known Neolithic culture developed in SW Asia between 8,000 and 600 BCE. People lived in settled villages, cultivated grains and domesticated animals, developed pottery and did weaving. From this phase evolved urbanization of the Bronze Age. In S.E. Asia, a distinct type of Neolithic culture cultivated rice, before 2000 BCE.

       By now man had gained fair amount of knowledge on metals and some sort of industries too had developed. In the ancient region of W. Asia around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, on the plains rendered fertile by canals settlements were found. These settlements probably date back to 5, 000 BCE. Since these settlements were the earliest found, hence the area has been termed ‘the cradle of civilization’. Later in the southern part of the same region (Mesopotamia), urban settlements arose in city states like Erech, and Ur. Here Akkad emerged (ca.2, 300 BCE) as the region’s first empire followed by Babylonia and Assyria.

      Till recently it was taken as universal truth, that the Indus Valley Civilisation emerged after the Mesopotamians—somewhere between 3,000 –1,000 BCE. However, elaborate archeological work by researchers like Jarrige, Cucina and Dani totally altered this picture. Their works revealed the startling fact that the IVC people started building their cities much earlier than the Sumerians and Mesopotamians. Their studies traced the origin of IVC to excavations in Mehrgarh, Balochistan to a period as far back as 9, 000 years BCE. 

       It should be recalled that before these studies, the first agricultural villages in these regions did not seem to date from any time earlier that 4000 BC. Their emergence was credited to colonies arriving from either the Iranian plateau or from southern central Asia. But today the work at Mehrgarh has enabled a complete re-evaluation of the archaeology of these regions and particularly of the antecedents to the large urban settlement of the Indus valley.

       Mehrgarh’s archaeological area spans nearly 300 hectares, containing traces of successive settlements since the aceramic Neolithic period (the end of the 8th and the beginning of the 7^th millennium BCE) until about 2600 BC, before the beginning of the Indus civilization. Evidence of nine levels of building, with nine corresponding levels of burial grounds, have been found in the Neolithic aceramic sector (period I). Houses of crude rectangular brick, some decorated with paintings on the external walls, were built to a roughly similar design. The agricultural economy was dependent on the cultivation of barley, but the staple meat diet was provided by hunting, even though the beginning of the domestication of goats was recorded at this time.

        During this same period, livestock farming overtook hunting and not only was the Indic zebu (Bos indicus) domesticated, the farmed variety became more common than the wild. Palynological studies have shown that plant growth was less lush then, than what exists today. The excavation of nearly 360 tombs has enabled a detailed study of funerary effects, which provides a wealth of anthropological and social indicators. The funerary effects include utilitarian objects, but also especially an abundance of ornaments of a quality which bears witness to the skill and energy of craftsmen using materials from relatively faraway regions, notably several seashells, lapis lazuli, turquoise, steatites and calcites. The dead were sometimes buried with tarred baskets at their feet. Amongst the layers at the end of Period I were found ornaments with copper beads, one of which still carried the trace of a cotton thread, the oldest known example of this fibre being used.

      With the dawn of period IIA, about 6000 years BC, the first pottery made from unrefined clay began to appear. The development of agricultural activity is clearly borne out by the presence of impressive collections of buildings containing crates and partitions, identifiable in many cases as being used for the storage of cereal crops. In the period IIB, pottery becomes more refined. But it is not until a little after 5000 BC that geometric designs painted onto increasingly elegant receptacles begin to appear.

     The ancient chalcolithic period (Period III), between 5000 BC and the first half of the 4^th millennium, is distinguished by remarkable advances in crafts and ceramics in particular. Ceramics made from fine-quality clay, mounted on a turntable, are lavishly adorned with pictures of wild beasts and birds. Also noteworthy is the production of beads of steatite, baked and then varnished with a green copper-oxide glaze. Metallurgy progressed, and remains have been found of studios where lapis lazuli and turquoise were worked.

Mehrgarh: The Lost Civilisation

      PART-I- THE FIRST URBAN SETTLEMENT IN HUMAN HISTORY

                                     Female Figurine of fertility from Mehrgarh

•    The people of Mehrgarh in ancient Pakistan were the first to start a community life in human history.

•  They knew the art of making fabric “just” 9000 years ago.

•  They had an organized social life when the humanity at large was ‘housed’ in caves.

