Indus Valley Civilization.

[Minimalist]

Charlie's got flakes that look just like this. In fact, we made a couple the other day. All you need are two of the right kinds of stones and they will fracture to give you a nice sharp edge.

[kbs2244]

Your making of these kind of tools reminds me of a story told to me by a friend about a Snake River fishing trip he and a friend had gone on.
They had beached their boat and walked down stream looking for good spots.
After catching some good eating fish, the two White Men walked back to the boat to bring it down to where they caught the fish so they could set up camp and use their axes to cut drift wood for cooking.
In the less than 2 hours it took them to get back, their Native American guide had a fire going and dinner was ready. Fillets on sharpened sticks over the fire.
Turns out the guide had just picked up some river rocks and thrown them down on other rocks until he got one with a sharp edge.
He used that to cut up the drift wood for the fire and to sharpen the sticks for cooking. No iron tools needed. (He did use a Zippo to start the fire.)
In the morning they left the burnt fire wood, fish bones and sharp stones behind. Took all their other garbage with them.
This was in the 1980’s.
Who wants to guess about the analyzing of the date of this site when it is found in 100 years?

[Digit]

In the area of the UK where I was born and raised the sub-soil is chalk, and flint is as common as sand on beaches, and I have seen nodules that have been broken by falling from a height and left with a razor sharp edge.
Probably our ancestors observed the same thing and put two and two together.
It is not unreasonable to suggest that the first 'tools' were chance finds and that deliberate knapping came later. If this is so it would be deeply confusing to researchers trying to identify natural 'tools' from man made ones unless the edges are microscopically examined, and that is a fairly recent development of course.

[Forum Monk]

That statement is important to the work of Charlie on the Preclovis thread. I am not sure how difficult it may be to tell a worked sample from one that occurs naturally. Especially one that has tubbled along a rocky stream bed for several millenia. When you look at some of Charlie's samples, it is glaringly obvious by flutes and tabs and intentional bifacial working. Others...well it takes a more experienced eye than I have.

[Minimalist]

Who wants to guess about the analyzing of the date of this site when it is found in 100 years?

Well, they won't be able to use carbon dating, that's for certain.

[Digit]

Look for 'Kilroy was here!'

[Beagle]

Well, back on topic:

http://www.niot.res.in/m3/arch/jgsi-60-2002.pdf

A short PDF about archaeology in the Gulf of Cambay. This fellow is pretty far out since he invokes Graham Hancock.

[MichelleH]

A couple of scholarly pieces for this topic:

Adaptation and human migration, and evidence of agriculture coincident with changes in the Indian summer monsoon during the Holocene

Current Science April 2006

http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/apr252006/1082.pdf

Abstract: Human societies have evolved through a complex system of climate and ecological interactions. Known records suggest intimate relationship of adaptations, mitigations and migrations to climate extremes leaving their impacts on human societies. The northwestern part of India provides such an example, where human civilizations flourished in the early Holocene along the major fluvial systems when the Indian summer (southwest) monsoon was much stronger and rainfall was higher over the Indian land mass. Summers were thus wetter, conducive to agriculture and ecodiversity. Changes in the early civilizations in the Indian subcontinent had a close relation to changes in the monsoon climate over the past 10,000 years. The summer monsoon has weakened over the last 7000 years since its peak intensification in the early Holocene (10,000–7000 cal yrs BP). Discrete intervals of dry phases in the summer monsoon are visible in the proxy record of the monsoon winds from the marine sediments of the Arabian Sea, which had significant impact on human settlements in South Asia. The strongest aridity in the Indian subcontinent and extended periods of droughts at ca 5000–4000 cal yrs BP seems to have triggered eastward human migrations towards the Ganga plain. Other times of monsoon weakening during the Holocene are coincident with the initial development of ponds, reservoirs and other rainwater harvesting structures that may have served as an adaptation to climate change.



Honors Thesis: The State in the Indus River Valley by Adam Stuart Green

Abstract: (Quoting author) "This thesis examines the concept of the state in the context of the Indus River Valley, located in northwest India and Pakistan. In the first section, I synthesize several popular trends in state discussion from both inside and outside of archaeological theory. I then apply my synthesized approach to state definition to the archaeological record from the Indus River Valley. The resulting work visits both the concept of the state and the rich cultural history of the Indus Civilization. I determine that there was a state in the Indus River Valley, but that the Indus state was very different from others scholars have identified in the archaeological record."


http://etd.gsu.edu/theses/available/etd ... 608_BA.pdf

[Beagle]

Thanks Michelle. Those are both very interesting papers. I read them both and whew, that second one is long.

The first one is very interesting for anyone interested in the Indus civilization, or climate change in the Holocene. Essan - if you're out there you would enjoy this scholarly work. It even hints at a coming ice age. I'm sure that got folks attention.

The second paper is long. 73 pages I think. If anyone wants to read the whole thing I can tell you that there is no archaeology at all from p.21-41 on the PDF counter. If that's still too much, I recommend that you skip to the conclusion at least.

In that paper, which was written in 2006, the author dates the Indus civilization to 6500 BC. It will be interesting to see what the final decision is once the site in the Gulf of Khambat is fully examined. Side scan sonar is showing what appears to be the rectangular foundations of buildings.

Thanks again Michelle.

[Ishtar]

This is an article that I've had for some time in "favorites", along with some others on the Harrapan civilization. It argues that the Indo-Aryan invasion didn't happen at all, and more probably went in the other direction. Many Indian archaeologists are writing in those terms. While it is a little long, it should really peek ones interest.

