Rakhigiri Township, The Sindhu- Sarasvati Civilization
The Indus-Sarasvati or Harappan civilization is one of the largest civilizations of the Ancient world. Extending over more than 386,000 square miles across the plains of the Indus from the Arabian Sea to the Ganges. In its mature phase with an estimated population of over five million people. It had been larger than either Egypt or Mesopotamia.
History
Between 7000 and 5000 BCE, pastoral camps and therefore the first village farming communities settled into this fertile region. Over millennia these communities developed and interacted with others, sharing skills and technologies such as pottery, metallurgy, town planning, and farming. Hence, by 2500 BCE the region became the most important, if not the best civilization of the traditional world. The Indus-Sarasvati Civilization, its zenith lasted about thirteen centuries and flourished within the basins of the Indus, and the Sarasvati or Ghaggar-Hakra River, which once flowed through northwest India and eastern Pakistan. The majority of the discovered sites are located either along these major rivers and their tributaries or along trade routes linking larger urban centers.
Trade Courses
Iran, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent had engaged in seasonal migration and trade for many years. Hence the people of the Indus-Sarasvati Civilization already had long-standing connections with regions to their West. They also established links with Gulf Coast cultures reaching all the way of southern Mesopotamia and, via intermediaries like Bahrain’s Dilmun traders, far beyond. They exported gold, copper, timber, ivory, and cotton to Mesopotamia and imported bronze, tin, silver, lapis lazuli, and soapstone. To maintain such an extensive trade network they must have possessed advanced skills in shipbuilding, sailing, and overland transportation.
Indus-Sarasvati Civilization artifacts found in Mesopotamia, Oman, and Bahrain indicate the trade with distant regions. The recently discovered Jiroft site on the Iranian plateau lies along the trail of this trade network and here archaeologists have found lazuli (from Afghanistan or western Baluchistan) and carnelian (likely from the Indus Valley) alongside artifacts from other regions.
Archaeological History
Archaeology has its roots in European imperialism, which has historically meant that certain regions like Mesopotamia and Egypt are emphasized over others. Scholars such as Professor Gregory L. Possehl, author of Harappan Civilization, estimate that but two percent of a probable 2,600 sites are excavated across India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, and more should be found.
Findings within the Indus-Sarasvati region go back as early as 7000 BCE up to 300 BCE. Most sites appear to be small villages and towns, but others, for instance, the location of Ganweriwala within the Cholistan region of Pakistan is estimated to hide 80 hectares (197.68 acres). And Rakhigarhi located west of New Delhi is thought to exceed 225 hectares (555.987 acres), making it the largest site discovered to date in India and second largest in the subcontinent; after Mohenjo-Daro which covers 250 hectares (620 acres) in Pakistan.
Although threatened by urban development and mismanagement, it is hoped that significant breakthroughs in the understanding of the Indus-Sarasvati Civilization will come to light in the near future as new sites are unearthed using modern archaeological techniques and DNA research
Civilization Know-hows
Traditionally, early civilizations are ranked so as of importance consistent with degrees of sophistication within the development and usage of script, agriculture, urbanization, architecture, and trade. By these measures, the Indus-Sarasvati Civilization must be ranked as among the foremost advanced. This mercantile civilization had many progressive features like drainage, sewers, and baths. They invented a system of measurement, which may be the first example of a decimal system. Town planning made use of geometry. Their weights, used in trade, show a geometrical progression with regular increases in ratios.
Since the Indus script has so far not been deciphered there are tons we don’t realize the structure of society in villages or towns, or across the greater civilization. It may have been a loose confederation of merchant cities; cities that sprang up as a result of unique, favorable environmental conditions that initially led to agricultural surpluses and subsequently to productivity surfeits, trade, and specialization.
