India's Atlantis: The Indus Valley Civilization

[Skywizard]

shrouded in mystery

The Ancient Indus Valley Civilization of India is shrouded in mystery. For years, ancient India was thought to have only dated back about 200 years prior to Alexander the Great’s invasion of the area, about 500 B.C. However, discoveries of ancient cities like Mohenjo Daro (Mound of the Dead) and Harappa have led researchers to believe that the civilization must date back much further than originally thought. In fact, the estimated date has been pushed back thousands of years.

The cities they discovered are so intricate that they believe they must have been planned before they were developed, exhibiting an early form of city planning including plumbing/sewage system that is more advanced than some found today. Nearly every house had a bathing area and drainage system, and wells were located throughout the city.

Unlike other ancient civilizations such as those in Egypt and Mesopotamia, the Indus cities lack large-scale monuments like palaces, temples, or elaborate royal tombs. The absence of these structures has led to theories that the civilization may not have been ruled by a king or a powerful priestly class. This suggests a more egalitarian society where power may have been decentralized or organized in a way that did not require grand displays of authority.

The Indus people also developed a written language, but it remains one of the greatest mysteries of this ancient civilization. The script is found on small seals, pottery, and tablets, but the inscriptions are very brief, typically containing only a few characters. Despite numerous attempts by linguists and archaeologists, the script has not been deciphered. Because the script remains a mystery, we have no written records from the civilization itself, leaving their beliefs, political structure, and daily life open to speculation.

Like the Mayans, it is unclear what drove this civilization away from their homes. Several theories are climate change (such as drought), invasion (there is little evidence of a large-scale invasion) and internal collapse (social and economic systems broken down).

Ultimately, this great civilization didn't fall to a cataclysmic invasion. It simply faded away, its perfectly planned cities becoming ghost towns. The Indus Valley Civilization serves as a chilling reminder that even the most advanced and well-organized societies can, for reasons unknown, simply vanish, leaving behind a silence that continues to baffle historians and archaeologists to this day.





"the greatest mystery is not that we have come here, but that we have chosen to remain."

...peace

[shaberon]

Posted by Skywizard (here)
However, discoveries of ancient cities like Mohenjo Daro (Mound of the Dead) and Harappa have led researchers to believe that the civilization must date back much further than originally thought. In fact, the estimated date has been pushed back thousands of years.

I have put a few months into studying this rather extensively.

I would have to say that a lot of "ancient information" is "brand new" as it continues to come to light.

Mohenjo daro and Harappa are relatively late establishments.

Evidence of brick towns pre-dates 3,000 B. C. E., and the currently oldest-known evidence of a ploughed field is at Kalibangan around 2,800.

The *problem* is that historical and archeological studies have succumbed to the academic defining of things as "kingdoms" and "races" and therefor competition and dominance.

I would suggest the *reason* for the activity was an outflow of development from Iran. Almost specifically Jiroft is the "origin of writing", and large sites occur in Iran to an even more distant age, something like 4,000 B. C. E.; and, more impressively, there are relics showing a huge trade triangle between Turkmenistan, Iran, and India in these misty times.

My personal thought is India never suffered an "Aryan invasion", but, rather, evolved Sanskrit and its corresponding culture by importing it. Thus the development of IVC was an imitation of that seen in Iran, or, more specifically, Sistan.

That's correct that it is unlike Egypt or Mesopotamia and has almost no signs of violent conflict.

It is probably best thought of as an "architectural and technological layer" that was not sustained after a certain point.

As to its influence, the Indus system of weights in 2,300 B. C. E. was used as far afield as Mari, Syria, which region shows signs of Indian influence for about a thousand years. This same system is still used in jewelry.

I find it fascinating, and am working on the early form of Sanskrit as most likely being present in the IVC, which means the written script is either a Sanskrit educational system, or, its way of interfacing with a Dravidian sprachbund.

There are a million mostly-wrong things posted about this, such as nothing says the statue is a priest or king, it's just a statue with no further context, other than perhaps the design work.