        The origin of man on this earth is one of the most mysterious and intriguing questions boggling the human mind. The search for the origin of man’s endeavors and any traces of these activities is rightly considered a step forward in the solution of the jigsaw puzzle of human endurance and survival.

 by Mahmood Mahmood

       The knowledge developed for the search of the origin of the humanity is called anthropology and it has a diverse mosaic of tools and branches developed to assist in the understanding of the basic question of humanity’s origin. The range of subjects and techniques applied in tracing and understanding the bases and origin of humanity in the universe and earth is exhaustive. But on the earth the archaeology is the most potent field in understanding the remnant and footsteps of the ancestors of the human being.

         Pakistan is the epitome and zenith of diverse cultures and harmonized expressions of human creative influences ranging from initial agricultural relics at Mehrgarh and the first human dentistry which was practiced here in the Balochistan province. [1]

       The archaeological evidence revealed in the vast span of this country gives the sense of immense cultural origins of civilization from the cave art of Chilas to the well developed and oldest urban civilisation in the world excavated so far; with the developed urban infrastructure.

       Archaeological artifacts are the undeniable source of the solid knowledge about the ancient history.[2] Heitherto, the ancient history of the world was more centered on Mesopotamia and Egypt in the Middle East, specially the sites in present day Israel. China and many other sites in Europe and Latin America, Australia and North American areas have also been under a focus. However, when a comparative study is done, only then is it realized that all civilisations like Middle East, Europe, China, Asia and other parts of the world are not older than 4000 BC. Mehrgarh being the oldest in the world is unique. See for instance Jericho, a town in Palestine, large quantity of grains ranging back to 12000 years old were found but there was no evidence at all of settled, urbanized towns before about 4000 BC.

       A chopping tool found in Pakistan dates back to 2 million years ago, earlier than the earliest hominid remains, the Homo species “Narmada Man,” (250000 years ago). The presence of early anatomical modern Homo sapiens was first indicated in Sri Lanka only about 34000 years ago.

       But what distinguishes the Mehrgarh area from other archeological sites is its unique, independent and locally developed culture. There is a continuous, vast, developed, intellectually robust, indigenous and sustained thread of civilization in the present day Pakistan.

       While doing an assessment of the past history or exploring the layers upon layers of humanity’s social habitat, there is always a risk of ethnocentric bias. Due to overtones of nationalism – to talk in the light of experiences of past, it frequently becomes a passionate and controversial issue. Interestingly this risk is done away with in case of our country as the study of past in the present day Pakistan is religiously irrelevant. More than 98% of Pakistan’s population is not practicing the traditionally popular religions of the area and are converts to the most recent religion Islam. However, this also can be a destabilizing affect in the form of over- zealous and conservative interpretation of the religious affinities of the masses. But it is the utmost interesting and important aspect of this study to delve deep into the soul of the people from Mehrgarh to present day Pakistan – spread over thousands of years. In the present discourse, therefore, an attempt is being made to understand the history in its true perspective and analyze the legacy of our past in a dispassionate and objective way to make sense of our glorious past as the first known urban people of the world.

       The Mehrgarh period of Indus Civilisation is the most fascinating phenomenon of human development as it is the oldest town as per the present available records but its pre-eminence is rarely mentioned in the text books or historical documents. Mostly it is cited as the pre-Indus Civilization without referring to its unique and innovative aspects.

       In these pages it is endeavored to understand Mehrgarh as an independent unit and its study as a pioneer chapter in the development of civilization in the cradle of civilization. Let us look in depth

• What are unique attributes of Mehrgarh?
• Why is it unique?
• When did it flourish?
• What relation does it have with the succeeding Indus civilization?

       The archaeological site at Mehrgarh consists of a number of low archaeological mounds in the Kachi plain, close to the mouth of the Bolan Pass, located next to the west bank of the Bolan River, it’s some 30 kilometers from the town of Sibi. Covering an area of about 250 hectares, most of the archaeological deposits are buried deep beneath accumulations of alluvium although in other areas ‘in situ’ structures can be seen eroding on the surface. Currently exposed excavated remains at the site comprise a complex of large compartmental mud-brick structures. Built of hand-formed plano-convex mud bricks, the function of these sub-divided units is still uncertain but it is believed that many were for storage rather than residential purposes. Mounds, MR3 & MR1 also contain formal cemeteries, parts of which have been excavated.

