ap world history summer project 2014 - houstonisd.org · that said, to make some sweeping...
TRANSCRIPT
AP World History Summer Project 2014 All parts of the summer project will be on the wwwBellaireorg website and on the AP World History blog httpwwwapworldbellaireblogspotcom
FOLLOW DIRECTIONS EXACTLY AS WRITTEN Register at the turnitincom website Go to create a user profile at top right corner Follow the directions after that It will eventually ask for the class ID and enrollment password You will turn your four essays to the proper folders at turnitincom Class ID 8053358 Password APWORLD (case sensitive) Turnitincom will verify that the work you turn in is your work alone _____________________________________________________________________________________________
Activity one After reading the background information case studies and cartoons (below) write an
800 word report (two paragraphs) describing the hunter-gatherer societies of the Paleolithic Era
and the transition to farming people of the Neolithic Era discuss the following topics in your paper
bull Lifestyle including diet and nutrition
bull Invention of early tools including simple weapons
bull Understanding of how to make fire
bull Social organization
bull Development of oral language
bull Art and its importance
(800 words=1 page typed Times New Roman font single spaced size 12 standard margins) Do
NOT quote the information summarize only Turn in your essay to wwwturnitincom before the
first day of school
Background Information of Paleolithic Peoples Archeological evidence indicates that during the Paleolithic era hunting-foraging bands of humans
gradually migrated from their origin in East Africa to Eurasia Australia and the Americas adapting their
technology and cultures to new climate regions
A Humans used fire in new ways to aid hunting and foraging to protect against predators and to adapt
to cold environments
B Humans developed a wider range of tools specially adapted to different environments from tropics to
tundra
C Economic structures focused on small kinship groups of hunting-foraging bands that could make what
they needed to survive However not all groups were self-sufficient they exchanged people ideas and
goods
Paleolithic and Neolithic Societies The Stone Age
One of the principal characteristics separating hominids from their immediate ancestors was tool use it
has been traditional to divide human prehistory into eras based on levels of technological capability
Hominids made their tools out of many materials such as wood bone and animal skins But the most
noteworthy were the ones made of stone The first period of history is known as the Stone Age This era
is broken down into at least two periods the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age (10000 to 25 million years
ago) and Neolithic or New Stone Age (5000 to 10000 years ago) The change from Paleolithic to
Neolithic is associated with the end of the Ice Age
Early Tool-making
During the Paleolithic era Homo habilis and Homo erectus used crude tools including clubs and
choppers to crack open bones rudimentary axes and scrapers to prepare animal hides The earliest
humansmdashNeanderthal Cro-Magnon and Homo sapiens sapiensmdashimproved upon these tools and created
new ones Tools were generally designed to provide shelter protection and defense and foods and
clothing The earliest hominids lived in natural shelters like caves and canyons Fire was developed one
million years ago and then hominids made tent like structures and simple huts to live in By the end of the
Paleolithic the hominids were building more advanced wood and stone structures They also developed
weapons like clubs and rocks They devised tools for hunting and food preparation which could also be a
weapon such as the bow and arrow spears axes and knives
Paleolithic Religion
Paleolithic peoples were very spiritualistic Animism is the belief that everything had its own spirit
people animals trees rivers mountains and the sky The interaction of these spirits within this unseen
world was what shaped the visible events of everything around them weather wars and health
Those who demonstrated certain powers the shamans or witchdoctors were both greatly respected and
greatly feared They were understood to possess special magical powers that could be worked to the
good-or the bad--of the community The community as a whole felt that it exercised some controlling
influence over events--by their ability to pre-enact the necessary events of their lives Thus the
community engaged in ritualistic war dances hunting dances rain dances medicine dances and rituals
which supposedly had the power to predispose or control the behavior of the unseen spirits in order to
assure a forthcoming favorable outcome--whatever the event or whatever the communitys particular
need
Hunting and Gathering the New Stone Age
As time passed hominids began to organize themselves in social groups This would eventually
give birth to family units and these families would tend to cluster together by ties of kinship As clans
became larger they usually mixed with neighboring groups that grew into bands or tribes
Paleolithic groups sustained themselves by hunting and gathering This practice is known as
foraging Rather than produce food themselves hunter-gatherer societies lived off the resources from the
land They killed birds and animals for food especially mammoths bison deer and rodents They also
picked roots and berries from surrounding trees When the resources dried up the band or tribe moved to
a new area with sustainable resources
The early tribes also developed a form of government This organization was based on chiefs
leaders and religious figures to head the tribe They were to main figure to these early hunter-gatherer
societies and are responsible for keeping them together The early tribes also worshipped deities and
practiced a variety of religious rituals It is said that Cro-Magnon buried their dead over 100000 years
ago indicating the belief in an afterlife The religious ceremonies became more sophisticated with the
sacrificing to gods goddesses and spirits The early tribes were very artistic people they were known to
play music and paint on cave walls
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Case Study Neander Valley
Modern man was really forced to stop and think when unusual fossils (bones) were found in 1856 near
Duesseldorf Germany in the Neander Valley Workers were mining for limestone in a cave when they
came across a skull and other various bones This is of course how Neanderthal gets its name
This was not the first discovery of Neanderthal fossils though It was about 1829 or 1830 when fragments
from the skull of a Neanderthal child were found in Belgium and in 1848 a full skull of an adult was
found in Gibraltar But the find in the Neander Valley began all of the excitement it stirred up many
questions and theories
These remains found in the cave near Duesseldorf were examined by Rudolf Vichow a German
Anatomist He concluded that it was just a Homo sapiens (modern human) with rickets Vichow claimed
that the flattened head was due to some form of injury
A biologist named Thomas Huxley declared that it was
an ancestor of modern humans Paleontologist Marcellin
Boule argued that Neanderthals were not direct
ancestors of Homo sapiens sapiens and so called them
Homo neanderthalensis Boule also gave the impression
that these creatures were stupid Of course this is
disputable with the evidence of the average brain size of
a Neanderthal compared with that of a modern human
There was a dispute to whether Neanderthals were direct ancestors or an extinct species of their own
Immediately they were portrayed as slouched over violent bruteape-like cavemen And this image was
carried on until almost 1960 At this time scientists realized that the first found Neanderthal had arthritis
and they did in fact walk upright It is said that if you were to put a cleaned up Neanderthal with a group
of modern day humans there would not be much difference at all
The average height is thought to be about 5 feet tall Their
bodies were probably quite stocky or muscular with very
strong legs-most likely due to traveling or wandering They
had low brow ridges Their front teeth were quite large larger
than the modern humanrsquos and worn - indicating much use for
chewing Neanderthalsrsquo average brain size is larger than
some modern humans
According to evidence they lived between 130000 and
35000 years ago dating back to the fourth glaciation Neanderthals seemed to live primarily in Europe
and in Western Asia this is concluded because most of the fossils were found in these areas
Many Mousterian tools were found with the fossil remains consisting of different kinds of scrapers and
points Many believe they primarily hunted reindeer and whenever possible the larger animals such as
mammoths cave bears etc Neanderthals were probably huntergatherer groups If so their diets
consisted of mainly small animals vegetation and less often the larger animals They would have used
whatever was in their environment for food and tools
Evidence shows that they possibly buried their dead Remains have been found in shallow graves often
buried with items such as flowers tool etc perhaps as offerings to the dead
Sources
Fagan Brian M The Journey From Eden Thames and Hudson Ltd London 1990
Wenke Robert J Patterns in Prehistory humankindrsquos first three million years Oxford University
Press Inc New York 1980 1984 1990
___________________________________________________________________________________
What are the key characteristics of Paleolithic art
It seems a bit flippant to try to characterize the art from a period that encompasses most of human history
Paleolithic art is intricately bound to anthropological and archaeological studies that professionals have
devoted entire lives toward researching and compiling The truly curious should head in those directions
That said to make some sweeping generalizations Paleolithic art
Concerned itself with either food (hunting scenes animal carvings) or fertility (Venus figurines)
Its predominant theme was animals
Is considered to be an attempt by Stone Age peoples to gain some sort of control
over their environment whether by magic or ritual
Represents a giant leap in human cognition abstract thinking
Engines of our Ingenuity No 1908 BLOMBOS CAVE Dr John H Lienhard
Today lets visit Blombos Cave The University of Houstons College of Engineering presents this series
about the machines that make our civilization run and the people whose ingenuity created them
You and I have to struggle with our of Clan-of-the-Cave-Bear thinking Weve been trained to believe that
only about thirty-five-thousand years ago the fine upright Cro-Magnons arose to displace the brutish Neanderthals
Well thats all being turned on its ear by the Blombos Cave site
Blombos Cave overlooks the Indian Ocean on the south coast of South Africa In 1993 it stunned the
anthropological world when it yielded hundred-thousand-year-old finely-formed bone tools -- two or three times
the age of such tools from Europe And the people who made them were anatomically Modern Humans -- like you
and me
Let me give some benchmark dating here the Paleolithic Era (which means the Era of Old Stone) It starts
with the first human tool-making two and a half million years ago It ends after the last Ice Age and the beginnings
of agriculture After that we talk about the Neolithic Era (the Era of New Stone) It lasted until we took up
metalworking and we invented writing
