# Indus era is 8,000 years old, not 5,500



## Karma (May 30, 2016)

KOLKATA: It may be time to rewrite history textbooks. Scientists from IIT-Kharagpur and Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) have uncovered evidence that the Indus Valley Civilization is at least 8,000 years old, and not 5,500 years old, taking root well before the Egyptian (7000BC to 3000BC) and Mesopotamian (6500BC to 3100BC) civilizations. What's more, the researchers have found evidence of a pre-Harappan civilization that existed for at least 1,000 years before this.

The discovery, published in the prestigious 'Nature' journal on May 25, may force a global rethink on the timelines of the so-called 'cradles of civilization'. The scientists believe they also know why the civilization ended about 3,000 years ago — climate change.

"We have recovered perhaps the oldest pottery from the civilization. We used a technique called 'optically stimulated luminescence' to date pottery shards of the Early Mature Harappan time to nearly 6,000 years ago and the cultural levels of pre-Harappan Hakra phase as far back as 8,000 years," said Anindya Sarkar, head of the department of geology and geophysics at IIT-Kgp.

The team had actually set out to prove that the civilization proliferated to other Indian sites like Bhirrana and Rakhigarrhi in Haryana, apart from the known locations of Harappa and Mohenjo Daro in Pakistan and Lothal, Dholavira and Kalibangan in India. They took their dig to an unexplored site, Bhirrana — and ended up unearthing something much bigger. The excavation also yielded large quantities of animal remains like bones, teeth, horn cores of cow, goat, deer and antelope, which were put through Carbon 14 analysis to decipher antiquity and the climatic conditions in which the civilization flourished, said Arati Deshpande Mukherjee of Deccan College, which helped analyse the finds along with Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad.

The researchers believe that the Indus Valley Civilization spread over a vast expanse of India — stretching to the banks of the now "lost" Saraswati river or the Ghaggar-Hakra river - but this has not been studied enough because what we know so far is based on British excavations. "At the excavation sites, we saw preservation of all cultural levels right from the pre-Indus Valley Civilization phase (9000-8000 BC) through what we have categorised as Early Harappan (8000-7000BC) to the Mature Harappan times," said Sarkar.

While the earlier phases were represented by pastoral and early village farming communities, the mature Harappan settlements were highly urbanised with organised cities, and a much developed material and craft culture. They also had regular trade with Arabia and Mesopotamia. The Late Harappan phase witnessed large-scale de-urbanisation, drop in population, abandonment of established settlements, lack of basic amenities, violence and even the disappearance of the Harappan script, the researchers say.

"We analysed the oxygen isotope composition in the bone and tooth phosphates of these remains to unravel the climate pattern. The oxygen isotope in mammal bones and teeth preserve the signature of ancient meteoric water and in turn the intensity of monsoon rainfall. Our study shows that the pre-Harappan humans started inhabiting this area along the Ghaggar-Hakra rivers in a climate that was favourable for human settlement and agriculture. The monsoon was much stronger between 9000 years and 7000 years from now and probably fed these rivers making them mightier with vast floodplains," explained Deshpande Mukherjee. 


Source - Indus era 8,000 years old, not 5,500; ended because of weaker monsoon - Times of Indi


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## TechGeek (Jun 3, 2016)

It' awesome man.It means we indians are among the oldest civilization on the Earth !!! :ligthbulb_NF:


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## Karma (Jun 5, 2016)

TechGeek said:


> It' awesome man.It means we indians are among the oldest civilization on the Earth !!! :ligthbulb_NF:



This research have exposed the some of western histroian.The white historian pushed forward the age of the Vedas from 5000 BC to 1200 BC so that can sustain the ridiculous LIE of the Bible that BIG BANG happened in 4004 BC


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## SaiyanGoku (Jun 5, 2016)

^ Big Bang happened around 14 billion years ago. No amount of these ancient fan fiction novels can alter that.


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## Karma (Jun 5, 2016)

SaiyanGoku said:


> ^ Big Bang happened around 14 billion years ago. No amount of these ancient fan fiction novels can alter that.



Indeed bro...i was saying what some of the Christians believe


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## Nerevarine (Jun 5, 2016)

The world's oldest civilization turned into the world's dumping ground for technology. What went wrong ?


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## SaiyanGoku (Jun 5, 2016)

Nerevarine said:


> The world's oldest civilization turned into the world's dumping ground for technology. What went wrong ?


Exam system, politics, religion and "log kya kahenge" happened.


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## bssunilreddy (Jun 5, 2016)

Briefly, there are two dating schemes for the Indus Valley  Civilization. When the Brits first uncovered the remains, they dated it  based on the accepted view of history back at the time, in the 19th  century. Biblical literalism told them the world was only about 6,000  years old, so history had to be condensed into something approximating  this timespan.

