Archaeologica.org

http://www.merinews.com/catFull.jsp?articleID=131256

The first traces of the Indus valley civilisation were found along the banks of the Indus and its tributaries. Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, on the banks of the rivers Indus and Ravi respectively, were excavated in the 1920s and were recognised as a constituent of a previously unknown culture. Around 1950, some 40 sites of this culture were known. By 1985, around 1400 sites had been identified. A recent catalog lists some 2600 sites. The expanse of this civilisation covered an area of around one million square kilometres stretching up to Manda in Kashmir in the north to Alamgirpur, western UP in the east, and from the head of the Godavari river in the south to almost the modern Pakistan-Iran border in the west.

I don't know who Mr. Gupta is, but I like him. Indian archaeology will be fast and furious well into the next century.

I still speculate that it's the home of our oldest civilization.

So...now we go back to Hancock. Did the civilization along the rivers grow up AFTER the coastal civilization was flooded?

That's a very good question. It will be years I think, before we get a clear picture. Tomorrow, I'll check again to see if there is any info. on the marine archaeology.

Minimalist wrote:So...now we go back to Hancock. Did the civilization along the rivers grow up AFTER the coastal civilization was flooded?

I wonder how one would rule out the other.....?

We need river water to live (to drink), but we cannot drink sea water, although it provides us with very tasty food.

Rivers are also good for providing a route to trade throughout the country, especially when the roads through a jungle are few and narrow. Then the rivers take us down to the sea which provides the means for international trade.

So surely we need both?

In for a penney, in for a pound as you Brits say.

Look at it this way, Ish. If sea level was lower, whatever rivers flowed into the sea would simply have a longer course. There seem to be structures underwater off the coast of India which were flooded sometime in the past. No matter how much further away the coastline was the rivers would have still had to reach it just as today. Where a river reaches the sea is a great spot for a town....at least until the water rises.

I still speculate that it's the home of our oldest civilization.

Wanna bet?

Are you thinking Catal Hoyuk, Cogs?

Ishtar, there are "cities" out there older than Caltal Hoyuk but, no, that's not the settlement I was considering. Jericho is older, being founded as early as 9,000bc by Natufians who displayed some Gravettian characteristics in their culture. But I still expect something older will be found. It really doesn't matter to me whether the oldest is in India, the Middle East, Northern Africa or even China. But my money is on the Northern Middle Eastern area since that's where the greatest variation in human haplogroups stems since the LGM.

Estimates of the world human population in 10,000bc generally range around 4 million, by 5,000bc that number was 5 million when suddenly the population began growing exponentially due to agriculture taking root. To me, if Natufian Jericho had huge stone walls and an impressive stone tower by 8,500bc I see no reason why people could not create the same type of city thousands of years earlier somewhere else since the population was stable and it wouldn't take a genius to build walls to encircle houses.

The initial genetic trail moves from Africa to the Middle East and then branches into India and the Anatolian/Caucasus region. With the onset of the LGM pushing Eurasian populations south after 22,000bc I would put the first civilisations somewhere south of the Black or Caspian Seas, pushing back into Northeast Africa, the Middle East and India; also east towards China (the first Tocharians were moving in that direction about 15,000bc).

Genetic traffic indicates groups were "getting out of Dodge" in a big way, traveling south at the same time the planet was entering the most severe Ice Age in the last half million years. My scenario doesn't rule out India -- it would have been a warm-weather getaway and a vacation paradise.

Every so called 'city' that we know of thus far Ish shows evidence of development work that we have yet to find the sources of.
In Egypt, for example, you can still find the progressive steps from Mastabas to Pyramids. Where are the progressives steps that must have led to the creation of large urban centres?

Cognito wrote:
Genetic traffic indicates groups were "getting out of Dodge" in a big way, traveling south at the same time the planet was entering the most severe Ice Age in the last half million years. My scenario doesn't rule out India -- it would have been a warm-weather getaway and a vacation paradise.

Yes, that ties in with my take on India. The Anu tribe pushed south from Kashmir into the Punjab and settled it for a while. These were led by the fire shamans, the Bhrigus. But (possibly because of a failing Soma crop further north), the Puru tribe came down from the north east and then pushed westwards, and eventually inito the Punjab, pushing out the Anus who then emigrated out north, north-west and west.

But we don't have any dates, apart from that of the Indus seals (circa 3,000 BC) and n fact the whole Harappan civilisation shows that they had been established there for some time, and were an advanced civilisation.

But once again, we have this gap that Dig refers to - they disappeared, my guess is into the rest of the India. There was a big climate shift at the time and that area dried out considerably.

Ishtar wrote:
There was a big climate shift at the time and that area dried out considerably.

The same climate shift that dried out the central Sahara and pushed the 'Saharans' into their diaspora, founding pharaonic Egypt?

Rokcet Scientist wrote:

Ishtar wrote:
There was a big climate shift at the time and that area dried out considerably.

The same climate shift that dried out the central Sahara and pushed the 'Saharans' into their diaspora, founding pharaonic Egypt?

That's the consensus, yes.

So, when I step back a bit I see civilisations in the Sahara, around Harappa, and in the Euxine Basin, between around 10,000 and 6,500 BC. Then the Euxine Basin flooded in 6,500 BC, scattering the Euxine civilisation(s) in all directions. Around the same time a climate shift started to dry out the Harappa region and the central Sahara, forcing those civilisations into a diaspora as well!

With all those peoples on the move the era between 6,500 BC and 3,500 BC must have been a very intense and formative period for human civilisation(s).

Just catching up here, but we may want to settle on a definition of "civilization" one day.

In the old Sarasvati river system many settlements and cities are being discovered, and is culminated with the hypothesized sunken city of Dwarka in the Gulf of Cambay. All of these cities are at least older than 2,000 BC. Some are walled and others are not. This is a rather extensive civilization, probably easier older than the Sumerian. Megarh is dated to 6,000 BC.

But then, for our discussion, what constitutes a civilization?