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The civilization of Indus River Valley is considered one of the three earliest civilizations in world history, along with Mesopotamia and Egypt. Bigger geographically than those two as it unfolded starting in 3300 BCE across what is now Pakistan and India, the Indus civilization boasted uniform weights and measures, skilled artisans, a multifaceted system of trade and commerce, and upwards of 500 symbols and signs for communicating.But one question has vexed scholars for decades and hindered attempts to learn more about this civilization: Were those characters a language or more akin to pictograms? Even as some experts begin to translate...

Carbon dating suggests that the cultural deposits may be 300 years older than believed... The results from the fourth excavations suggest that the “second urbanisation [the first being Indus] of Vaigai plains happened in Tamil Nadu around 6th century BCE as it happened in Gangetic plains.” ... The recent scientific dates obtained for Keeladi findings push back the date of Tamil-Brahmi script to another century, i.e., 6th century BCE... Six carbon samples collected from the fourth season (2018) of excavations at Keeladi were sent to Beta Analytic Lab, Miami, Florida, U.S., for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) dating... “This finding suggests...

Up to 95 per cent of plastic polluting the world’s oceans pours in from just ten rivers, according to new research. The top 10 rivers – eight of which are in Asia – accounted for so much plastic because of the mismanagement of waste. About five trillion pounds is floating in the sea, and targeting the major sources – such as the Yangtze and the Ganges – could almost halve it, scientists claim. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt flew in coach-class seats on at least two trips home to Oklahoma when taxpayers weren’t footing the bill, despite claims he...

The Harappan civilization dominated the Indus River valley beginning about five thousand years ago, many of its massive cities sprawling at the edges of rivers that still flow through Pakistan and India today. But its culture remains a mystery. Why did it leave behind no representations of great leaders, nor of warfare? Archaeologists have long wondered whether the Harappan civilization could actually have thrived for roughly 2,000 years without any major wars or leadership cults. Obviously people had conflicts, sometimes with deadly results — graves reveal ample skull injuries caused by blows to the head. But there is no evidence...

Evidence of an ancient "lost river civilisation" has been uncovered off the west coast of India, the country's minister for science and technology has announced. Local archaeologists claim the find could push back currently accepted dates of the emergence of the world's first cities. Underwater archaeologists at the National Institute of Ocean Technology first detected signs of an ancient submerged settlement in the Gulf of Cambray, off Gujarat, in May 2001. They have now conducted further acoustic imaging surveys and have carbon dated one of the finds. The acoustic imaging has identified a nine-kilometre-long stretch of what was once a ...

Excavations reveal 7,000 year-old Harappan sites Staff Report PESHAWAR: Gandi Umar Khan, around 55 kilometres west of Dera Ismail Khan, is the most important archaeological site of the Indus Valley civilization in the North Western Frontier Province. Gandi Umar Khan is spread over an area of 220 by 200 meters and has a maximum height of 8.5 metres. The site was discovered in 1997 by the University of Peshawar. The Directorate of Archaeology and Museum NWFP conducted an extensive survey of the Gomal Plain in March 2003 and discovered 95 sites out of which exist 53 sites of different periods...

The recent International Conference on Harappan Archaeology produced an unexpected announcement from archaeologists BR Mani and KN Dikshit, both of the Archaeological Survey of India, who claim that new dates from excavations show the Harappan culture began around 2000 years earlier than previously thought.The ruins of the Harrapan city of Mohenjo-daro remained undocumented for over 3,700 years, until their discovery in 1922 by Rakhaldas Bandyopadhyay, an officer of the Archaeological Survey of India. He was led to the mound by a Buddhist monk, who reportedly believed it to be a stupa. Image: Wikimedia commons Redating of Harappan culture Based on...

Lost civilisation from 7,500 BC discovered off Indian coast Archaeologists have found a civilisation dating back to 7,500 BC off India's western coast. The find is 5,000 years older than any previously unearthed civilisation in the subcontinent. Researchers uncovered pottery, beads, sculptures, a fossilised jaw bone and human teeth at the Gulf of Cambay site.(DNA tests?) Previously, the oldest known civilisations were the Harrapan and Indus Valley communities - which date from around 2,500BC. Murli Manohar Joshi, minister for human resources and ocean development, told The Times of India: "The findings buried 40 metres below the sea reveal some ...

Professor VD Mishra said that new researches have revealed that agricultural practices in India started in Mesolithic period (6-7,000 BC), much before the Neolithic period (4000 BC) as is generally believed. This discovery has proved that agriculture in India started simultaneously with other parts of the world. He said that Sativa rice, discovered from excavations at Chopni in Belan valley, has proved that India did not lag behind in agriculture... Joshi said that encroachments around historical monuments should be stopped because it harms our heritage. Citing an example, he said that Gwalior Fort could not be declared World Heritage due...

The mysterious fall of the largest of the world's earliest urban civilizations nearly 4,000 years ago in what is now India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh now appears to have a key culprit — ancient climate change, researchers say. Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia may be the best known of the first great urban cultures, but the largest was the Indus or Harappan civilization. This culture once extended over more than 386,000 square miles (1 million square kilometers) across the plains of the Indus River from the Arabian Seato the Ganges, and at its peak may have accounted for 10 percent of...