  Modern dating methods cast doubt on these dates, showing the IVC to  be much older. So there are two different chronologies, one traditional,  and one based on modern dating methods. They are like so:


*Phase**Traditional**Modern**Stage*Early Harappan / Ravi Phase (1A/B)5,700 - 2,8009,000 - 6,300Early farming/pastoral villagesEarly Harappan / Kot Phase (2)4,800 - 4,6006,300 - 5,200Advanced farming communitiesHarappan (Phase 3A)4,600 - 4,4505,200 - 4,600EarlyHarappanTransition (Phase 3B)4,450 - 4,2004,600 - 4,500Early - Mature TransitionalMature Harappan (Phase 3C)4,200 - 3,9004,500 - 3,900Mature HarappanLate Harappan / Transitional3,900 - 3,7003,900 - 3,000Post Urban HarappanLate Harappan3,700 - 3,3003,000 - 2,500Iron Age
 
All of these dates are BP, meaning years before the present. As you  can see, the modern dating, first published by Possehl in 2002, pushes  back the earliest phase by over 3,000 years while extending the last  phases by almost a thousand years.

  While there has been plenty of evidence for the modern dating from  dozens of sites, one problem is that the sites are spread over a very  large area. *The Indus Valley Civilization was larger than ancient  Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt combined.* So there are few representative  places which contain a transect of the entire Indus Valley Civilization,  from beginning to end. This makes it harder to correlate dates *on the same site* in a consistent manner.

  The paper referred to in this article accomplishes that, at a site in  northwestern India near a town named Bhirrana. They found artefacts  which can be reliably dated across all phases of the Indus Valley  Civilization, and their dates corroborate the modern Possehl dating,  which pushes the date back by about 2,500 years on average.

  While this is nice, this isn’t really news in the archeological  community, since support for the Possehl dating is already quite  substantial. In fact, the main thrust of the article is on a different  topic, namely, the connection between these phases and various climate  events (wet/dry periods).

  As for the question of whether it’s the oldest civilization in the  world, it sort of depends on how you define “civilization”. Yes, the  oldest phases of farming villages are older than Egypt at 9,000 or 8,000  years ago. Agriculture was only introduced to Egypt around 7,500 years  ago, in the Faiyum Basin. But if you define civilization to mean early  urban life, the first towns and cities, then Egypt, Mesopotamia and the  Indus Valley are roughly contemporary.

  If the Indus Valley stands out, it’s on the basis of the sheer scale.  Egyptian civilization was constrained by the thin band of the Nile,  extending in a strip a dozen kilometers on each bank of a long river.  Mesopotamian civilization likewise, was constrained to the area between  the Tigris and Euphrates, with farms only existing right by the river,  and the middle taken up by pastoral lands progressing to desert. The  Indus Valley, in contrast, is a much larger area, stretching between  dozens of tributaries of the Indus and the Ghagra-Hakkar complex. It was  huge.


But in India, there is evidence of farming as early as 9,000 years  ago. At Mehrgarh in the Indus Valley region, they have found evidence of  farming at 9,000 years BP. Period I at Mehrgarh is the earliest, dated  to 9,000 BP, about which the Oxford Companion to Archaeology says:
Mehrgarh I, a small village of farmers and herders, was 7 to 10 acres. Dwellings and compartmented buildings,  apparently granaries, were found. Storage facilities of this type began  in Period I, and as agricultural production increased, so did their  number and sophistication. The dwellings were simple mud brick  structures, 16 by 13 feet on average, frequently subdivided into four or  six rooms.
  Paleobotanical material from Period I is rich and complex. Most of  the evidence came from thousands of impressions in the abundant mud  bricks of this period. The dominant plant is naked six-row barley (_Hordeum vulgare_).  More than 90% of the seends and imprints were identified as this plant.  There is also hulled six-row barley, einkorn, emmer and hard wheat  present in greatly reduced amounts.
  The animal economy is dominated by 12 species of large game animals.  Richard Meadow takes this to indicate that the first inhabitants  exploited not only the surrounding hills but the Kachi Plain itself. By  the end of the aceramic period, the faunal assemblage is different:  almost all of the faunal remains that can be identified come from sheep,  goat or cattle.
​So these people were planting barley 9,000 years ago, along with  smaller quantities of emmer, einkorn and hard wheat. They were also  herding cattle, goat and sheep. Among the tools found were grinding  stones and mortars for grinding cereal, and sickle blades with sheens  typical of use in cutting plants (harvesting).

  The population of the Mehrgarh complex in this period is estimated to  be around 25,000, which is about the same as the entire population of  ancient Egypt 9,000 years ago. Besides agriculture and herding, these  people were quite sophisticated in other ways. Nature published an article  some time ago about bones dated from 7,500 - 9,000 years ago recovered  from a graveyard at Mehrgarh. Many of the skulls had teeth which had been drilled to treat dental caries. Flint drills have been found which were likely used to drill these holes.

  So this region was quite advanced for its time 9,000 years ago.

Some insight into Harappa Civilization:*www.nature.com/articles/srep26555


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## kg11sgbg (Jun 5, 2016)

^ A very rich and exhaustive discussion/comment by you my Friend.
Seems you have an acumen of knowledge possessing in History and Anthropolgy...keep it up brother.


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