The Indus Valley - The New Age Archaeology Magazine

THE INDUS VALLEY, ANCIENT BALUCHISTAN, PAKISTAN AND INDIA

THE INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION: ATLANTIS OF THE EAST?
By Patrick C. Chouinard, excerpt from A Legacy of Gods and Empires

While many independent archaeologists continue to look westward in their ongoing search for lost continents and civilizations, the exotic allure of India and the Far East is sometimes too fantastic to resist. Since the Greek philosopher Plato first wrote it down over 2,000 years ago, the myth of Atlantis has been either directly or indirectly linked to our own Western civilization. It wasn’t until the nineteenth century with the publication of a number of esoteric books that Atlantis took on global proportions. Plato described their lifestyle akin to that of gods, with a perfect utopian civilization of advanced wealth and culture, towering architectural monuments and a powerful maritime fleet that literally controlled Egypt and the Mediterranean for some 11,000 years. In a single day and night, this lost civilization was destroyed in a great cataclysm. This so-called “Atlantis” has become a cliché in our modern world and is often disregarded as lunacy rather than a rich mythological treasure carrying the hidden history of the human race. There is evidence of a prehistoric civilization stretching from India and the Gulf of Cambay to the Japanese Islands. The question remains how did Asian culture develop, and who were the antecedents of Eastern civilization, and how did they eventually come into contact with the West?

This calls into question the existing chronology and clarifies the position that either the Indus Valley Civilization or another South Asian culture preceded the well-known Sumerian and Egyptian civilizations. French archaeologist Jean-Francois Jarrige said: “Everything ever written about civilization before five years ago is wrong.” (Hancock 117)

Further investigation indicates that the Indus Valley Civilization was “thoroughly individual and independent” and was “deeply rooted in Indian soil. The Indus Valley Civilization represents a very perfect adjustment of human life to a specific environment. And it has endured; it is already specifically Indian and forms the basis of modern Indian culture.” (Britannica 21:30-31)

The Indus Valley Civilization (c. 3000–1500 B.C.) was a system of ancient city-states that flourished in South Asia extending from Baluchistan in the West to the Ghaggar-Hakra River in the East. (Wikipedia, 2007). The archaic roots of the Indus Valley civilization go back not thousands but tens of thousands of years. At the dawn of the twentieth century, virtually nothing was known about this “cradle of human civilization,” whose monuments had been dismantled to build fortifications and Buddhist stupas. (Wikipedia, 2006) In the early 1970s, the American archaeologist Marija Gimbutas defined civilization as “the ability of a given people to adjust to its environment and to develop adequate arts, technology . . . and social relationships” that have appeared, in the case of the pre-Harappan cultures “achieved a marked degree of success.” (Gimbutas 17) This revision rejects the idea of urbanism and centralized authority as one of the major precursors that set civilization apart from primitive village-dwellers. If civilization can be ascribed as belonging to such an earlier stage then our world conception has already changed significantly including our understanding of prehistoric communities. (Gimbutas 19) The pre-Harappan societies of the Indian subcontinent are another good example and antedate many of the other world civilizations by many centuries and seem to indicate that something unique was happening there at a very early time.

Homo Erectus, an earlier ancestor of the human race, was perhaps the first group of peoples to inhabit the region. According to Kenoyer, “The stone tool-using hominids lived in the Potwar plateau region of northern Pakistan over two million years ago where the oldest stone tools have been discovered near the town of Riwat. (Kenoyer 33)

Conventional theory maintains that the prehistoric habitation of India dates from the Upper Paleolithic Age ca. 400,000 B.C. to the Early Harappan period ca. 3000 to 2500 B.C. (Britannica 21:17) “We can identify factors that set the stage for the establishment of the first cities, and the presence of such factors can explain why early cities developed only in certain regions of the world. Some of the initial factors that resulted from patterns of human adaptation have their roots in the first stone tool technologies and hunting strategies of the earliest human populations in the subcontinent. Other factors can be traced to the time when communities began producing their own food by cultivating plants and raising animals. The development of ceramics and ornaments also reflects important economic and social changes that are closely tied to status and ritual beliefs. Political and religious changes occurring the conjunction with these other developments helped set the stage for the final rise of cities and state level political organization.” (Kenoyer 38-39)