The older Paleolithic Era took place in two parts Lower and Upper During the latter part the Upper
Paleolithic Era Modern Humans appeared and rapidly extended tool making beyond simple chipped rocks For a
long time wed believed all thatd started just a little over thirty thousand years ago
But most of the evidence for that had come out of Europe Now Blombos Cave has moved the rise of
Modern Humans back to a time long before the Neanderthals vanished It has tripled the length of the Upper
Paleolithic Era and it places the cradle of Modern Humans down at the far tip of the African continent
Among those oldest-known bone tools we find spear points awls spatulas We find standard forms of
tools We find the first evidence of fishing We find fine stonework of a kind that didnt turn up in Europe until
twenty-thousand years ago We find different areas of the cave devoted to specific activities
The most remarkable discovery is that of purely artistic technologies Ochre was widely used Ochre is a
form of iron ore that makes a fine paint It can be used on human bodies or on walls And those chunks of ochre
themselves have been scribed with abstract designs The cave has also yielded up a seventy-five-thousand-year-old
snail-shell necklace -- the oldest ever found
All this suggests something beyond just tool making These uses of an esthetic symbolic language would
hardly have been possible without speech as well And speech was also something wed thought was only thirty
thousand years old
Its neat to find our grandparents doing so well so long ago As I was reading about that old necklace my
wife showed me a simi-lar one in a jewelry catalog She said I guess we havent come as far as wed thought
Well its true We really did not start being smart just the day before yesterday
Earliest evidence for cheese making in the 6th millennium BCE
in northern Europe Melanie Salque et al (Nature International Journal of Science Dec 2012)
The introduction of dairying was a critical step in early agriculture with milk products being rapidly
adopted as a major component of the diets of prehistoric farmers and pottery-using late hunter-gatherers The
processing of milk particularly the production of cheese would have been a critical development because it not
only allowed the preservation of milk products in a non-perishable and transportable form but also it made milk a
more digestible commodity for early prehistoric farmers The finding of abundant milk residues in pottery vessels
from seventh millennium sites from north-western Anatolia provided the earliest evidence of milk processing
although the exact practice could not be explicitly defined1 Notably the discovery of potsherds pierced with small
holes appear at early Neolithic sites in temperate Europe in the sixth millennium BC and have been interpreted
typologically as lsquocheese-strainersrsquo although a direct association with milk processing has not yet been
demonstrated Organic residues preserved in pottery vessels have provided direct evidence for early milk use in the
Neolithic period in the Near East and south-eastern Europe north Africa Denmark and the British Isles based on
the δ13
C and Δ13
C values of the major fatty acids in milk Here we apply the same approach to investigate the
function of sievesstrainer vessels providing direct chemical evidence for their use in milk processing The
presence of abundant milk fat in these specialized vessels comparable in form to modern cheese strainers provides
compelling evidence for the vessels having being used to separate fat-rich milk curds from the lactose-containing
whey This new evidence emphasizes the importance of pottery vessels in processing dairy products particularly in
the manufacture of reduced-lactose milk products among lactose-intolerant prehistoric farming communities
The emergence of dairying was a major innovation in prehistoric societies enabling the supply of nutritious
food without the slaughtering of precious livestock The processing of milk particularly the production of cheese
would have been an important development however the origins of cheese making are currently unknown
Iconographic and written evidence from the mid-third-millennium BCE weakly documents the history of cheese
making although its origins probably lie much earlier in prehistoryhellip
Activity two Read ldquoConsequences and future of plant and animal domesticationrdquo by Jared
Diamond (below) and write an 800-1200 word summary (1-1 frac12 pages typed Times New Roman
font single spaced size 12 standard margins)
o Explain why humans began to domesticate plants and animals and how the species subsequently
changed
o Describe the reasons why so few species were suitable and why certain areas became
agricultural hearths
o Finally explain the consequences of domestication
Do NOT quote the article summarize only Turn in your summary to wwwturnitincom before the
first day of school
Consequences and future of plant and animal domestication Jared Diamond
Domestication interests us as the most momentous change in Holocene human history Why did it
operate on so few wild species in so few geographic areas Why did people adopt it at all why did they
adopt it when they did and how did it spread The answers to these questions determined the remaking of
the modern world as farmers spread at the expense of hunterndashgatherers and of other farmers
Plant and animal domestication is the most important development in the past 13000 years of
human history It interests all of us scientists and non-scientists alike because it provides most of our
food today it was prerequisite to the rise of civilization and it transformed global demography Because
domestication ultimately yielded agents of conquest (for example guns germs and steel) but arose in only
a few areas of the world and in certain of those areas earlier than in others the peoples who through
biogeographic luck first acquired domesticates acquired enormous advantages over other peoples and
expanded As a result of those replacements about 88 of all humans alive today speak some language
belonging to one or another of a mere seven language families confined in the early Holocene to two
small areas of Eurasia that happened to become the earliest centers of domestication mdash the Fertile
Crescent and parts of China Through that head start the inhabitants of those two areas spread their
languages and genes over much of the rest of the world Those localized origins of domestication
ultimately explain why this international journal of science is published in an Indo-European language
rather than in Basque Swahili Quechua or Pitjantjatjara
The past of domestication Our decision to domesticate
The question why farm strikes most of us modern humans as silly Of course it is better to grow
wheat and cows than to forage for roots and snails But in reality that perspective is flawed by hindsight
Food production could not possibly have arisen through a conscious decision because the worlds first
farmers had around them no model of farming to observe hence they could not have known that there
was a goal of domestication to strive for and could not have guessed the consequences that domestication
would bring for them If they had actually foreseen the consequences they would surely have outlawed
the first steps towards domestication because the archaeological and ethnographic record throughout the
world shows that the transition from hunting and gathering to farming eventually resulted in more work
lower adult stature worse nutritional condition and heavier disease burdens The only peoples who could
make a conscious choice about becoming farmers were hunterndashgatherers living adjacent to the first
farming communities and they generally disliked what they saw and rejected farming for the good
reasons just mentioned and others
Instead the origins of domestication involved unforeseen consequences of two sets of changes mdash
changes in plants and animals and changes in human behavior As initially recognized by Darwin many
of the differences between domestic plants and their wild ancestors evolved as consequences of wild
plants being selected gathered and brought back to camp by hunterndashgatherers while the roots of animal
domestication included the ubiquitous tendency of all peoples to try to tame or manage wild animals
(including such unlikely candidates as ospreys hyenas and grizzly bears) Although humans had been
manipulating wild plants and animals for a long time hunterndashgatherer behavior began to change at the
end of the Pleistocene because of increasingly unpredictable climate decreases in big-game species that
were hunters first-choice prey and increasing human occupation of available habitats To decrease the
risk of unpredictable variation in food supply people broadened their diets to second- and third-choice
foods which included more small game plus plant foods requiring much preparation such as grinding
leaching and soaking Eventually people transported some wild plants (such as wild cereals) from their
natural habitats to more productive habitats and began intentional cultivation
The emerging agricultural lifestyle had to compete with the established hunterndashgatherer lifestyle
Once domestication began to arise the changes of plants and animals that followed automatically under
domestication and the competitive advantages that domestication conveyed upon the first farmers
(despite their small stature and poor health) made the transition from the hunterndashgatherer lifestyle to food
production autocatalytic mdash but the speed of that transition varied considerably among regions Thus the
real question about the origins of agriculture which I consider below is why did food production
eventually out-compete the hunterndashgatherer lifestyle over almost the whole world at the particular times
and places that it did but not at earlier times and other places
Changes of wild species under domestication
These changes are particularly well understood for southwest Asias Fertile Crescent the site of
domestication that was earliest in the world and that yielded what are still the worlds most valuable
domestic plant and animal species For most species domesticated there the wild ancestor and its wild
geographic range have been identified its relation to the domesticate proven by genetic and chromosomal
studies its changes under domestication delineated (often at the gene level) those changes traced in
successive layers of the archaeological record and the approximate time and place of its domestication
identified
For example wild wheat and barley bear their seeds on top of a stalk that spontaneously shatters
dropping the seeds to the ground where they can germinate (but where they also become difficult for
humans to gather) An occasional single-gene mutation that prevents shattering is lethal in the wild
(because the seeds fail to drop) but conveniently concentrates the seeds for human gatherers Once people
started harvesting those wild cereal seeds bringing them back to camp accidentally spilling some and
eventually planting others seeds with a non-shattering mutation became unconsciously selected for rather
than against
Individual wild animals also vary in traits affecting their desirability to humans Chickens were
selected to be larger wild cattle (aurochs) to be smaller and sheep to lose their bristly outer hairs and not
to shed their soft inner hairs (the wool) Most domestic animals including even recently domesticated
trout have smaller brains and less acute sense organs than do their wild ancestors Good brains and keen