This is something I did a while back but it may be of interest here. It shows where the various digs have been finding 5th millennium BC civilisations in India (see article below):

http://www.zeenews.com/znnew/articles.a ... 63&sid=FTP

These findings support the claim that Srikant Talageri makes in his e book “The Rig Veda – An Historical Analysis." http://voi.org/books/rig/index.htm about there being an movement of Purus from the east (around Calcutta) that dislodged the Anus and Danus (referred to in the Pokotia thread) so that they went north and west. He wrote this book in 2000, six years before the archaeological finds.

By comparing the Rig-veda and the Iranian (Zoroastrian) Zend Avesta and, by putting together the geographical place names named in both, Talageri has come to the conclusion that the Indo-Iranian homeland was in the Punjab, Harayana and Uttar Pradesh regions of India.

The map that shows (circled in blue) the area that Talegeri's talking about. The new archaeological finds are circled in red. The blue area extends into Afghanistan as Talegeri says there was a general move towards the north-west.

Also, by studying the Anukramanis, the indices of the Rig-veda, he has put together a chronology of who wrote which bits and in what order which disagrees with the Western Indologists’ version.

From this, Talegeri has come to the conclusion that most of the early mandalas (books) were written by the Puru family of Angirasa rishis, and it was fairer, taller Purus who pushed out the Anus and Danus (as I mentioned in the Pokotia thread).

He says that rest of the Anus migrated to Iran and one of these families, called the Spitamas, produced Zoroaster who was responsible for the Zend Avesta and Zoroastrianism.

Talegeri published his book in the year 2000, which was at least five years before the archaeological discoveries in the region.

As I said on another thread, I still haven’t decided whether I think that the Rig-veda is literal history or metaphorical (maybe it’s a combination of both). But if it is literal history, imho this book makes very good sense of it.

(By the way Beagle, small polnt: you said something earlier about the “story of Ram from the Rig-veda”. Ram is not in the Rig-veda. The story of Ram is in the Ramayana which is a couple of thousand years later than the Rig-veda. Hope this helps.)

[Beagle]

Thanks for the help Ishtar. Interesting stuff - I'm just getting into some of the Vedic texts. They mention Soma a lot, an intoxicating beverage of some kind. They speak of the "Land of the Soma". Any thoughts on that?

Not to mention the "Cocaine Mummies".

[Ishtar]

Thanks for the help Ishtar. Interesting stuff - I'm just getting into some of the Vedic texts. They mention Soma a lot, an intoxicating beverage of some kind. They speak of the "Land of the Soma". Any thoughts on that?

Not to mention the "Cocaine Mummies".

Soma, in the four older Vedas books, was a psychotropic herb - possibly flyagaric - that they used to help them go into a trance like state. This is because they were shamans - the shamans in south America also use a similar psychotropic herb called ayahuasca.

Nobody much in the Hindu religion wants to admit that these early Vedic types were shamans, but they were, and their practices were hijacked and corrupted and sanitised and disempowered to form the later Puranic religion and eventually, Hinduism and the caste system.

In the Rig-veda, the effects of one's karma were resolved by a shaman taking a trip into the causal reality and straightening things out there. Later on, karma became something that you had to be personally responsible for and only good behaviour would mitigate its effects. This nonsense eventually led to the famous 'fatalism' of the Indian people where they accepted whatever caste they were born into in a docile way in the hope of a better station in life next time. It's all pure nonsense, religion at it worst - they'd be better off going back to the Soma!

[Ishtar]

I've just found another commonality between south America and India, and I wrote it myself in the last post without realising what I said.

Around the time we're talking, shamanism was the way of life all over the world. There were small cultural differences that were superficial to the practice, e.g. the names of gods/devas/nature spirits (whatever you want to call them). But at its core, the shaman performed the same thing. He would travel, in ecstatic trance, up the 'world tree' to the 'other worlds' of which there were always two: the 'upper world' and 'lower world', which is not Hell, by the way - that's just what the Christians decided to do with it.

How they went into ecstatic trance was usually by the means of a drumbeat. It's a fact that if you expose yourself to a drum beat (or similar rhythmic sound) of between 4 and 7 a second, you go into what's known as the Theta state by scientists today. So every shamanic culture would use the drum, or some form of music, to attain this state - that includes the Africans, the Australian Aborigines, the Native Americans, the Siberians, the Laplanders - and the Celts who would use something that looked like a frying pan and they called it tanging.

Now the only two cultures that we know did not use any form of musical instrument to attain the trance state were the Vedics in India and (even to this day), the south American shamans. Instead, both of these groups used (and use) a psychotropic herb indigenous to the area.

So there we have another link between ancient India and south America.

[Beagle]

That's interesting Ishtar, although I know little of shamanism.

You and many others have rebuked the Aryan Invasion Theory, and have posted links to many sites that believe it's false. Now, it seems like no two linguists can agree but I imagine you are not a believer in Max Meullers theories (in fact I think he first proposed the AIT.)

But what do you think of Michael Witzel? He seems to be old school as well. Thanks.

[Ishtar]

Don't get me started.

I'll just tell you one thing about Michael Witzel, and let you make up your own mind.

He offered Shrikant Talageri - who is a poor accountant in India and thus someone who could probably only dream of the rich pickings of Western white towered academia - the opportunity to do a PhD at Harvard, after Talageri wrote the book on the Rig-veda that I mentioned a few posts back.

The only thing was, in order to be accepted at Harvard, Talageri was told that he would have to renounce all his theories on the Aryan invasion.

Talageri turned down the offer. So then Witzel rubbished his book.

And yes, Monk, joy of joys, I finally do have a link on it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrikant_G._Talageri