       The archaeological sequence at the site of Mehrgarh is over 11 meters deep, spanning the period between the seventh and third millennium BC. The site represents a classic archaeological tell site that is an artificial mound created by generations of superimposed mud brick structures. Its excavators have proposed the following chronology:-

       I-A: Aceramic Neolithlic c.6500-6000 BC Mound MR3
       I-B: Ceramic Neolithic c.6000-5500 BC Mound MR3
       II: c.5500-4500 BC Mound MR4
       III: Early Chalcolithic c.4500-3500 BC Mound MR2
       IV-VII: Chalcolithic c.3500-2500 BC Mound MR1

       The earliest Neolithic evidence for occupation at the site has been identified at mound MR3, but during the Neolithic-Chalcolithic period the focus shifted to mound MR4. The focus continued to shift between localities at the site but by 2600 BC it had relocated at the site of Nausharo, some six kilometers to the south. During this period the settlement was transformed from a cluster of small mud brick storage units with evidence of the on-going domestication of cattle and barley to a substantial Bronze Age village at the centre of its own distinctive craft zone.

       The absence of early residential structures has been interpreted by some as further evidence of the site’s early occupation by mobile groups possibly travelling every season through the nearby pass.

       Although Mehrgarh was abandoned by the time of the emergence of the literate urbanized phase of the Indus Civilization, its development illustrates the development of the civilization’s subsistence patterns as well as its craft and trade specialization. Following its abandonment it was covered by alluvial silts until it was exposed following a flash flood in the 1970s. The French Archaeological Mission to Pakistan excavated the site for thirteen years between 1974 and 1986, and they resumed their work in 1996. The most recent trenches have astonishingly well preserved remains of mud brick structures proving the urban streak of this civilization.                                                                              

End of Part-I

Courtesy: www.chowk.com

HARAPPA – Whispers of an Ancient Past

Map showing location of the two sites of ancient Indus Valley Civilisation in modern Pakistan

Time present and time past, Are both present perhaps, in time future, And time future contained in time past, If all time is eternally present all time

is unredeemable.

T.S. Eliot

by Umair Ghani

Seated on a high deserted mound amid ruins of Harappa I experience timelessness, envisioning the time when world was not a chaotic blend of tension, power and dominance, but a warm cosmic breath that gave impetus to a simple yet blooming life. I tried to relate frayed ends of an existence distorted by merciless scythe of time.

My imagination flickered and thoughts carried me to times immemorial when cities of ancient Indus Valley flourished on fertile alluvial soils along the banks of mighty Indus River. I started listening to echoes of life amid those ruins and saw shadows walk past me. Who are those figures calling from the stony graves? What do they whisper; from eternity! I am standing among my ancestors, my fore-fathers, mothers, aunts, uncles, now reduced to bony ashes! My friends, foes, sons of the land that my own being is made of.  I saw them buried under tons and tons of dust, fossilized in a state of eternal slumber spanning centuries, waiting for someone to excavate the naked truth of what happened to them.

It was in year 1856, some six miles from River Ravi, that British engineers John and William Brunton were laying the East Indian Railway Company track connecting Karachi and Lahore. Gossip of an ancient ruined city called Brahminabad already existed there. Charles Masson had already mentioned it in 1842. Railway construction workers struck their spades on a mound of backed bricks. The mound crumbled and collapsed. Along with the bricks, some unrecognizable pieces of soapstone (with figures of animals and plants) and other objects were also revealed.

Some more brick mounds were reported near the village of Harappa. Buried truth of many thousand years began to yawn and got set for resurrection. In 1872-73, Sir Cunningham confirmed the antiquity of the discovered material (3300 -1700 BC) and archeologists embarked upon a course of astounding discoveries that provided evidence of many missing links to the past of humanity. More sites were unearthed and the world resounded with the discovery of Harappa civilization in the plains of Indus River.

Later, more seals of the ancient Harappa civilization were discovered by J. Fleet, in an excavation campaign under Sir John Hubert Marshall [Sir John Marshall, To Rai Bahadur Daya Ram Sahni and Madho Sarup Vats goes the credit who unearthed much of Harrappa settlements in 1921-22]. Indus Valley settlements were scattered all over present day Pakistan and into some parts of India but main cities were Harappa and Moenjo-Daro. Now the past of human civilization got a new dimension i.e. the Pre- and Post Harappan periods.