eyes are essential to survival in the wild but represent a quantitatively important waste of energy in the
barnyard as far as humans are concerned
Especially instructive are cases in which the same ancestral species became selected under
domestication for alternative purposes resulting in very different-appearing breeds or crops For instance
dogs were variously selected to kill wolves dig out rats race be eaten or be cuddled in our laps What
naive zoologist glancing at wolfhounds terriers greyhounds Mexican hairless dogs and chihuahuas
would even guess them to belong to the same species Similarly cabbage was variously selected for its
leaves (cabbage and kale) stems (kohlrabi) flower shoots (broccoli and cauliflower) and buds (brussels
sprouts)
Why so few wild species were domesticated
The wild animal species that most plausibly could have yielded valuable domesticates were large
terrestrial mammalian herbivores and omnivores of which the world holds 148 species weighing 45 kg or
more Yet only 14 of those 148 species were actually domesticated prompting us to ask what prevented
domestication of the other 134 species Similarly worldwide there are about 200000 wild species of
higher plants of which only about 100 yielded valuable domesticates Especially surprising are the many
cases in which only one of a closely related group of species became domesticated For example horses
and donkeys were domesticated but none of the four zebra species were
The key question concerning this selectivity of domestication is as follows in the cases of all
those species never domesticated did the difficulty lie with the species itself or with the people
indigenous to the area to which the species was native For instance is the abundance of large wild
mammals the reason why no mammal species was ever domesticated in subequatorial Africa making
domestication superfluous for Africans If that explanation were correct then African people should also
have ignored Eurasian domestic mammals when those were finally introduced to Africa and European
animal breeders on arriving in Africa should have succeeded in domesticating some African wild
mammals but both of those predictions are refuted by the actual course of history
Six independent lines of evidence converge to prove that in most cases the obstacle lay with the
species itself not with the local people the rapid acceptance of introduced Eurasian domesticates by non-
Eurasian peoples the rapid ancient domestication of the most valuable wild species the repeated
independent domestications of many of them the failure of even modern European plant and animal
breeders to add significantly to our short list of valuable domesticates ancient discoveries of the value of
thousands of species that were regularly harvested in the wild but that never became domesticated and
the identification of the particular reasons preventing the domestication of many of those species
Comparisons of domesticated wild species with never-domesticated close relatives illustrate the subtle
factors that can derail domestication For example it is initially surprising that oak trees the most
important wild food plant in many parts of Eurasia and North America were never domesticated Like
wild almonds acorns of most individual wild oaks contain bitter poisons with occasional non-poisonous
mutant trees preferred by human foragers However the non-poisonous condition is controlled by a single
dominant gene in almonds but polygenically in oaks so that offspring of the occasional non-poisonous
individuals are often non-poisonous in almonds but rarely so in oaks preventing selection of edible oak
varieties to this day A second example is provided by the European horse breeders who settled in South
Africa in the 1600s and mdash like African herders for previous millennia mdash tried to domesticate zebras
They gave up after several centuries for two reasons First zebras are incurably vicious have the bad
habit of biting a handler and not letting go until the handler is dead and thereby injure more zoo-keepers
each year than do tigers Second zebras have better peripheral vision than horses making them
impossible even for professional rodeo cowboys to lasso (they see the rope coming and flick away their
head)
Figure 1 Comparisons of domesticated wild species (left of each pair) and their never-
domesticated close relatives (right) reveal the subtle factors that can derail domestication
Among wild mammal species
that were never domesticated the six
main obstacles proved to be a diet not
easily supplied by humans (hence no
domestic anteaters) slow growth rate
and long birth spacing (for example
elephants and gorillas) nasty
disposition (grizzly bears and
rhinoceroses) reluctance to breed in
captivity (pandas and cheetahs) lack
of follow-the-leader dominance
hierarchies (bighorn sheep and
antelope) and tendency to panic in
enclosures or when faced with
predators (gazelles and deer except
reindeer) Many species passed five of
these six tests but were still not
domesticated because they failed a
sixth test Conclusions about non-domesticability from the fact of non-domestication are not circular
because these six obstacles can be assessed independently
Why there were so few homelands of agriculture
Food production bestowed on farmers enormous demographic technological political and
military advantages over neighboring hunterndashgatherers The history of the past 13000 years consists of
tales of hunterndashgatherer societies becoming driven out infected conquered or exterminated by farming
societies in every area of the world suitable for farming One might therefore have naively anticipated
that in any part of the world one or more of the local hunterndashgatherer societies would have stumbled
upon domestication become farmers and thereby outcompeted the other local hunterndashgatherer societies
In fact food production arose independently in at most nine areas of the world (Fertile Crescent China
Mesoamerica AndesAmazonia eastern United States Sahel tropical West Africa Ethiopia and New
Guinea)
The puzzle increases when one scrutinizes that list of homelands One might again naively have
expected the areas most productive for farming today to correspond at least roughly to the areas most
productive in the past In reality the list of homelands and the list of breadbaskets of the modern world
are almost mutually exclusive (Fig 2) The latter list includes California North Americas Great Plains
Europe the pampas of Argentina the cape of southern Africa the Indian subcontinent Java and
Australias wheat belt Because these areas are evidently so well suited to farming or herding today why
were they not so in the past
Figure 2 Ancient and modern centers of agriculture
Ancient centers of origin of plant and animal domestication mdash the nine homelands of food
production mdash are indicated by the orange-shaded areas on the map The most agriculturally productive
areas of the modern world as judged by cereals and major staples are indicated by the yellow-shaded
areas Note that there is almost no overlap between the areas highlighted except that China appears on
both distributions and that the most productive areas of the central United States today approach areas of
the eastern United States where domestication originated The reason why the two distributions are so
different is that agriculture arose in areas to which the wild ancestors of the most valuable domesticable
crops and animals were native but other areas proved much more productive when those valuable
domesticates reached them
The explanation is that the homelands of agriculture were instead merely those regions to which
the most numerous and most valuable domesticable wild plant and animal species were native Only in
those areas were incipient early farmers able to out-compete local hunterndashgatherers Once those locally
available wild species had been domesticated and had spread outside the homelands societies of
homelands had no further advantage other than that of a head start and they were eventually overtaken by
societies of more fertile or climatically more favored areas outside the homelands
For instance the Fertile Crescent of southwest Asia was home to wild wheats barley peas sheep
goats cows and pigs mdash a list that includes what are still the most valuable crops and livestock of the
modern world Hence hunterndashgatherers of the Fertile Crescent domesticated those species and became the
worlds first farmers and herders beginning around 8500 BCE That head start in food production led to
them and their close neighbors also developing the worlds first metal tools writing empires and
professional armies Those tools of conquest and Fertile Crescent human genes gradually spread west
into Europe and North Africa and east into the western Indian subcontinent and central Asia However
once those crops livestock and human inventions had spread Fertile Crescent societies possessed no
other advantages As all of those elements slowly spread northwest across Europe farming and power
also shifted northwest from the Fertile Crescent to areas where farming had never arisen independently mdash
first to Greece then to Italy and finally to northwest Europe Human societies of the Fertile Crescent
inadvertently committed slow ecological suicide in a zone of low rainfall prone to deforestation soil
erosion and salinization
The spread of food production
From the homelands of domestication food production spread around the world in either of two
ways The much less common way was for hunterndashgatherers outside the homelands to acquire crops or
livestock from the homelands enabling them to settle down as farmers or herders as attested by
archaeological evidence for substantial continuity of material culture and by genetic linguistic and
skeletal evidence of continuity of human populations The clearest such example of local adoption of food
production is in southern Africa where around 2000 years ago some Khoisan hunterndashgatherers acquired
Eurasian livestock (cattle sheep and goats) arriving from the north and became herders (so-called
Hottentots) Much more often however local hunterndashgatherers had no opportunity to acquire crops and
livestock before they were overrun or replaced by farmers expanding out of the homelands exploiting
their demographic technological political and military advantages over the hunterndashgatherers
Expansions of crops livestock and even people and technologies tended to occur more rapidly along
eastndashwest axes than along northndashsouth axes1 (Fig 3) The reason is obvious locations at the same latitude
share identical day-lengths and seasonalities often share similar climates habitats and diseases and hence
require less evolutionary change or adaptation of domesticates technologies and cultures than do
locations at different latitudes Examples include the rapid westwards and eastwards dispersal of wheat
horses wheels and writing of western Asian origin and the westwards dispersal of chickens citrus and
peaches of Chinese origin along the eastndashwest axis of Eurasia This can be contrasted with the slow
spread of Eurasian livestock and non-spread of Eurasian crops southwards along Africas northndashsouth
axis the slow spread of Mexican corn and the non-spread of Mexican writing and wheels and Andean
llamas and potatoes along the Americas northndashsouth axis and the slow spread of food production
southwards along the northndashsouth axis of the Indian subcontinent
Figure 3 The continental major axis is oriented eastndashwest
