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Posted on 04/10/2018 3:50:41 AM PDT by Cronos
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 that any Harappan city was ever burned, besieged by an army, or taken over by force from within. Sifting through the archaeological layers of these cities, scientists find no layers of ash that would suggest the city had been burned down, and no signs of mass destruction. There are no enormous caches of weapons, and not even any art representing warfare.
That would make the Harappan civilization an historical outlier in any era. But it's especially noteworthy at a time when neighboring civilizations in Mesopotamia were erecting massive war monuments, and using cuneiform writing on clay tablets to chronicle how their leaders slaughtered and enslaved thousands.
What exactly were the Harappans doing instead of focusing their energies on military conquest?
The Indus River flows out of the Himalayas, bringing fresh water to the warm, dry valley where the ancient city of Harappa first began to grow. The Harappan civilization is the namesake of this city, located between two rivers, whose arts, written language, and science spread to several other large, riverside cities in the area. Mohenjo-Daro was the largest of these cities with a population of roughly 80,000 people.
Art from Harappan cities also attests to a very mixed population, with statues showing people who sport a wide variety of clothing and hair styles. So the Harappans appear to have been a very diverse lot. Some traveled far from their cities, probably by boat across the Persian Gulf, to trade with other great civilizations in the region during the 2000s BCE. There was at least one Harappan trade outpost in Mesopotamia, in the city of Eshnunna, which today lies about 30 km northeast of Baghdad. People from other Mesopotamian cities like Ur owned distinctively Harappan luxury goods such as beads and tiny carved bones
Harappans appear to have been traders who welcomed people to their cities from pretty much anywhere. But that doesn't mean they were disorganized or anarchic.
By studying the layers of built environments in Harappa, archaeologists have pieced together a fragmentary history of the civilization's rise. Harappa began as a village, probably about 6,000 years ago. There's evidence of agriculture and very early pottery throughout the 3000s BCE.
It's also during this time that we begin to see markings that look like writing on pottery. Over a period of just a couple of centuries, these crude marks evolved quickly into an alphabet that we still can't decipher. Here you can see a typical example of Harappan writing, on a seal that would have been pressed into soft clay, and was probably used in trade.
Indeed, it seems that writing in Harappa followed soon after the invention of standard weights and measures for commerce. Archaeologists have unearthed hundreds of blocks in a variety of standard sizes that conform to the binary weight system favored in the Indus Valley.
This fits with most accounts of how writing emerges in civilizations. Often, it begins with people using numbers and math to determine who owns what, or who has bought what from whom. From there, it develops quickly into a full-blown system of symbols. Writing seems to be one of those technological innovations that evolves very rapidly once people start using it.
It's next to impossible to build an urban civilization without standard measures and writing, but it's rare that we have a chance to look back in history to glimpse a literate culture emerging from a pre-literate one. In the ruins of Harappa, we can track that transition taking place. And the more writing we see in a given layer, the more complicated and advanced the civilization had become.
Advanced Technologies and Civil Engineering
Harappans didn't just create standardized measures — they liked everything to be standardized, right down to the size of the bricks they used to build their homes. Bricks and boards, like weights, came in just a few standard sizes. Echoing this love of order, Harappans built their cities on fairly strict grids.
Though the idea of a street grid seems perfectly ordinary to city-dwellers today, it was unusual at the time. Most great cities in Mesopotamia, for example, had curving streets and a more organic-looking layout
Sometimes archaeologists call the Harappan architectural style "nested" because they loved to build walls within walls. Every city was surrounded by a wall, but once inside, residents would find themselves walking past several more walled enclosures. We're not entirely sure why the Harappans designed their cities this way, but it's possible that these inner walls protected sacred areas or the estates of particularly high-status citizens.
I mentioned earlier that the Harappans left no monuments to their leaders, but their walls and city layouts make it clear that they were hardly egalitarians. Homes ranged from single rooms in dormitory-like buildings, possibly for slaves, to palatial estates with dozens of rooms and multiple outdoor courtyards. Harappans preferred two-story buildings, and semi-public courtyards were part of nearly every home.
There were regions of Harappan cities, often in their northwest corners, that were elevated above the rest. One of these elevated areas — surrounded by walls, of course — has been excavated extensively at Mohenjo-Daro. Dubbed (somewhat incorrectly) "the citadel," it includes what some archaeologists believe is a granary, as well as large, public buildings whose uses remain mysterious. But one structure stands out, partly because its design is tied to one of the greatest technological innovations of the Harappan city.
It is a public bath
You can see it above, along with the grand staircase that would have taken visitors down into its waters. The floor of the bath was built from specially-sized fired bricks, and it was surrounded by many passages and small rooms. Whether or not this particular bath was simply a public bathing site, or perhaps something more ceremonial, it was the largest version of a technology that was common throughout Harappan cities.