“The story of Harappan civilization is a story of a people intricately tied to their environment,”

Harappa flourished as a centre of civilization between 2600-1900 BC [most precisely between 2250-1900BC]. Indus Valley civilization was twice as extensive as earliest civilizations, the Old Kingdom of Egypt and the Sumerian city-states. Its people, towns, markets thrived with economy entirely depending upon agriculture. Use of fire bricks in certain residences suggests that people were governed by a rich bureaucracy [in form of an efficient municipal government] that lived lavishly and enforced a system of collection and distribution of available resources. Ruling elite carefully laid down the city plans [with pathways within the city in a perpendicular criss-cross fashion] and suggested the use of sun backed bricks as an option easily available to everyone [which still continues without much change]. Since financial system revolved mostly around agriculture, huge granaries were built at each city which contained grains. These semi-nomadic people cultivated wheat, barley, peas, sesame seed, and cotton. A system of weights and measurements was also introduced [Indus Valley civilization is credited with the earliest known use of decimal fractions in a uniform system of ancient weights and measures, as well as negative numbers].

Evidence of manufacturing stone and copper drills, large pit kilns, copper melting crucibles, and button seal devices with geometric designs were a hallmark of Indus Valley people. Harappan seals have pictures of animals that relate to a wet and marshy environment. Rhinoceroses, elephants, and tigers are placed in the midst of marshy plants. The Harappans reared a range of domesticated animals such as cats, dogs, goats, sheep, and buffalo.

The term “Fertile Crescent” was coined around 1900 by archaeologist James Henry Breasted. It involved rivers of Middle East, but Arnold Toynbee with a keen look at world map suggests that earliest civilizations flourished along a wider Fertile Crescent which spanned from Latin America to Yangtze River in China, including Mediterranean, Euphrates, Nile and Indus rivers. River Ravi and Bias provided large scale irrigation to Indus Valley settlements around Harappa. Water was abundant so an advanced drainage system also existed. Drains started from the bathrooms of the houses and joined the main sewer in the street, which was covered by brick slabs. Living quarters even had latrines [which still can be seen in their most ancient traditions in many cities of Sind and also in modern day Harappa village].

Harappan society had a strong social stratification. The towns were planned in a way that the citadel was a good 20 ft higher than the tower of the middle cities. Dr. J.M. Kenoyer, an expert on Indus Valley Civilization states, “Several competing classes of elite who maintained different levels of control existed there. Instead of one social group with absolute control, the rulers included merchants, ritual specialists and individuals who controlled resources such as land, livestock and raw material. Maybe — Just may be — we are seeing an ancient democracy at work”.

“We know nothing of the religion of the Harappans”, writes Richard Hooker, “Unlike in Mesopotamia or Egypt, we have discovered no building that so much as hints that it might be a temple or involve any kind of public worship. We do, however, have a number of tantalizing figures on various seals and statues. What we gather from these figures is that the Harappans probably exercised some sort of goddess worship”.

I stared at the figures of gods and goddesses of Harappan people with all the qualms of an atheist. There was a time when they governed the fate of an entire civilization, which looked after them as protectors and sought benevolence from them. New all of them mutilated tiny statues of terracotta, helplessly hanging by steel clamps in glass shelves at Harappa Museum. The statue of King Priest found at Moenjo- Daro leads to a speculation that Indus Valley Civilization had a religious hierarchy [or probably a chain of  command and chartered social norms and implemented ethics].

The most copious of the existing artifacts are a series of soapstone seals [some two thousand inscribed seals in good, legible condition], of which the best known are those of the humped Brahmani bull and Pashupati. These seals carry a pictographic script which is enigmatic and undecipherable at present. Some archeologists argue about their nature signifying that they were used as currency; while some believe that they were mere imperial seals and were issued to bestow authority upon some high ranking officials. What puzzles the scholastic world is very short and brief text. The average number of symbols on the seals is 5, and the longest is only 26 and the language is completely dissimilar to anything else, meaning an isolate. It appears that the maximum number of Indus script symbols is 400, although there are 200 basic signs.

In 2005 Steve Farmer, Richard Sproat and Michael Witzel stunned the world by their hypothesis that the Indus sign system was not writing thus thwarting the work of Dr. Asko Parpola who had concluded that the Indus Valley sign system represented an ancient Dravidian language. But Dr Ahmed Hassan Dani, one of the subcontinent’s most remarkable archaeologists, disproves of any possibility that Indus Valley script relates to Dravadian language and asserts that its agglutinative language, without doubt.