“At the end of the Pleistocene glacial period between 12 and 10,000 years ago, some communities may have lived [year-round] in the highland valleys, but many bands continued to move back to the plains in the cold winters. (Kenoyer 35) Some hunting-and-gathering bands returned to the same locality each year and eventually constructed more permanent houses out of mud or stone, reeds and thatch. They began to systematically to exploit specific types of plants (wheat, barely, lentils) and animals (sheep, goat, cattle and pigs), which became domesticated.” (Kenoyer 35)

Jared Diamond linked the success of the Indus Valley with the development of its food production capabilities, but was quick to point out that it was through diffusion that agriculture developed that particular region. (Diamond 9) The transition of food production can be seen as the indigenous event that probably occurred simultaneously in the highland regions and all among the piedmont one of Baluchistan. (Kenoyer 36-37) The earliest levels at Mehrgarh Period IA date from around 6500 to 6000 B.C., and because no pottery or copper tools have been found in these levels, they are said to belong to the no-ceramic or aceramic Neolithic period. An irregular scatter of mud-brick houses separated by refuse dumps and passageways made up the first village. (Kenoyer 37)

“In 1826, British Army deserter James Lewis, posing as an American engineer named Charles Masson, recorded the existence of mounded ruins at a small town in the Punjab called Harappa.” (Kenoyer 20) The energetic young explorer Alexander Barnes, who was scouting out the region for its commercial and strategic potential, followed him. The Punjab came under British control after 1849, and with the building of canals, roads and bridges, it became one of the most prosperous agricultural provinces of the empire. Alexander Cunningham, director of the recently formed Archaeological Survey of India, visited the mounds in 1853 and 1856 as he searched for the cities of the Buddhist period that had been visited by early Chinese pilgrims.” (Kenoyer 20-22) Initially, it was assumed that the new sites were remnants of the Buddhist historical period but it soon became evident that wasn’t the case. (Kenoyer 20-22) Now a century later we are still barely touching the surface.

Journalist Graham Hancock challenged these facts and has presented an entirely different theory regarding such dates. Hancock’s assertion is that from 15,000 B.C. to 9,000 B.C., a series of advanced coastal civilizations in India and elsewhere were inundated by the floodwaters of the post-glacial meltdown. It was from this event, Hancock claims, that the hundreds of flood myths and legends of lost continents became universal. Therefore, some of the earliest known civilizations in Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley were actually descended from the survivors of this great cataclysm.

The present timeline dates the first Neolithic settlements in Baluchistan ca. 9000 B.C. The various stages of human antiquity — Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Chalcolithic — roughly correspond to that of Europe with a few minor exceptions. During the Paleolithic or “Old Stone Age” there seems to be considerable activity. “The oldest artifacts yet found on the subcontinent, were uncovered at the western end of the Shiwalik Hills, near Rawalpindi in northern Pakistan. These quartzite pebble tools and flakes date to two million years ago, according to paleomagnetic analysis.” (Britannica 21:15) In later strata, evidence was found of chert tools and weapons, chert being a common form of stone used by Stone Age peoples to fashion tools and weapons. The Mesolithic Age extends over a substantial span of time. In Sri Lanka, there were “Mesolithic sites dating back some 30,000 years.” (Britannica 21:13) The Neolithic age succeeded the Mesolithic in varying degrees of technological achievement, locations and time. “The Neolithic was originally described as the era in which ground-stone tools and pottery made their appearance in local archaeological sequences.” (Possehl 23) It now more correctly signifies the period that saw the domestication of crops and livestock and the settling down in planting and pastoral communities. (Possehl 23) Around 7000 B.C., more advanced cultures existed to the west of the Indus Valley in the hills of Baluchistan.