All previous research has been conditioned by some kind of European attack on India, but this is untenable. There is no evidence of migration, and no genetic input from "the Steppes" until a tiny trickle not before 1,200 B. C. E.. So they had it backwards. There is instead outflow from India to Sistan.

The actual cultural hub was not even in the Indus Valley, it's the Ghaggar-Hakra system in Haryana, around the eastern edge of the brick sites.

There were floods and droughts which became fairly harmful, but otherwise, there is no reason to say that one kindgom or empire was overthrown and replaced by another. Nothing like that. Depends on the absolute chronology of the Veda, which *does* record conflict. I would tend to guess that these records are perhaps a couple centuries younger than the IVC script.

[Raskolnikov]

Posted by shaberon (here)

Posted by Skywizard (here)
However, discoveries of ancient cities like Mohenjo Daro (Mound of the Dead) and Harappa have led researchers to believe that the civilization must date back much further than originally thought. In fact, the estimated date has been pushed back thousands of years.

The *problem* is that historical and archeological studies have succumbed to the academic defining of things as "kingdoms" and "races" and therefor competition and dominance.

Ah yes, the eternal agenda. I've always felt the goal was to paint all past civilizations as "survival of the fittest" cultures, the fight for dominance, kingdoms, royal bloodlines and all that bs. Yet so much evidence that doesn't fit into this narrative is continually reburied, destroyed, or written off as some kind of oddity or fluke. Civilization is built upon civilization upon civilization. Reminds me of the multiple layers of the Statue of Liberty: the cheap statue, built upon a massive pedestal from an older civilization, built upon a starfort from an even older civilization, built upon a man-made island from possibly an even older civilization. They need to keep us in the no creator/no purpose/pure chance/survival of the fittest mode to remain in power.

[shaberon]

Posted by Raskolnikov (here)

Posted by shaberon (here)

Posted by Skywizard (here)
However, discoveries of ancient cities like Mohenjo Daro (Mound of the Dead) and Harappa have led researchers to believe that the civilization must date back much further than originally thought. In fact, the estimated date has been pushed back thousands of years.

The *problem* is that historical and archeological studies have succumbed to the academic defining of things as "kingdoms" and "races" and therefor competition and dominance.

Ah yes, the eternal agenda. I've always felt the goal was to paint all past civilizations as "survival of the fittest" cultures, the fight for dominance, kingdoms, royal bloodlines and all that bs. Yet so much evidence that doesn't fit into this narrative is continually reburied, destroyed, or written off as some kind of oddity or fluke.

It's by design, coming from Sargon of Akkadia.

Most middle eastern powers sought to replicate his "conqueror, might is right" methods at least through the Assyrian Empire, and then it may lose this detail, but remains as the underlying attitude through many more-recent warmaking countries.

Through this, I would suggest that what we are seeing are different views on the meaning of Victory. Towards the west, this takes on descending and lesser meanings, just as in the Sargonic image. In the east, this is a last resort, because the main meaning is inner and personal.

There is little evidence of organized battle prior to the Akkadians, who were successful with an army of about 5,000.

Obviously, it takes a massive amount of dedicated resources to support this, which would have been of no interest to those focused on simpler things.

The number and type of weapons found in IVC offer little implication that anything other than hunting was being done.

Meanwhile, receipts for battle arrows have been found for three successive generations of middle eastern kings, in the amounts:


400

1,000

10,000


Like generations of processors, it looks like a relatively rapid and drastic change.

True enough, India later becomes a battle zone, mostly internally, but my interest in the archaic times is precisely because it is all about peaceful trade. I believe this was the natural "world civilization" which survived actually until about the 600s. For example we have two old manuscripts of Bhutadamara Tantra; in the first, the Roman Denarius is accepted as an everyday item, while in the second manuscript, one or two hundred years later, they don't know what it is.

Europeans on discovering Roman relics in India had no clue how they got there, but considered it as important for evidence of early Christianity.