And then Harappans disappeared, and they disappeared without a trace. Between 1800 and 1700 BC, the Harappan cities and towns were mysteriously abandoned. Dr Kenoyer quotes that from the earlier excavations in the Cemetery H, occupation areas have been identified dating to the late Harappan phases [1900-1300 BC)] in contrast to earlier interpretations of decline and abandonment, the city was in fact thriving and at the center of important cultural, economic, and ideological transformations till 1300 BC. However, some scholars believe that they were overrun by the war-like Aryans around 1700 BC. Aryans called themselves the “noble ones” or the “superior ones, who, like a storm, rushed in from Euro-Asia and overran Persia and northern India. Again Dr Ahmed Hassan Dani quotes, “Whatever we know of the Aryans, from the literary records, in the Rig Veda, the earliest book, do not speak at all of any urban life. They speak of only rural life, villages, and as the Indus Civilization is an urban civilization, therefore to talk of any Aryan association with the urban life seems to me rather unthinkable.”

Another possibility is that the periodic changes in the course of Indus contributed to the decline of Indus Valley Civilization. Whatever the cause or the causes, the Harappans disappeared and the archeologists still wriggle and tangle to unlock the heart of the sentinel hush of Harappan ruins. These artifacts for posterity remain shrouded in mystery. Only faint whispers tell the tale to passing winds and yet the secret is guarded by the night.

“Darkness was hidden by darkness in the beginning.”

(Rig Vedas)

Photo Credits:  www.harappa.com map: Rupeenews.com

————————————

Pictures Description:

Photograph # 1: J. Mark Kenoyer is Professor in Anthropology. He teaches archaeology and ancient technology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. USA.In this photograph he is sitting in the right foreground taking notes during excavations at site in Harappa.

Photograph # 2: Three Early Harappan zebu figurines from Harappa. The earliest animal figurines from Harappa. They are typically very small with joined legs and stylized humps. A few of these zebu figurines have holes through the humps that may have allowed them to be worn as amulets on a cord or a string.

Photograph # 3: Bird figurine from Harappa. Many bird figurines have circular bases instead of legs and feet. Some have outstretched wings and may represent birds in flight. (Photograph by Richard H. Meadow)

Photograph # 4: Zebu figurine with painted designs from Harappa. Other animal and sometimes anthropomorphic figurines are decorated with black stripes and other patterns, and features such as eyes are also sometimes rendered in pigment. Figurines of cattle with and without humps are found at Indus sites, possibly indicating that multiple breeds of cattle were in use.  (Photograph by Richard H. Meadow)

Photograph # 5: Unicorn seal after conservation. Note the deeply chiseled engraving of the script similar to that found particularly on Period 3C rectangular seals.

Heritage – Our Identity – Our Pride

The historic Badshahi Mosque of Lahore

WOP Editor explains the phenomenon that beckons peoples to seek their roots in heritage, the pride in their glorious past and a means to their identity in the contemporary world.

Nayyar Hashmey

Archaeology enables us view our distant past at the time our life is happening before us. Monuments as long as they exist, give ever new meanings to our lives and acquire an ever new cultural significance; for they are a visible link between our present and the distant past.

[Right: The Shalamar Gardens, Lahore]

As monuments pass through ages, they are appreciated according to their age value and hence are also referred to as timemarks or as Germans would call them the Denk-Mals. Denk-Mal is generally an expression of a mysterious monument which inspires people to think deep about philosophical questions associated with the beginning of humanity in prehistoric periods.

Perceiving monuments as timemarks with a distinct aura around them; while recognizing that they are older than we can imagine, stimulates us also to philosophize not only about the past and its relationship with the present but also about the eternity, about the age of humanity, the speed of history, the transience of individuals, the achievement of whole cultures and what the monuments may see in future – us for instance.

Often the melancholic appreciations of ancient monuments can easily acquire a political significance, when ruins are taken as evidence of former glory or as fetishes for a social nostalgia.