At the ruins of Mehrgarh, there is evidence of five or six thousand years of occupation comprising two major periods, the first from the eighth to sixth millennium B.C. (Britannica 21:11) The second period was during the fifth, fourth and third millennium B.C. The most hotly debated issues of this civilization occur during the last mentioned periods. There was a 23-foot-deep mound that was discovered beneath the alluvial deposits. This seems to belong to Period I due to the discovery of artifacts indicative of the age. The presence of certain artifacts beyond the limits of the Indus Valley or Baluchistan seems to indicate extensive trade even at this early time. Although they certainly were not an urban or literate society, it is quite evident that they had a level of sophistication in their social organization that their neighbors in Europe did not yet possess. These cultures might have descended from a group of proto-Neolithic peoples that existed along the shoreline during the last Ice Age, and were inundated by rising sea levels resulting from the glacial meltdown. There is no evidence of any substantially organized society during this time period, but it seems logical that if this is the case evidence, it would be found off the coastline.

THE VEDIC ALTERNATIVE TO NOAH'S FLOOD
From the nineteenth century onward, Western scholarship has been dominated by two competing world-views: Darwinism and Biblical Creationism. Little credence was given to alternatives, and if there were any different points of view what are they and where did they come from? Darwinism was accompanied by a general belief in uniformatarianism, or the theory that all global changes happen gradually, and incrementally over a long period of time, and Creationism distinguished by Catastrophism and the idea of a great flood that was responsible for much of the geologic makeup of our world today. However, there is an alternative, and it can be found in the ancient scriptures of India. Yet, there is much we still do not know about this great cultural ancestor.

The old beliefs of India are vital in understanding the antiquity of Indus Culture. The ancient Pakistani and Indian mythology illuminate our understanding of these civilizations much in the same way early Biblical texts allowed us to appreciate more fully myths found in Sumerian and Babylonian tablets. The Vedic texts may have been written in the second millennium, but the events they commemorate and describe go back to an even earlier time. (Chouinard, 2005) They also explain what the early Vedic authors thought happened to this lost civilization and what is yet to come. Unlike Western cosmologies, the Indian world-view is cyclical rather than linear. There is a never-ending cycle of creation, destruction and rebirth. This tradition was also applied to legend. One of the most intriguing of these legends involved the god-man Krishna, who is the human representation of the god Vishnu, founded the city of Dwarka, and ruled over it making it the spiritual center of his kingdom and reign on Earth. This city was built on the site of an even more ancient citadel, Kususthali, from land reclaimed from the Arabian Sea. “Krishna,” so the story goes, “solicited a space of twelve furlongs from the ocean, and there he built the city of Dwarka, defended by high ramparts.” Centuries passed and the Davapara Yuga, ended. Krishna was eventually slain and the world fell into darkness and chaos. “On the same day that Krishna departed from the Earth powerful dark-bodied Kali Age descended. The ocean rose and submerged the whole of Dwarka.” (Hancock 29) The Age of Kali represents the known history of the human race with its impiety, its violence and social degradation, its weaknesses and malice. This period began 5,000 years ago, circa. 3102 B.C. Before that a civilization unparalleled in the history of mankind existed according to Hindu text.

This mythological statement ties the discoveries made at the Harappan sites and the idea that there was indeed a civilization that predated Mesopotamia, Egypt and the new World. Graham Hancock firmly believes that 11,000 years ago, on an area of several hundred kilometers from what is now the shore of the Arabian Sea that a sophisticated and highly evolved civilization existed at the precise spot that was later inundated by the massive floodwaters following the glacial meltdown of the last Ice Age. Vedic scripture describes a massive flood and how Manu and the Seven Sages sought refuge in the Himalayas. (Hancock 109) It is clear that since the Himalayas are the tallest peaks on the planet, it would be unlikely if a flood could have penetrated and over swept them, allowing a boat to seek safety there. (Hancock 109) But perhaps a boat did play a part in the process of preserving early Indian civilization, so that the authors of the scriptures could have embellished and dramatized it until the end result was a story describing just that, a myth closely related to the story of Noah making land-fall on Mt. Ararat. (Hancock 110) Hancock presented his hypothesis of the Indian Atlantis on a notepad he taken on route to Goa:

Hypothesis:

The Indus-Sarasvati civilization, the development of which archaeologists have already traced back 9000 years, has an earlier episode of hidden prehistory. It was founded by the survivors of a lost Indian coastal civilization destroyed by the great floods at the end of the Ice Age. Such floods occurred many times between 15,000 and 7,000 years ago, but a particularly bad episode is attested in high salinity levels in the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal between 12,000 and 10,000 years ago. . . The survivors who established the early villages practiced a “proto-Vedic” religion that they had brought with them from their inundated homeland and probably spoke an early form of Sanskrit.

There were secular rulers but the real leadership of the new communities remained vested down the generations in the brotherhood of sages whose forefather had escaped the deluge – the lineage of Vedic masters whose task it was to preserve and transmit a precious body of antediluvian knowledge. (Hancock 113)

In the Near East, Egyptian scribes told of a forgotten epoch in the history of man when the gods ruled the world, and later by powerful overseers called the companions of Horus. But it is only in the East, on the Indian subcontinent, that we catch a glimmer of the true “cradle of civilization.” In India, it was called the Rama Empire that reigned, according to myth, some 50,000 years ago. As this paper had discussed, many of the attributes of this civilization, specifically in Harappa indicate that such a civilization is perhaps an actuality.

“The most intriguing artifacts are postage-stamp-size seals, usually of stone, that bear writing and carved figures that may be deities. Other seals depict animals, such as the humped zebu bull, still common in the Indian subcontinent. Many of these pieces were used to stamp impressions on clay rectangles, probably for attaching to trade goods to show ownership. Others may have been identification badges of a sort, proclaiming the wearer’s membership in a particular community.” (Edwards 116) A clay jar inscribed with wedge-like symbols and other shapes might be the smoking gun: proof that the Indus civilization is older than that of Sumer. Richard Meadow told BBC that his excavators will continue to search for more examples of this unique writing system in order to determine if it is indeed a genuine form of writing and, if so, how it developed from its primitive form to the more advanced writing we see today. The answer came sooner than he expected.

David Whitehouse made the following observation in an article in BBC News:

What historians know of the Harappan civilization makes them unique. Their society did not like great differences between social classes or the display of wealth by rulers. They did not leave behind large monuments or rich graves. They appear to be a peaceful people who displayed their art in smaller works of stone. Their society seems to have petered out. Around 1900 B.C., Harappa and other urban centers started to decline as people left them to move east to what is now India and the Ganges. (Chouinard, 2005)

Whitehouse closes his article by stating that perhaps writing arose independently in three places at once between 3500 B.C. and 3100 B.C. I would not doubt that there is much more to this story than mainstream scientists or archaeologists are prepared to admit. Though the Indus script has never been deciphered, it is clear that such myths as universal floods and lost civilizations are definitely present in the Hindu Vedic sources. Further investigation indicates that the Indus Valley Civilization was “thoroughly individual and independent” and was “deeply rooted in Indian soil. The Indus Valley Civilization represents a very perfect adjustment of human life to a specific environment. And it has endured; it is already specifically Indian and forms the basis of modern Indian culture.” (Britannica 21:30-31) According to conventional wisdom the main centers of early civilization were in Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, China, Mesoamerica and Peru. Other later civilizations, in Europe, Africa and throughout the Old World were products of cultural and racial interaction with these older and more advanced cultures. Far older civilizations, whose origins can be traced to before 6,000 B.C. have since been identified, but there is still much speculation and debate on the issues. This calls into question the existing chronology and clarifies the position that either the Indus Valley Civilization or another South Asian culture preceded the well-known Sumerian and Egyptian civilizations.