for Eurasia but northndashsouth for the Americas and Africa
The spread of food production tended to occur more
rapidly along eastndashwest axes than along northndashsouth axes mainly
because locations at the same latitudes required less evolutionary
change or adaptation of domesticates than did locations at
different latitudes
This is not to deny the existence of ecological barriers at
the same latitude within Asia and North America but the general
pattern remains Eurasias eastndashwest axis and the resulting rapid enrichment of societies in each part of
Eurasia by crops and technologies from other parts of Eurasia became one of the main ultimate reasons
why Eurasian peoples conquered Native American peoples rather than vice versa Eurasias eastndashwest
axis also explains why there is much less evidence for multiple independent domestications of the same
plant species (see below) and much more evidence for agriculturally driven language expansions in
Eurasia than in the Americas
Consequences of domestication Consequences for human societies
Beginning around 8500 BCE the transition from the hunterndashgatherer lifestyle to food production
enabled people to settle down next to their permanent gardens orchards and pastures instead of migrating
to follow seasonal shifts in wild food supplies (Some hunterndashgatherer societies in especially productive
environments were also sedentary but most were not) Food production was accompanied by a human
population explosion that has continued unabated to this day resulting from two separate factors First
the sedentary lifestyle permitted shorter birth intervals Nomadic hunterndashgatherers had previously spaced
out birth intervals at four years or more because a mother shifting camp can carry only one infant or slow
toddler Second plant and animal species that are edible to humans can be cultivated in much higher
density in our gardens orchards and pastures than in wild habitats
Food production also led to an explosion of technology because sedentary living permitted the
accumulation of heavy technology (such as forges and printing presses) that nomadic hunterndashgatherers
could not carry and because the storable food surpluses resulting from agriculture could be used to feed
full-time craftspeople and inventors By also feeding full-time kings bureaucrats nobles and soldiers
those food surpluses led to social stratification political centralization and standing armies All of these
overwhelming advantages are what enabled farmers eventually to displace hunterndashgatherers
Evolution of epidemic infectious diseases
The main killers of humans since the advent of agriculture have been acute highly infectious
epidemic diseases that are confined to humans and that either kill the victim quickly or if the victim
recovers immunize himher for life Such diseases could not have existed before the origins of
agriculture because they can sustain themselves only in large dense populations that did not exist before
agriculture hence they are often termed crowd diseases The mystery of the origins of many of these
diseases has been solved by molecular biological studies of recent decades demonstrating that they
evolved from similar epidemic diseases of our herd domestic animals with which we began to come into
close contact 10000 years ago Thus the evolution of these diseases depended on two separate roles of
domestication in creating much denser human populations and in permitting much more frequent
transmission of animal diseases from our domesticates than from hunted wild animals For instance
measles and tuberculosis arose from diseases of cattle influenza from a disease of pigs and ducks1 An
outstanding mystery remains the origins of smallpox did it reach us from camels or from cattle
Crowd diseases paradoxically became agents of conquest because exposed individuals acquired
immune resistance from childhood exposure and exposed populations gradually evolved genetic
resistance but unexposed populations had neither type of resistance In practice because 13 of our 14
large domestic mammals were Eurasian species evolution of crowd diseases was concentrated in Eurasia
and the diseases became the most important agents by which Eurasian colonists expanding overseas killed
indigenous peoples of the Americas Australia Pacific islands and southern Africa
The agricultural expansions
Because some peoples acquired domesticates before other peoples could and because
domesticates conferred eventual advantages such as guns germs and steel on the possessors the history
of the past 10000 years has consisted of farmers replacing hunterndashgatherers or less advanced farmers
These agricultural expansions originating mainly from the nine homelands of agriculture remade genetic
and linguistic maps of the world Among the most discussed (and often highly controversial) possible
examples are the expansions of Bantu-speaking farmers out of tropical West Africa over subequatorial
Africa Austronesian-speaking farmers out of Taiwan over Island Southeast Asia Fertile Crescent farmers
over Europe and Korean farmers over Japan
Activity three Without the ability to translate their writing script archaeologists today do not
understand nearly as much about the Indus River Valley civilization that flourished from 2600 to
1900 BCE although the artifacts found there have enhanced our knowledge of these ancient
peoples One mystery is what exactly happened to the civilizations of the Indus River Valley
Mesopotamia and Egypt were later absorbed into a broader Hellenistic and later Roman cultural
zone but civilization in the Indus River Valley instead disappeared Study the map and read the
articles ldquoThe Myth of the Aryan Invasion of Indiardquo ldquoWere they Copycats or Geniusesrdquo
ldquoEnvironment and Technology Environmental Stress in the Indus River Valleyrdquo and ldquoDid Aryans
kill them or a depressionrdquo Write an 800 word essay that addresses the following question
What are the debates that center around the disappearance of this ancient civilization (Include
examples from the articles) Do NOT go on-line and attempt to find any more information Do
NOT quote from the articles Turn in your essay to wwwturnitincom before the first day of
school
River Valley Civilizations
The Indus Valley Civilization was the first major urban culture of South Asia It reached its peak
from 2600 BC to 1900 BC roughly a period called by some archaeologists Mature Harappan as
distinguished from the earlier Neolithic Early Harappan regional cultures Spatially it is huge
comprising of about 1000 settlements of varying sizes and geographically includes almost all of modern
Pakistan parts of India as far east as Delhi and as far south as Bombay and parts of Afghanistan
The main corpus of writing dated from the Indus Civilization is in the form of some two thousand
inscribed seals in good legible conditions (In case you dont know what seals are they are used to make
impressions on malleable material like clay)
Although these seals and samples of Indus writing have been floating around the scholastic world
for close to 70 years little progress has been made on deciphering this elegant script However we should
not blame scholars for their lack of progress for there are some major impediments to decipherment
1 Very short and brief texts The average number of symbols on the seals is 5 and the longest is
only 26
2 The language underneath is unknown
3 Lack of bilingual texts
For instance consider Champollion who deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs with all of these 3
important clues there were very long Egyptian texts he knew Coptic a descendant of Egyptian and the
Rosetta Stone a bilingual text between Greek and two written forms of Egyptian
But the script isnt as bad as undecipherable For one even though scholars dont have long texts
and bilingual texts they can still theorize about the language underneath the writing system There are
several competing theories about the language that the Indus script represent
A The language is completely unrelated to anything else meaning an isolate Well this doesnt get
us anywhere
B The language is Aryan (some form of Indian-Iranian Indo-European) The historical languages
spoken in Northern India and Pakistan all belong to the Indic branch of Indo-European including
Sanskrit Hindi Punjabi etc so maybe the people of the Indus valley spoke a very old Indo-
European language
The major problem with this model is the fact that horses played a very important role in all Indo-
European cultures being a people constantly on the move There is no escape from the fact that
the horse played a central role in the Vedic and Iranian cultures (Parpola 1986) Sidenote
Vedic means from the time of the Vedas the earliest text in India and the Vedic culture is from
around 1500 to 500 BC However no depiction of horses on seals nor any remains of horses have
been found so far before 2000 BC They only appear after 2000 BC Very likely there were no
Aryan speakers present before 2000 BC in the Indus Valley
C The language belongs to the Munda family of languages The Munda family is spoken largely in
eastern India and related to some Southeast Asian languages Like Aryan the reconstructed
vocabulary of early Munda does not reflect the Harappan culture So its candidacy for being the
language of the Indus Civilization is dim
D The language is Dravidian The Dravidian family of languages is spoken in Southern Indian but
Brahui is spoken in modern Pakistan So far this is the most promising model as in the following
points
o There are many Dravidian influences visible in the Vedic texts If the Aryan language
gradually replaced the Dravidian features from Dravidian would form a substratum in
Aryan One of these features is the appearance of retroflex consonants in Indian languages
both Indo-European and Dravidian In contrast retroflex consonants do not appear in any
other Indo-European language not even Iranian ones which are closest to Indic (For more
information on retroflex consonants please visit my Phonetics page)
o Another possible indication of Dravidian in the Indus texts is from structural analysis of
the texts which suggests that the language underneath is possibly agglutinative from the
fact that sign groups often have the same initial signs but different final signs The number
of these final signs range between 1 to 3 The final signs possibly represent grammatical
suffixes that modify the word (represented by the initial signs) Each suffix would
represent one specific modification and the entire cluster of suffixes would therefore put
the word through a series of modifications This suffix system can be found in Dravidian
but not Indo-European Indo-European tongues tend to change the final sounds to modify
the meaning of a word (a process called inflection) but repeated addition of sounds to the
end of word is extremely rare Often many suffixes in an agglutinative language
correspond to a single inflectional ending in an inflectional language
The Dravidian model isnt just an unapplicable theoryBut first we have to know what kind of
writing system is the Indus script
A count of the number of signs reveal a lot about the type of system being used Alphabetic
systems rarely have more than 40 symbols Syllabic systems like Linear B or Cherokee typically have 40
to 100 or so symbols The third ranges from logophonetic to logographic running upwards of hundreds of
signs (like 500 signs in Hieroglyphic Luwian and 5000 symbols in modern Chinese)
It appears that the maximum number of Indus script symbols is 400 although there are 200 basic