[Right: The Bust of Priest King, Indus Valley]

Seeing ancient objects as timemarks explains not only why people spend time at ancient monuments but also why they are interested in; and keep ancient objects as relics which they find elsewhere. Things which are perceived as ancient and foreign must, first and foremost, make people think. In this thinking process, archaeological researchers become attached to their works and for them archaeological study forms a significant part of their individual identity, a phenomenon which is followed by common men also.

The ability to symbolize national identity can explain the interest in prehistoric monuments, for they are the treasure of our country of which its people must feel proud of.

[Left: The Dome of Gurdwara Guru Arjan Dev Ji]

While defining ourselves (seeking our identities) whatever our profession or goal in life may be, we mostly draw ourselves on the recent past of one or two generations when we define ourselves as sons or daughters, or as members of a particular generation. When we remember our past it becomes very significant in our socialization as individuals and contributes decisively to the formation of identities. Collective identities often refer to the heritage of a distant past .The past can also form an important part of our identities within the society. The histories and traditions of different strata of the society, the royal families, the working classes or of a common man have become a key part of their modern identities. The underlying reasoning is usually that “long memories can make great people”.

It has been argued that our past has become more important as a source of reassurance and identity as our everyday world changes at ever faster rates, causing alienation. So a search for compensating factors and collective identities are important, as it contains already before our modern age references to time-marks in the ancient landscapes like Harappa, Moenjo-Daro, Mesopotamia, Greece etc.

“Attachment to one’s motherland is a common human emotion. Its strength varies among different cultures and historical periods. … A homeland (the motherland) has its landmarks, which may be features of high visibility and public significance, such as monuments, graves, mausoleums, shrines, a hallowed battlefield or cemetery. These visible signs serve to enhance a people’s sense of identity; they encourage awareness of and loyalty to place.”

[Right: A Column filled Hall inside Royal Fort, Lahore]

Ancient burial monuments, beyond being landmarks, can also acquire a meaning closely associated with people’s psyche. The collective vision of a shared origin and identical forefathers and foremothers, linked to ancient traditions, monuments and graves, can be the most important thing which all members of a community share, and about which they are collectively proud in their social memories Ancient burial monuments can therefore be crucial for the unity of a group of people. They seem to stand outside the flow of daily events and are symbols of stability in an ever changing world. One could therefore say: “He who controls the past controls who we are “This is why monuments, prehistoric as well as post historic, do not only link the present with the distant past, but also with the distant future”.

[Left: The Kargah Buddha near Gilgit, Northern Areas]

It is one explanation for drilling of sites for certain artifacts, discovered in Harappa and Moenjo-Daro. These excavations leave their marks as a well visible symbol for the shared identity of our community, our nation. Individuals may make a public statement about who we are and who our ancestors had been. Furthermore like modern graffiti, such marks have been the result of a private, even secret act of connecting oneself forever with a public monument. Some individuals may have carried the stone dust produced constantly with them, reminding them of the heritage and origin of the community to which they belonged: their roots.

Group identities and a perhaps slightly nostalgic attachment to a homeland or a familiar cosmology may also have been expressed by putting secondary burials into ancient mounds, imitating them for their own burials, or continuing certain traditions. Later finds made at archaeological sites or in their neighborhood as well as ancient objects being re-used can similarly be taken as evidence for activities through which the identity of either individuals or whole groups were connected with the distant past.

In later ages, ancient monuments were chosen as meeting places, e.g. for court sessions or political bodies, probably because they were linked so closely with the identity of the community. The ability to symbolize national identity can explain the importance of prehistoric monuments e.g. the Indus Valley craftsmen – identified through the artifacts’ excavated in Harappa and Moenjo-Daro and the obviously deliberate visual and material references to monuments in different places of Pakistan. Similar references to the national past in relation to ancient monuments are frequently found in the journals and works of early travelers and antiquarians.

[Left: Rock Inscriptions near Manthal]

Summing up, I reproduce here what a German Archaeologist wrote in 1923 about prehistoric relics; (translation mine):

“Heritage is a treasure of our country, and we must be proud of it. It’s quiet and impressive language of the distant past talks so powerfully to us.”

The archaeological sites and monuments form a part not only of history, culture and cultural memories, but also of many generations’ (past, present and the coming ones) understanding of our time marks which means the very understandings of ourselves, our identity, our life.

Photo Credits: top to bottom:
1 & 2 Ayaz Asif 3. “http://www.Imagesofasia.com/” 4 & 5. Ayaz Asif 6, 7 & 8. Nadeem Khawar.