Yet there is much we still do not know about this great cultural ancestor. ”The breakthrough” according to journalist and researcher Graham Hancock, “came with the excavations at the village farming community of Mehrgarh in Baluchistan in 1974.” Excavation layers have shown that a sophisticated material culture had inhabited that site as late as 7,000 B.C., making it far older than any other known culture found in any strata anywhere in the world. This site had been “continuously inhabited” until late in the first millennium B.C.

Following the partition of British India, the area of the IVC was divided between Pakistan and India, and excavations from this time include those led by Sir Mortimer Wheeler in 1949, archaeological adviser to the Government of Pakistan. Outposts of the Indus Valley civilization were excavated as far west as Sutkagan Dor in Baluchistan, as far north as the Oxus River in Afghanistan.

Initially, it was assumed that the new sites were remnants of the Buddhist historical period but it soon became evident that wasn’t the case. (Kenoyer 20-22)

“Mohenjodaro and some of the other Indus-Sarasvati settlements were laid out according to a strict grid with major thoroughfares and buildings aligned to the cardinal directions: north-south and east-west.” Hancock was amazed how this civilization emerged from seemingly nowhere as if the gods, or a parent civilization that has been lost to us had created it instantaneously. (Hancock 115-120)

Unlike Egypt and Mesopotamia, characterized by huge ziggurats, temples, pyramids and palaces dedicated in honor of kings, rulers and gods, Harappa was clearly lacking in this respect. “The small scale of Indus art objects suggests that craftsmanship and technical qualities were more important than gross monumentality.” (Kenoyer 18) There was no sign of “kingship or theocracy,” only an “elaborate middle-class society.” There were also no signs of warfare, no carved depictions of battles, war sacrifices, or violence of any kind. Harappa was a civilization ruled by merchants and traders, who used canals, waterways and a complex road-system to trade with other Indus Valley states and even westward with the Near East, the Levant and Southeastern Europe. (Edwards 116-117) The “Indus people had a well-defined set of concepts about human life and culture that they used to set themselves apart from other peoples.” (Possehl 54) Holding the very fabric of their civilization together was a new ideology, or order, based on urbanization, city life and community. “Archaeologists see this new order, or ideology, expressed as new signs and symbols.” (Possehl 54-57) Their religious convictions were projected inward not outward. Rather than glorifying their gods or divine rulers with great monuments, secular political beliefs and social customs seemed more important to these people. This was like being a “good Marxist” in the former Soviet Union. Perhaps being a “good Harappan” represented the highest ideal in the Indus Civilization.” (Possehl 54-57) It seems that Protagoras’ ideology “man is the measure of all things” was being practiced three thousands years before the great Greek philosophers ever lived.

Harappan tablets depict glorious processions that might be staged to elevate the status of “merchants, landowners and spiritual leaders, enabling them to rule the Indus through control of religion and trade.” (Edwards 121) “We do not know who the actual rulers of these cities were, but they may have been wealthy merchants, powerful landlords or spiritual leaders. These rulers controlled vast trade networks that funneled raw materials from distant Central Asia, Oman and peninsular India to urban workshops. Local exchange networks redistributed the finished goods: agricultural and pastoral communities provided food for urban centers.” (Kenoyer 17) “The Indus people employed the wheel for transport as well as to turn pottery, and they were the first to make large-scale use of fire-hardened bricks in construction.” Like their neighbors the Sumerians, the Harappans also “had a writing system; archaeologists have unearthed thousands of examples of the script. Despite the efforts of many scholars, however, the symbols have yet to yield a credible sentence — a major reason that the Indus culture, surely one of the greatest of the ancient world, has remained vexingly obscure.” (Edwards 114)