During the third millennium BCE, the Indus Civilisation flourished in what is now northwest India and Pakistan. Between 2200-1900 BCE the culture was characterised by long-distance exchange networks, carefully planned urban settlements such as Harappa and Mohenjo Daro that had sophisticated sanitation facilities, standardised weights and measures, and a sphere of influence that extended over a million square kilometres of territory. The culture was seemingly at its height when the end came (collapse attributed to climatic change) but recent research published in both the open access journal PLoS ONE and an earlier 2012 article in the International Journal of Palaeopathology...

1. Disappearance of the Indus Valley Civilization With a culture that stretched from western India to Afghanistan and a population numbering over five million, the ancient Indus Valley people—India's oldest known civilization—were an impressive and apparently sanitary bronze-age bunch. The scale of their baffling and abrupt collapse rivals that of the great Mayan decline. But it wasn't until 1922 that excavations revealed a hygienically-advanced culture which maintained a sophisticated sewage drainage system and immaculate bathrooms. Strangely, there is no archaeological evidence of armies, slaves, social conflicts or other vices prevalent in ancient societies. Even to the very end, it seems,...

An archaeological site dating back about 5,500 years and believed to be older than Mohenjodaro has been found in Sindh province. A team of 22 archaeologists found semi-precious and precious stones and utensils made of clay, copper and other metals during an excavation in Lakhian Jo Daro in Sukkur district on Thursday. “At present, we can say that it is older than Mohenjodaro”, Ghulam Mustafa Shar, the director of the Lakhian Jo Daro project, said. Shar said the remains of a “faience” or tin-glazed pottery factory had been found at the site. It is believed to be of the era...

From Indus Valley to coastal Tamil Nadu T.S. Subramanian Strong resemblances between graffiti symbols in Tamil Nadu and the Indus script Continuity of tradition: Megalithic pots with arrow-work graffiti found at Sembiankandiyur village in Nagapattinam district. CHENNAI: In recent excavations in Nagapattinam district in Tamil Nadu, megalithic pottery with graffiti symbols that have a strong resemblance to a sign in the Indus script have been found. Indus script expert Iravatham Mahadevan says that what is striking about the arrow-mark graffiti on the megalithic pottery found at Sembiyankandiyur and Melaperumpallam villages is that they are always incised twice and together, just...

Distributing water DR. T. V. PADMA How did the people of the Indus manage to water their cities? In Indus cities, each house or group of houses had a private well, made with wedge-shaped bricks that slotted together in a cylindrical shape strong enough to withstand the weight of water when the well was full. This is not a simple matter, and required calculation — otherwise a well could collapse once it was full of water. How did the Indus people keep wells and bathing facilities watertight? First, they used bricks that fitted together tightly. Second, they coated the outer...

‘Indus Valley civilization was more varied and wider’ Abhay Mishra New Delhi, March 5: Indus Valley civilization was much more varied and wider than historians believed till date,” said Professor of Archaeology and Heritage Management, Boston University, Mohammed Rafique Mughal on Monday. "Extensive exploration and excavation of sites in the upper Indus Valley and the lower Sindh have revealed a widespread cultural phenomena which existed at that time," said Mughal, delivering the Dr I H Qureshi Memorial Lecture, the Harappan civilization, at St Stephen's College. Claiming that field researches at Harappan sites—both in India and Pakistan —are leading to fresh...

Panaji, Feb 07: Renowned German Indologist and scientist of religion, Egbert Richter Ushanas today claimed that he has unravelled the mystery of Indus Valley scripts by decoding major seals and tablets found during various archaeological excavations. "Already 1,000-odd seals are decoded and of them, 300-odd are printed in monography -- the message of Indus seals and tablets," stated Richter, who has also decoded tablets from Easter Island in Pacific Ocean and disc of Phaistos on Island of Crete in Meditarrenean Sea. "All the seals are based on Vedas -- Rig Veda and Atharva Veda," Richter told a news agency here....

On the Presence of Non-Chinese at Anyang by Kim Hayes It has now become clear that finds of chariot remains, metal knives and axes of northern provenance, and bronze mirrors of western provenance in the tombs of Anyang indicate that the Shang had at least indirect contact with people who were familiar with these things. Who were these people? Where did they live? When did they arrive? Following the discovery of the Tarim Mummies, we now know that the population of the earliest attested cultures of what is present-day Xinjiang were of northwestern or western derivation. According to the craniometric...

The discovery of a Neolithic stone celt, a hand-held axe, with the Indus script on it at Sembian-Kandiyur in Tamil Nadu is, according to Iravatham Mahadevan, "a major discovery because for the first time a text in the Indus script has been found in the State on a datable artefact, which is a polished neolithic celt." He added: "This confirms that the Neolithic people of Tamil Nadu shared the same language family of the Harappan group, which can only be Dravidian. The discovery provides the first evidence that the Neolithic people of the Tamil country spoke a Dravidian language." Mr....

In ancient India, scholars used to pass on traditional knowledge orally down the generations. Later on, a written tradition also existed using a variety of writing media from granite slabs to copper plates, tree barks and most importantly palm leaves. The manuscripts chiefly written in three different scripts called the Tamil Brahmi, Vatteluttu and Drantha scripts are treasure troves holding answers to the age-old era. The National Mission for Manuscripts, the federal Ministry of Culture department together with the state's Development, Culture and Religious Endowment department have started a survey aimed at locating and documenting such historical manuscripts possessing literary,...