signs (ie signs that are not combined from others) This means that the Indus script is probably
logophonetic in that it has both signs used for their meanings and signs used for their phonetic values
Many signs start off as pictorial representation of a physical object often misleadingly called
pictograms They really are should be called logograms because they represent words in the language
However its next to impossible to write out a word with abstract meaning pictorially What all early
writers figured out was to use a logogram not for the object or idea it was originally supposed to stand for
but for all words sounding similar to the original word for that object or idea For example in English to
write leave we can use a picture of a leaf This is called rebus writing and is a tremendously common
pattern in all early writing systems We could also then use the same leaf symbol to stand for the sound
in relief adding another symbol in front of the leaf symbol in order to indicate the re sound So the
logogram gained a phonetic value as well
Testing the theory How can we take the theoretical framework so far and apply it to archaeological data
Numerals seem to represented by vertical lines (represented by number of lines in the glyph) but
they only go up to 7 Analysis reveal 4 more signs that appear in the same context as these numerals and
so they likely represent numbers higher than 7
The fact that no vertical-line numeral sign denotes 8 very likely means the Harappan language is
based 8 (For example the Arabic numerals that we use has symbols from 0 to 9 and to write ten we
have to combined the symbols 1 and 0 which identify our number system as based ten)
Base 8 languages are rare in the world but it does appear that early Dravidian is base 8 but later
changed to base 10 (possibly under Indo-European influence) When translated the count from 1 to 7 is
familiar to us one two three four five six seven However above seven the numbers
etymologies become non-numerical 8 is number 9 is many minus one and 10 is many (Fairservis
1983)
But can we actually read (not interpret) any symbol on the seals We should start with pictograms as
this one
Many scholars (Knorozov Parpola Mahadevan etc) see this sign as a fish
Fish in reconstructed Proto-Dravidian is micircn Coincidentally micircn is also the word for star
On many pots from Mohenjo Daro an Indus site there are drawings of fish and stars together and so
affirming this linguistic association
Going further often the numeral six appears before the fish Either it means 6 fish or
6 stars Old Tamil (a Dravidian language still spoken today) texts from just around the 1st
century AD recorded the name of the Pleiades a star cluster visible during autumn and
winter just above Orion as Six-Stars or aru-micircn Throughout the world titles with celestial
connotations are very common and the clause Six Stars forming part or whole of a Harappan title is not
unreasonable (Parpola 1986)
Sometimes symbols are added to the basic sign to make new signs Of these the one that
looks like a circumflex accent placed on top of the fish is quite interesting It is theorized to mean
roof and in Proto-Dravidian it is vecircymecircy This is phonetically similar to Proto-Dravidian word
for black may Together with fish it spells out mai-m-micircn or black star which in Old Tamil
means the planet Saturn In Sanskrit texts Saturn is associate the color black The god of death Yama is
the presiding of this planet and is usually depicted as riding on a dark buffalo
But the fish reading isnt accepted by all scholars William Fairservis saw it as a combination of
a loom twist and a human sign and form a honorific title pertaining to rulership (Fairservis 1983) I
however am more inclined to accept the fish identification
This is a quick overview of the current process in the decipherment of the Indus script For more
information you can either go to the following links or go to a good library for books and articles (check
out my references)
The Myth of the Aryan Invasion of India Richard Hooker 1996
They called themselves the noble ones or the superior ones Their names are lost their tribal names
are lost But when they found themselves conquerors they gave themselves the name superior or
noble
They were a tribal and nomadic peoples living in the far reaches of Euro-Asia in hostile steppe lands
barely scratching out a living They were unquestionably a tough people and they were fierce and war-
like Their religion reflects it dominated as it is by a storm-god or sky-god that enjoins warfare and
conquest This god was called something like Dyaus a word related to Zeus deus (the Latin word
for god) deva (the Sanskrit word for god) and of course the English word divine Their culture
was oriented around warfare and they were very good at it They were superior on horseback and rushed
into battle in chariots They were a tribal people ruled over by a war-chief or raja (the Latin word rex
(king) comes from the same root word along with the English regal) Somewhere in the early centuries
of the second millennium BC they began to migrate southwards in waves of steady conquest across the
face of Persia and the lands of India
There they would take on the name superior or noble to distinguish themselves from the people
they conquered Their name is derived from the Indo-European root word ar meaning noble In
Sanskrit they were the Aryas (Aryans) but that root ar would also serve as the foundation of the
name of the conquered Persian territories Iran This concept of nobility in fact seems to lie at the heart
of Indo-European consciousness for it appears in another countrys name Ireland or Eire You can
bet however that when a people go around calling themselves superior that it spells bad news for other
people
And there is no question that they were bad news for the southern Asians They swept over Persia with
lightening speed and spread across the northern river plains of India Their natures as a warlike
conquering people are still preserved in Vedic religion the foundation of Hinduism In the Rig Veda the
collection of praises to the gods the god Indra towers over the poetry as a conquering god one that
smashes cities and slays enemies The invading Aryans were originally nomadic peoples not agricultural
They penetrated India from the north-west settling first in the Indus valley Unlike the Harappans
however they eventually concentrated their populations along the Ganges floodplain The Ganges unlike
the Indus is far milder and more predictable in its flooding It must have been a paradise to a people from
the dry steppes of central Asia and Iran a paradise full of water and forest When they arrived the vast
northern plains were almost certainly densely forested Where now bare fields stretch to the horizon
when the Aryans arrived lush forests stretched to those very same horizons Clearing the forests over the
centuries was an epic project and one that is still preserved in Indian literature
The Aryans or Vedic civilization were a new start in Indian culture Harappa was more or less a dead
end (at least as far as we know) the Aryans adopted almost nothing of Harappan culture They built no
cities no states no granaries and used no writing Instead they were a warlike people that organized
themselves in individual tribal kinship units the jana The jana was ruled over by a war-chief These
tribes spread quickly over northern India and the Deccan In a process that we do not understand the basic
social unit of Aryan culture the jana slowly developed from an organization based on kinship to one
based on geography The jana became a janapada or nation and the jana-rajya or tribal kingdom
became the jana-rajyapada or national kingdom So powerfully ingrained into Indian culture is the
jana-pada that Indians still define themselves mainly by their territorial origins All the major territories
of modern India with their separate cultures and separate languages can be dated back to the early jana-
padas of Vedic India
The earliest history of the Aryans in India is called the Rigvedic Period (1700-1000 BC) after the
religious praise poems that are the oldest pieces of literature in India These poems the Rig Veda are
believed to represent the most primitive layer of
Indo-European religion and have many characteristics in common with Persian religion since the two
peoples are closely related in time In this early period their population was restricted to the Punjab in the
northern reaches of the Indus River and the Yamuna River near the Ganges They maintained the Aryan
tribal structure with a raja ruling over the tribal group in tandem with a council Each jana seems to have
had a chief priest the religion was focused almost entirely on a series of sacrifices to the gods The
Rigvedic peoples originally had only two social classes nobles and commoners Eventually they added a
third Dasas or darks These were we presume the darker-skinned people they had conquered By the
end of the Rigvedic period social class had settled into four rigid castes the caturvarnas or four
colors At the top of the caturvarnas were the priests or Brahmans Below the priests were the warriors
or nobles (Kshatriya) the craftspeople and merchants (Vaishya) and the servants (Shudra) who made
up the bulk of society These economic classes were legitimated by an elaborate religious system and
would be eventually subdivided into a huge number of economic sub-classes which we call castes
Social class by the end of the Rigvedic period became completely inflexible there was no such thing as
social mobility
In the early centuries of Later Vedic Period or Brahmanic Period (1000-500 BC) the Aryans
migrated across the Doab which is a large plain which separates the Yamuna River from the Ganges It
was a difficult project for the Doab was thickly forested the Aryans slowly burned and settled the Doab
until they reached the Ganges While the Rig Veda represents the most primitive religion of the Aryans
during the Rigvedic Period the religion of the Later Vedic period is dominated by the Brahmanas or
priestly book which was composed sometime between 1000 and 850 BC Later Vedic society is
dominated by the Brahmans and every aspect of Aryan life comes under the control of priestly rituals and
spells In history as the Indians understand it the Later Vedic Period is the Epic Age the great literary
heroic epics of Indian culture the Mahabharata and the Ramayana though they were composed
between 500 and 200 BC were probably originally formulated and told in the Later Vedic Period Both of
these epics deal with heroes from this period and demonstrate how Aryan cultural values as we can
understand them from the Rig Veda are being transformed by mixing with Indus cultures
What did the Aryans do with their time They seem to have had a well-developed musical culture and
song and dance dominated their society They were not greatly invested in the visual arts but their interest
in lyric poetry was unmatched They loved gambling They did not however have much interest in
writing even though they could have inherited a civilization and a writing system when they originally
settled India We do not know exactly when they became interested in writing but it may have been at the
end of the Brahmanic period somewhere between 650 and 500 BC Still there are no Aryan writings until
the Mauryan periodmdashfrom Harappa (2500-1750 BC) to Maurya (300 BC) is quite a long time The script
that the Mauryans used is called Brahmi script and was used to write not only the religious and literary