Until the discovery of the Harappan shards, it was Egypt that was credited as the birthplace of writing. A collection of small, clay tablets engraved with an archaic form of hieroglyphics was found in 1998 in the tomb of the Scorpion king, one of the rulers of Egypt prior to the foundation of the glorious Old Kingdom. Carbon-14 dating revealed that the tablets had been inscribed around 3300-3200 B.C., a few centuries earlier than the supposed invention of cuneiform writing around 3100 B.C. by the Sumerians. (Chouinard, 2005)

Archaeologists now believe that this system of writing did not develop as a natural outgrowth of a spoken language. They believe that it was invented at the order of a ruler who needed to find the best way to make records and levy taxes. A uniform system of writing would be the perfect agent for not only civic leaders but priests wishing to put down in writing their various incantations, descriptions of holy rites and the stories which their faiths were based upon. It is very probable that pre-Columbian civilizations such as the Aztec and Maya also were based on such practical necessity. The key to understanding this script is an extrapolative comparison to known Egyptian hieroglyphics. But unlike the Scorpion inscriptions, there was nothing that could be used to compare with the Harappan script, no common Rosetta stone from which to unlock its mysteries. (Chouinard, 2005) “The most intriguing artifacts are postage-stamp-size seals, usually of stone, that bear writing and carved figures that may be deities. Other seals depict animals, such as the humped zebu bull, still common in the Indian subcontinent. Many of these pieces were used to stamp impressions on clay rectangles, probably for attaching to trade goods to show ownership. Others may have been identification badges of a sort, proclaiming the wearer’s membership in a particular community.” (Edwards 116) In the Near East, Egyptian scribes told of a forgotten epoch in the history of man when the gods ruled the world, and later by powerful overseers called the companions of Horus. But it is only in the East, on the Indian subcontinent, that we catch a glimmer of the true “cradle of civilization.” In India, it was called the Rama Empire that reigned, according to myth, some 50,000 years ago. As this paper had discussed, many of the attributes of this civilization, specifically in Harappa indicate that such a civilization is perhaps an actuality.

The ruins of the ancient Indus Valley Civilization shed new light on the rise of civilization. Excavations have shown a technologically sophisticated culture of unimagined wealth and power that harkens back to the idea of Atlantis. It is very possible that this culture, lost to the sands of time for five thousand years, may prove to be our direct cultural ancestor. It is unsettling for Europeans to consider that a predominately Asian community could have preceded the west and established the basic fundamentals of organized society. The birthplace of writing, forever tied with cuneiform script found on clay tablets in Mesopotamia, may have proved to be an ingenious copy of another, far earlier innovation.

In Forbidden History, David Lewis writes: “The world is full of mysteries. And given its mystical traditions, no place in the world remains more mysterious than India, a country and culture said to be rooted in primordial timelessness.” (Kenyon 35)

WORKS CITED
Chouinard, Patrick C. 2005. Earliest Script Found in Indus Valley, Ancient American Magazine (May).
Diamond, Jared. 1997. Guns, Germs and and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, New York: Norton and Company.
Edwards, Mike. 2000. Indus Civilization: Clues to An Ancient Puzzle,National Geographic Magazine (June) 114-129.
Hancock, Graham. 2002. Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization, New York: Crown Publishers.
The Indus Valley Civilization, Last modified June 15, 2005, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_valley_civilization.
Kenoyer, Jonathan Mark. 1998. Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilizations,New York:Oxford University Press.
The New Encyclopedia Britannica fifteenth ed., 1998. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica Inc.
Possehl, Gregory L. 2002. The Indus Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective, New York: Altamira Press

THE INDUS VALLEY, ANCIENT BALUCHISTAN, PAKISTAN AND INDIA

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THE INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION: ATLANTIS OF THE EAST?By Patrick C. Chouinard, excerpt from A Legacy of Gods and Empires

THE INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION: ATLANTIS OF THE EAST?
By Patrick C. Chouinard, excerpt from A Legacy of Gods and Empires