The failure to decipher the script has left many important questions unanswered, including the very identity of the Indus people. Their civilization appears to possess developed and thrived without warfare or violence, but we don’t know what the facility structure seemed like in these towns or across the greater civilization. We don’t know if there was a central government or ruler, but indications are that there wasn’t since there are not any palaces, and really few structures are often identified that may have had a religious function. Not one seal depicts a battle, a captive or a victor, and there’s no evidence anywhere of armies or warfare, slaughter, or man-made destruction in any settlement, at any phase of this civilization.
Fortifications and the few weapons that have been found can be accounted for by the need for protection against floods as well as perhaps local marauders, and for hunting. Notwithstanding, their civilization seems to possess been highly organized, building cities of uniform planning, each producing almost identical artifacts like pottery, seals, weights, and bricks, and trading over vast distances from Central Asia to Mesopotamia for centuries.
There are neither archaeological nor any genetic indications about the origin of civilization. The cumulative impact wasn’t such a lot a collapse of the Indus-Sarasvati Civilization as a gradual return to rural farming centered on smaller settlements and a broad-based migration towards the eastern river basins in northern India with its more humid climate.
Theories around civilization
The debate about the character and therefore the origin of Vedic culture has been contentious and divisive, often informed by bias and politics. Historically there are two opposing theories: the Eurocentric “Aryan invasion theory” and therefore the equally one-sided Indo-centric “Indigenous origin theory.”
Most scholars today agree that while some Sanskrit-speaking Aryans were creating mayhem on the steppes, others had begun to migrate to the south, traveling in small bands through Afghanistan and eventually settling within the Sapta-Sindhu, “The Land of the Seven Rivers”. Given the limited evidence, the scholar Karen Armstrong in her book the good Transformation puts it best:
“Our only sources of data are the ritual texts, composed in Sanskrit, referred to as the Vedas (Knowledge). The language of the Vedas is so on the brink of the Avestan and its cultural assumptions so on the brink of the Gathas that it’s almost certainly an Aryan scripture. Today most historians accept that in the second millennium, Aryan tribes from the steppes did indeed colonize the Indus Valley. But it had been neither a mass movement nor a military invasion. There’s no evidence of fighting, resistance, or widespread destruction. Instead, there was probably endless infiltration of the region by different Aryan groups over a real while”
As we said earlier, Iran, Central Asia, and therefore the Indian subcontinent had engaged in seasonal and trade migration for many years, therefore, the people of the Indus-Sarasvati Civilization already had long-standing connections with regions to the West. This infiltration of Aryans could have heightened in intensity during the severe drought beginning around 2000 BCE, but by this point aspects of both cultures could become assimilated. The next dissolution of the good Indian Indus-Sarasvati Civilization quite likely left a regional power vacuum that the people from the west took over.
Deities
At times of danger and instability not only is there an urgent got to communicate with the Divine, but people tend to reflect on the possible end of their traditional identity and therefore the possibility of the termination of their most cherished, sacred, beliefs and non-secular practices. For instance, it had been while in exile in Babylon, that Jewish scholars began to gather and redact the memories, stories, and events that might create what we all know today because of the Bible.
The Rig Veda naturally reflects its people’s perennial beliefs, ancient past, and their newer histories and experiences. Within the throes of building themselves within Punjab, the Aryans had turned to the God Indra and far away from the cult of Varuna. Within the Rig Veda, Indra became the chief asura (Sanskrit for the Avestan ahura) the Supreme God. Indra within the heavens reflected the time of scarcity and struggle on the world that developed from two hundred years of drought. Indra, the God of war, was a heroic God with the facility to liberate the waters from the demon and enemy of the gods: the “serpent or dragon” (quite possibly glaciers or clouds) that trapped them.
Most scholars concluded that parts of the Vedas that are much, much older, reveal to rishis were absolutely authoritative and divine. They have passed down with exactitude, especially because the precision of every sound was so important for these early peoples. As the indispensable and most precious part of a people’s ancient oral culture, these verses would have always traveled with the Aryan or Indian peoples, and confine mind that nobody has any idea how old the Vedas are: scholars have speculated their origins from as early as 5000–6000 BCE.
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