language of the time Sanskrit but also the vernacular languages This script Brahmi is the national
alphabet of India
The Vedic period then is a period of cultural mixing not of conquest Although the Aryans were a
conquering people when they first spread into India the culture of the Aryans would gradually mix with
indigenous cultures and the war-religion of the Aryans still preserved in parts of the Rig Veda slowly
became more ritualized and more meditative By 200 BC this process of mixing and transforming was
more or less complete and the culture we call Indian was fully formed
Were they Copycats or Geniuses How did the Harappans take the great leap from self-contained agricultural societies to a trade-oriented
luxury-conscious sophisticated urban civilization that gave the world the concept of town planning
Analyzing the evidence from various sites Possehl found that between 2600 BC and 2500 BC the
Harappans experienced a century of cathartic changes Before this he finds no breadboard models of the
expansion to come be it the invention of writing or the awesome town-planning techniques A
tremendous jump in human ability is evident So what or who caused it
In the past the reputed British archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler argued that ideas have wings and that
the Harappans were influenced by their trade contacts with the Sumerians But the diffusion theory of
civilization as it is called is slowly being given the heave-ho Cambridge historian Raymond Allchin an
authority on the subject says We are now beginning to see the foundation being laid in the preceding
100 to 200 years in smaller sites There appears to be a completely organic process of growth that threw
up the Harappan culture as we know it
Yet the evidence of that process continues to be scanty In Kunal in Haryana archaeologists recently
found what are known as proto Indus seals On pottery on many of the smaller sites in both India and
Pakistan graffiti similar to some figures on the script begin to appear And at Dholavira and at Banawali
in Haryana the distinction between the citadel and the lower city is beginning to evolve There is
however a huge jump in scale in such activity in those critical 100 years For in Harappa as in most
Indus sites the distinct gridiron pattern for streets appear a scientific system of drainage that linked up to
even the smallest house in the lower city is established precise weights and measures begin to circulate
and the writing system evolves So were the Harappans copycats Archaeologists say the Indus people
couldnrsquot have copied their town-planning from Egypt and Mesopotamia because in those civilizations the
roads meandered like village streets Nor was the writing similar to Sumer`s cuneiform or the Egyptian
hieroglyphics The Harappans had their own distinctive style Lal explains the dramatic change as a result
of centuries of growth reaching a critical mass that caused an unparalleled urban explosion Trade he
believes was the driving force of the revolution Even a skeptic like Possehl maintains that these are
indeed an expression of the Indian genius
Did Aryans kill them or a Depression Archaeologists are known to stumble but the kind of knocking Wheeler has taken over his Aryan
invasion theory has few parallels When the British archaeologist discovered a dozen skeletons in
Mohenjodaro he propounded a theory about the final massacre by marauding invaders that put an end to
the Indus civilization When an Indian scholar told him of Hariyuppa being mentioned in the Rigveda he
took it to mean Harappa And since a fort was known as pur and Indira the Aryan god was known as
Purandhara or destroyer of forts it all fitted neatly
After all werenrsquot the Indus cities among the most fortified Yet the past 50 years and more so the last
decade has shown just how wrong Wheeler was The last massacre theory was his imagination running
riot Far from being snuffed out there was a brilliant resurgence of Indus culture further south for a while
Possehl who made a recent study found that in 2000 BC in Pakistanrsquos Sindh district the sites were down
from 86 to 6 and in Cholistan 174 to 41 But in India the sites in Haryana Punjab and Rajasthan exploded
from 218 to 853 Possehl asks How can this be construed as an eclipse We are looking at a highly
mobile people
Allchin argues that there is clear indication that the rainfall pattern which had initially brought fertility
had become adverse in the Sindh region And theories that given the instability of the Himalayan region
there may have been a massive earthquake that possibly changed the course of rivers such as the Sarasvati
and affected many Indus cities The Indus people then migrated eastward Lal talks of steep decline in
trade because of problems in Sumer that resulted in a Great Depression and turned many urban centers
into ghost cities
Bisht concurs with Lal but goes a step further He says that after the quake hit the heart of the civilization
the Indus people migrated east which acted like a sort of bypass to their woes And like a dying candle it
shone brilliantly again but briefly before being snuffed out Dholavira Banawali Mehrgarh Harappa -- in
fact all the major cities show that as the cities declined encroachments on streets that were unseen at its
peak began to occur with alarming regularity There was a breakdown in sanitation and cities like their
modern-day counterparts in India simply ran themselves aground They were replaced by massive squatter
colonies and an explosion of rural sites as people disillusioned with cities went back to farming
communities A giant step backward
Yet it wasnrsquot as if all came to naught as was earlier believed Some of the writings survived in the pottery
of the following ages The weight and decimal system too lived on And so did the bullock-cart
technology that the Indus had perfected Rather than a violent transition there may have been an orderly
interaction with oncoming Aryans Lal in his most recent book even puts across the most audacious
theory Could the Bronze Age Harappans be Aryans themselves He says this because of the presence of
fire worship and the discovery of horse remains and idols in Indus sites Meadows dismisses it as
premature and points out that it was more likely that ass remains were mistaken for that of a horsersquos And
that the Vedas showed a great antipathy for urban centers
Whatever the cause it would take another 1000 years for a semblance of civilization to return to the
subcontinent -- a dire warning to modern India of the catastrophe that can befall an errant populace
Environmental Stress in the Indus Valley Source Quotation from D P Agarwal and R K Sood in Gregory L Possehl ed Harappan Civilization A Contemporary Perspective (Warminster
England Aris and Phillips 1982)229
The three river-valley civilizations discussed in this chapter were located in arid or semiarid regions Such
regions are particularly vulnerable to changes in the environment Scholars debates about the existence
and impact of changes in the climate and landscape of the Indus Valley illuminate some of the potential
factors at work as well as the difficulties of verifying and interpreting such long-ago changes
One of the points at issue is climatic change An earlier generation of scholars believed that the climate
of the Indus Valley was considerably wetter during the height of that civilization than it is now As
evidence they cited the enormous quantities of timber cut from extensive forests that would have been
needed to bake the millions of mud bricks used to construct the cities (see photo) the distribution of
human settlements on land that is now unfavorable for agriculture and the representation of jungle and
marsh animals on decorated seals This approach assumes that the growth of population prosperity and
complexity in the Indus Valley in the third millennium BCE required wet conditions and it concludes
that the change to a drier climate in the early second millennium BCE pushed this civilization into
decline
Other experts skeptical about a radical climatic change countered with alternative calculations of the
amount of timber needed and evidence of plant remains-particularly barley a grain that is tolerant of dry
conditions However recent studies of the stabilization of sand dunes which occurs in periods of heavy
rainfall and analysis of the sediment deposited by rivers and winds have been used to strengthen the
claim that the Indus Valley used to be wetter and in the early-to-mid second millennium BCE entered a
period of relatively dry conditions that have persisted to the present
A much clearer case can be made for changes in the landscape caused by shifts in the courses of rivers
These shifts are due in many cases to tectonic forces such as earthquakes Dry channels whether
detected in satellite photographs or by on-the-ground inspection reveal the location of old riverbeds and
it appears that a second major river system the Hakra once ran parallel to the Indus some distance to the
east The Hakra with teeming towns and fertile fields along its banks appears to have been a second axis
of this civilization Either the Sutlej which now feeds into the Indus or the Yamuna which now pours
into the Ganges may have been the main source of water for this long-gone system before undergoing a
change of course The consequences of the drying-up of this major waterway must have been immense-
the loss of huge amounts of arable land and the food that it produced the abandonment of cities and
villages and consequent migration of their populations shifts in the trade routes and desperate
competition for shrinking resources
As for the Indus itself the present-day course of the lower reaches of the river has shifted 100 miles
(161 kilometers) to the west since the arrival of the Greek conqueror Alexander the Great in the late
fourth century BCE and the deposit of massive volumes of silt has pushed the mouth of the river 50
miles (80 kilometers) farther south Such a shift of the river bed and buildup of alluvial deposits also may
have occurred in the third and second millennia BCE
A recent study concludes It is obvious that ecological stresses caused both climatically and
technically played an important role in the life and decay of the Indus civilization
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity four Read the article below about the early Chinese dynasties Using information from
the article write an 800 word essay that describes the influence of the environment religion and
gender on the formation of the government of ancient China Again do NOT look up additional
information use only what is provided Also do NOT quote from the articles paraphrase and
summarize only Turn in your essay to wwwturnitincom before the first day of school
The Shang and Zhou Dynasties By 5000 BCE agricultural communities had spread through much of what is now called China and there
were agricultural villages from the Wei River Valley eastward parallel with the great Yellow River
(Huang He) which flowed out of the Kunlun Mountains to the deciduous forest and loess soil region of
the North China Plain Where people were free of forest and had access to water they grew millet -- as
early as 5500 BCE -- while they continued to hunt deer and other game to fish and gather food And they
raised dogs pigs and chickens They built one-room homes dug into the earth with roofs of clay or
thatch pit homes grouped in villages They had spinning wheels and knitted and wove fibers And they
made pottery decorated with art