Because, you see, Harappans had plumbing. Every home had bathrooms, many had toilets, and drainage ditches throughout their cities carried waste beyond its walls. In fact, one way we know that the Harappans set up outposts in Mesopotamia is that their cities had such sophisticated, distinctive plumbing. Perhaps, instead of making war, the Harappans were devoting their money and energy to city infrastructure planning. Below, you can see an artist's recreation of what a city's plumbing would look like. Clay pipes ran alongside city streets, and past homes.
Harappans were also spending a lot of time perfecting the art of luxury goods. They made bangles, carved decorative bones, worked copper and other metals. Most of all, they crafted beads that must have been famous for thousands of kilometers, given that archaeologists have found them in far-flung Mesopotamian cities.
A very good point. But without the glory, what would be the point of the wars? There was little to rob and it looks like they didn't have fast chariots and they also were a bit too far away to govern over long distances.
Also Assyrian deportation policy was to deport the elites and some peasant farmers from one corner to the opposite corner of the empire. Some of the peasants were retained
They weren't spread across the eurasian continent but were sent to what is now sotuhern iraq or eastern Iran. Some assimilated and became ancestors of modern day Iraqis and Kuzestani Iranis and some came back with the Judeans after the Persian King Cyrus let people go back and the Iranis gave money for the rebuilding of the temple.
About Carthage developing from the Philistines, I would think that is not likely as
As to the point of Create artisans fleeing to Egypt - that's very very likely -- we know that the Cretans traded with the Egyptians and the Hittites and with the Phoenicians at least from 1700 BC, so cultural dispersion is more than likely
Deforestation for Harappan - hmm... that does make sense, but the question remains - did they use a lot of timber? Their houses are brick houses and they seem to not have had seige wars (both uses of wood) - or perhaps they cut down the forests to make farm lands (as happened in Europe). That's a very interesting point.
Survival.
Making sure the enemy did not regard you as an easy target.
As I said prior, fighting them over there so you do not have to fight them in your back yard.
They had no interest in governing the barbarians over the hill, they just wanted them to leave them alone.
People do not build walls because they like not being able to see out, they build them because it is necessary.
And the Anasazi did not.
Neither did the pre-Roman Britons, Gauls, Germans or Rus.
Their warriors lived in their own houses with their own families. Actually quite a more healthy system then isolating the warriors from their families.
It is a trend we have started to embrace. Except for basic most troops today have never lived in a barracks.
It also increased the likelihood that your warriors tended to have children which did not dilute your gene pool nearly as badly.
That’s a very good point! Thank you for enlightening me
hmmm... so you subscribe to the theory of the Aryanic people warring with the local Dravidian/Harappans?
The only way you do not have war is either you perceive the other group as vastly more powerful or if there is someone else around that will pulverize you if you attack them.
By the way looking through my books I found a couple of statues that might have been of great leaders. Or it might have been statues of a not so great leaders.
"Look kids, this is the statue of Og the Stupid who decided to go pet the tiger cubs. Don't be like Og, leave the tiger cubs alone."
Well, that was your most fun, wildest collection yet regarding the Sea Peoples, g. We must have discussed this twenty times over the years, I was looking for the most recent one but for this instance, and found instead an escalating argument I’d remembered but hadn’t been able to find in years (not with you, someone else), so that was cool. Also came across this one, which should be relevant and interesting to all:
Sex, drugs and Philistines: A biblical psychedelic scene
Times of Israel | May 28, 2015 | Daniel Bernstein
Posted on 05/30/2015 1:00:17 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3295125/posts
Vanishing forests must have been some kind of problem, or if not a problem, at least had some kind of impact on how various ancient groups lived their lives. As long as forests remained unstream, the riverine civs would at least have been able to receive shipments of wood.
I saw an enjoyable but historically rather questionable Bollywood movie complete with mega song and dance numbers called Mohenjo Daro. Rather implausibply, it showed the city being wiped out by a flood and the survivors moving from the Indus to the Ganges and becoming modern India’s progenitors.
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Thank you for your opinion (for whatever its worth)
I believe what the prophets wrote, not what vile men say.
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Isn’t Mohenjo-Daro one of those Indus cities which has a ‘sister city’ now covered by the Ocean? The one above water level is being excavated but the one under water is not.
“Dwarka” - I don’t have much idea about that — blam would know more
Ezekiel 37:16-17
The Samaritans have genetic markers related to the judaic people and they are/were descendents of Israelites who intermarried with other Semites
Let's also make it clear -- the British are not the lost tribes.
While the flood bit may be overblown, it can’t be discounted. There was climate change and some of the folks did move east. But it was definitely not an overnight event, more like a long-drawn out event over decades or even centuries
I have this posting from 2002:
Regarding Dwarka, just a selection from some relevant keywords:
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