Flooding along the Yellow River was worse than it was along the Yangzi River to the south Along the
Yangzi River through the Hubei Basin and on the coastal plain to Hangzhou Bay farming had also
developed but people along the Yellow River had to work harder at flood control and irrigation and
perhaps this stimulated a greater effort at organization At any rate the North China Plain became the
largest area with a relatively dense population
Where people were producing more food than they needed to survive warriors had the incentive not only
to plunder but also to conquer And conquering kings arose on the North China Plain as they did in West
Asia The first dynasty of kings in the North China Plain has been described as belonging to the Xia
family - whose rule is thought to have begun around 2200 BCE But the first dynasty of which there is
historical evidence is that of the Shang family The Shang clan came out of the Wei River Valley just west
of the North China Plain By around 1500 BCE give or take a century or so the Shang unified people
along the North China Plain The military had chariots each with an aristocrat archer a driver and
sometimes also a man with a spear The Shang built an empire in much the same way as other conquerors
by leaving behind a garrison force to police local people by turning a local king into a subservient ally
free to manage local matters and by taxing the conquered
Around 1384 BCE the Shang moved their capital to Yin As a regular pastime the Shang emperors and
nobles hunted in organized game drives Emperors and aristocrats had splendid homes with walls of
pounded earth or earthen bricks while common people continued to live in their pit homes of earlier times
A Shang emperor was chief priest and he had an administrative bureaucracy with councilors lesser
priests and diviners As with other warring civilizations slaves were taken the slaves laboring at growing
crops And women in Shang civilization were subservient to men with aristocratic women enjoying a
greater freedom and equality than common women The role of the woman was to be gentle calm
respectful and to obey her husband Women were lower than men and were subjected to womenrsquos work
(tending to the children and needs of the husband) Men also married multiple times and women were
used as concubines
During the Shang dynasty the civilization along the Yellow River had canals for irrigating crops
Communities had drains that ran water out of town They made beer from millet The stable government
allowed for extended trading and use of money in the form of cowry shells Shang merchants traded in
salt iron copper tin lead and antimony some of which had to be imported from far away As early as
the 1300 BCE a bronze casting industry had developed This was later than the rise of bronze casting in
Europe and West Asia but it was the most advanced in the world
It was around 1300 BCE that the first known writing appeared in Shang civilization because the
government officials needed to have questions answered that would allow them to better govern This
writing was for divination done on plate-like portions of the bones of cattle or deer on seashells and
turtle shells and perhaps on wood By applying a pointed heated rod to a bone or shell the item cracked
and to which written symbol the crack traveled gave answers for various questions what the weather was
going to be like would there be flood would a harvest succeed or fail when might be the best time for
hunting or fishing there were also personal questions about illness or whether one should make a journey
Shang Violence and Splendor
To the east north and south of Shang civilization were those the Shang saw as barbarians including the
farming people along the Yangzi River Shang emperors sent out armies to repulse invaders and the
Shang emperors went beyond their domains to plunder and to capture foreign peoples needed for sacrifice
to their gods Uncovered tombs of emperors from the Shang period indicate that they could put into the
field as many as three to five thousand soldiers Found buried with the emperors were their personal
ornaments and spears with bronze blades and the remains of what had been bows and arrows Buried with
the emperors were also horses and chariots for transporting soldiers to battle And with the emperors in
death were their charioteers dogs servants and people in groups of ten -- people who had been
ceremonially beheaded with bronze axes
Zhou Empire Religion and Human Sacrifice
Shang rule was threatened by forces from outside and from within its empire To the west of Shang
civilization in the Wei River Valley lived a pastoral people called Zhou who led an alliance that included
other tribal peoples neighboring Shang civilization While the Shang emperor Zhouxin was occupied by
a war against tribal people to his southeast rebellions broke out among people that Shang monarchs
before him had conquered The Zhou and their allies saw the Shang emperors troubles as an opportunity
to move against him and in 1045 BCE they overpowered him at the battle of Mu-ye and had him
beheaded
A dynasty of Zhou emperors began ruling what had been Shang civilization They claimed that all lands
belonged to heaven that they were the sons of heaven and therefore that all lands and all people were
their subjects Seeing the lands they had conquered as too vast for one man to dominate the Zhou
emperors divided these lands into regions and assigned someone to rule each region in their name
choosing for this position a close family member a trusted member of their clan or the chief of a tribe
that had been allied with them against the Shang
Each local ruler had at his disposal all the lands around him He had his own militia And from the Zhou
emperors the local rulers received gifts such as chariots bronze weapons servants and animals The local
rulers received the title of lord (gong) Local rulers passed their positions to their sons their titles of lord
becoming hereditary And to control their areas better the lords made sub-lords of those who had
dominated the common people before they arrived A hierarchy of status and obligations emerged among
families and within families with older brothers ranking higher than younger brothers with rules of
succession as to which of the males would head his family If a married aristocrat became infatuated with
another woman rather than drive his wife from his home he could bring the other woman into the family
as a concubine where she would rank beneath his wife
Zhou emperors told those they had conquered that they the Zhou had ousted the ancestors of Shang
emperors from heaven and that heaven was occupied by their supreme god a god they called The Lord
on High who they said had commanded the downfall of the Shang emperors Like emperors in West
Asia Zhou emperors claimed that they ruled by divine right They claimed that they represented on earth
the Lord on High and that it was their duty to mediate with the Lord on High to perform appropriate
sacrifices and to maintain a proper relationship between heaven and their subjects They claimed that any
opposition to their rule was opposition to the will of heaven
It was from the Zhou emperors that local lords received the right to act as a priest to perform sacrifices
to have certain hymns sung and certain dances performed the right to propitiate the gods of local
mountains streams and of the soil and crops Meanwhile local aristocrats continued to keep track of their
ancestral heritage They married with religious rites and sanctions while common folk continued to have
no such marriages no surnames or recorded ancestors They merely lived together and were recognized as
a couple by their neighbors
Ancestor worship was also very important to the Shang It was thought that the success of crops and the
health and well being of people were based on the happiness of dead ancestors
The worship of various gods from the Shang period included gods of grain rain and agriculture -- one of
whom was believed to have had a virgin birth Among these gods was a god of the Yellow River who had
the body of a fish but the face of a man
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity five Research the social hierarchy religion political organization writing systems and
technological aspects of the societies listed on the SNAPSHOT Early Agricultural Societies Describe each aspect
of the society using specific evidence - in one or two clear sentences (SEE EXAMPLE of Olmec Society) Write
VERY neatly in ink Bring this chart with you on the FIRST DAY of school
A Humans used fire in new ways to aid hunting and foraging to protect against predators and to adapt
to cold environments
B Humans developed a wider range of tools specially adapted to different environments from tropics to
tundra
C Economic structures focused on small kinship groups of hunting-foraging bands that could make what
they needed to survive However not all groups were self-sufficient they exchanged people ideas and
goods
Paleolithic and Neolithic Societies The Stone Age
One of the principal characteristics separating hominids from their immediate ancestors was tool use it
has been traditional to divide human prehistory into eras based on levels of technological capability
Hominids made their tools out of many materials such as wood bone and animal skins But the most
noteworthy were the ones made of stone The first period of history is known as the Stone Age This era
is broken down into at least two periods the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age (10000 to 25 million years
ago) and Neolithic or New Stone Age (5000 to 10000 years ago) The change from Paleolithic to
Neolithic is associated with the end of the Ice Age
Early Tool-making
During the Paleolithic era Homo habilis and Homo erectus used crude tools including clubs and
choppers to crack open bones rudimentary axes and scrapers to prepare animal hides The earliest
humansmdashNeanderthal Cro-Magnon and Homo sapiens sapiensmdashimproved upon these tools and created
new ones Tools were generally designed to provide shelter protection and defense and foods and
clothing The earliest hominids lived in natural shelters like caves and canyons Fire was developed one
million years ago and then hominids made tent like structures and simple huts to live in By the end of the
Paleolithic the hominids were building more advanced wood and stone structures They also developed
weapons like clubs and rocks They devised tools for hunting and food preparation which could also be a
weapon such as the bow and arrow spears axes and knives
Paleolithic Religion
Paleolithic peoples were very spiritualistic Animism is the belief that everything had its own spirit
people animals trees rivers mountains and the sky The interaction of these spirits within this unseen
world was what shaped the visible events of everything around them weather wars and health
Those who demonstrated certain powers the shamans or witchdoctors were both greatly respected and
greatly feared They were understood to possess special magical powers that could be worked to the
good-or the bad--of the community The community as a whole felt that it exercised some controlling
influence over events--by their ability to pre-enact the necessary events of their lives Thus the
community engaged in ritualistic war dances hunting dances rain dances medicine dances and rituals
which supposedly had the power to predispose or control the behavior of the unseen spirits in order to
assure a forthcoming favorable outcome--whatever the event or whatever the communitys particular
need
Hunting and Gathering the New Stone Age
As time passed hominids began to organize themselves in social groups This would eventually
give birth to family units and these families would tend to cluster together by ties of kinship As clans
became larger they usually mixed with neighboring groups that grew into bands or tribes
Paleolithic groups sustained themselves by hunting and gathering This practice is known as
foraging Rather than produce food themselves hunter-gatherer societies lived off the resources from the
land They killed birds and animals for food especially mammoths bison deer and rodents They also
picked roots and berries from surrounding trees When the resources dried up the band or tribe moved to
a new area with sustainable resources
The early tribes also developed a form of government This organization was based on chiefs
leaders and religious figures to head the tribe They were to main figure to these early hunter-gatherer
societies and are responsible for keeping them together The early tribes also worshipped deities and
practiced a variety of religious rituals It is said that Cro-Magnon buried their dead over 100000 years
ago indicating the belief in an afterlife The religious ceremonies became more sophisticated with the
sacrificing to gods goddesses and spirits The early tribes were very artistic people they were known to
play music and paint on cave walls
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Case Study Neander Valley
Modern man was really forced to stop and think when unusual fossils (bones) were found in 1856 near
Duesseldorf Germany in the Neander Valley Workers were mining for limestone in a cave when they
came across a skull and other various bones This is of course how Neanderthal gets its name
This was not the first discovery of Neanderthal fossils though It was about 1829 or 1830 when fragments
from the skull of a Neanderthal child were found in Belgium and in 1848 a full skull of an adult was
found in Gibraltar But the find in the Neander Valley began all of the excitement it stirred up many
questions and theories
These remains found in the cave near Duesseldorf were examined by Rudolf Vichow a German
Anatomist He concluded that it was just a Homo sapiens (modern human) with rickets Vichow claimed
that the flattened head was due to some form of injury
A biologist named Thomas Huxley declared that it was
an ancestor of modern humans Paleontologist Marcellin
Boule argued that Neanderthals were not direct
ancestors of Homo sapiens sapiens and so called them
Homo neanderthalensis Boule also gave the impression
that these creatures were stupid Of course this is
disputable with the evidence of the average brain size of
a Neanderthal compared with that of a modern human
There was a dispute to whether Neanderthals were direct ancestors or an extinct species of their own
Immediately they were portrayed as slouched over violent bruteape-like cavemen And this image was
carried on until almost 1960 At this time scientists realized that the first found Neanderthal had arthritis
and they did in fact walk upright It is said that if you were to put a cleaned up Neanderthal with a group
of modern day humans there would not be much difference at all
The average height is thought to be about 5 feet tall Their
bodies were probably quite stocky or muscular with very
strong legs-most likely due to traveling or wandering They
had low brow ridges Their front teeth were quite large larger
than the modern humanrsquos and worn - indicating much use for
chewing Neanderthalsrsquo average brain size is larger than
some modern humans
According to evidence they lived between 130000 and
35000 years ago dating back to the fourth glaciation Neanderthals seemed to live primarily in Europe
and in Western Asia this is concluded because most of the fossils were found in these areas
Many Mousterian tools were found with the fossil remains consisting of different kinds of scrapers and
points Many believe they primarily hunted reindeer and whenever possible the larger animals such as
mammoths cave bears etc Neanderthals were probably huntergatherer groups If so their diets
consisted of mainly small animals vegetation and less often the larger animals They would have used
whatever was in their environment for food and tools
Evidence shows that they possibly buried their dead Remains have been found in shallow graves often
buried with items such as flowers tool etc perhaps as offerings to the dead
Sources
Fagan Brian M The Journey From Eden Thames and Hudson Ltd London 1990
Wenke Robert J Patterns in Prehistory humankindrsquos first three million years Oxford University
Press Inc New York 1980 1984 1990
___________________________________________________________________________________
What are the key characteristics of Paleolithic art
It seems a bit flippant to try to characterize the art from a period that encompasses most of human history
Paleolithic art is intricately bound to anthropological and archaeological studies that professionals have
devoted entire lives toward researching and compiling The truly curious should head in those directions
That said to make some sweeping generalizations Paleolithic art
Concerned itself with either food (hunting scenes animal carvings) or fertility (Venus figurines)
Its predominant theme was animals
Is considered to be an attempt by Stone Age peoples to gain some sort of control
over their environment whether by magic or ritual
Represents a giant leap in human cognition abstract thinking
Engines of our Ingenuity No 1908 BLOMBOS CAVE Dr John H Lienhard
Today lets visit Blombos Cave The University of Houstons College of Engineering presents this series
about the machines that make our civilization run and the people whose ingenuity created them
You and I have to struggle with our of Clan-of-the-Cave-Bear thinking Weve been trained to believe that
only about thirty-five-thousand years ago the fine upright Cro-Magnons arose to displace the brutish Neanderthals
Well thats all being turned on its ear by the Blombos Cave site
Blombos Cave overlooks the Indian Ocean on the south coast of South Africa In 1993 it stunned the
anthropological world when it yielded hundred-thousand-year-old finely-formed bone tools -- two or three times
the age of such tools from Europe And the people who made them were anatomically Modern Humans -- like you
and me
Let me give some benchmark dating here the Paleolithic Era (which means the Era of Old Stone) It starts
with the first human tool-making two and a half million years ago It ends after the last Ice Age and the beginnings
of agriculture After that we talk about the Neolithic Era (the Era of New Stone) It lasted until we took up
metalworking and we invented writing
The older Paleolithic Era took place in two parts Lower and Upper During the latter part the Upper
Paleolithic Era Modern Humans appeared and rapidly extended tool making beyond simple chipped rocks For a
long time wed believed all thatd started just a little over thirty thousand years ago
But most of the evidence for that had come out of Europe Now Blombos Cave has moved the rise of
Modern Humans back to a time long before the Neanderthals vanished It has tripled the length of the Upper
Paleolithic Era and it places the cradle of Modern Humans down at the far tip of the African continent
Among those oldest-known bone tools we find spear points awls spatulas We find standard forms of
tools We find the first evidence of fishing We find fine stonework of a kind that didnt turn up in Europe until
twenty-thousand years ago We find different areas of the cave devoted to specific activities
The most remarkable discovery is that of purely artistic technologies Ochre was widely used Ochre is a
form of iron ore that makes a fine paint It can be used on human bodies or on walls And those chunks of ochre
themselves have been scribed with abstract designs The cave has also yielded up a seventy-five-thousand-year-old
snail-shell necklace -- the oldest ever found
All this suggests something beyond just tool making These uses of an esthetic symbolic language would
hardly have been possible without speech as well And speech was also something wed thought was only thirty
thousand years old
Its neat to find our grandparents doing so well so long ago As I was reading about that old necklace my
wife showed me a simi-lar one in a jewelry catalog She said I guess we havent come as far as wed thought
Well its true We really did not start being smart just the day before yesterday
Earliest evidence for cheese making in the 6th millennium BCE
in northern Europe Melanie Salque et al (Nature International Journal of Science Dec 2012)
The introduction of dairying was a critical step in early agriculture with milk products being rapidly
adopted as a major component of the diets of prehistoric farmers and pottery-using late hunter-gatherers The
processing of milk particularly the production of cheese would have been a critical development because it not
only allowed the preservation of milk products in a non-perishable and transportable form but also it made milk a
more digestible commodity for early prehistoric farmers The finding of abundant milk residues in pottery vessels
from seventh millennium sites from north-western Anatolia provided the earliest evidence of milk processing
although the exact practice could not be explicitly defined1 Notably the discovery of potsherds pierced with small
holes appear at early Neolithic sites in temperate Europe in the sixth millennium BC and have been interpreted
typologically as lsquocheese-strainersrsquo although a direct association with milk processing has not yet been
demonstrated Organic residues preserved in pottery vessels have provided direct evidence for early milk use in the
Neolithic period in the Near East and south-eastern Europe north Africa Denmark and the British Isles based on
the δ13
C and Δ13
C values of the major fatty acids in milk Here we apply the same approach to investigate the
function of sievesstrainer vessels providing direct chemical evidence for their use in milk processing The
presence of abundant milk fat in these specialized vessels comparable in form to modern cheese strainers provides
compelling evidence for the vessels having being used to separate fat-rich milk curds from the lactose-containing
whey This new evidence emphasizes the importance of pottery vessels in processing dairy products particularly in
the manufacture of reduced-lactose milk products among lactose-intolerant prehistoric farming communities
The emergence of dairying was a major innovation in prehistoric societies enabling the supply of nutritious
food without the slaughtering of precious livestock The processing of milk particularly the production of cheese
would have been an important development however the origins of cheese making are currently unknown
Iconographic and written evidence from the mid-third-millennium BCE weakly documents the history of cheese
making although its origins probably lie much earlier in prehistoryhellip
Activity two Read ldquoConsequences and future of plant and animal domesticationrdquo by Jared
Diamond (below) and write an 800-1200 word summary (1-1 frac12 pages typed Times New Roman
font single spaced size 12 standard margins)
o Explain why humans began to domesticate plants and animals and how the species subsequently
changed
o Describe the reasons why so few species were suitable and why certain areas became
agricultural hearths
o Finally explain the consequences of domestication
Do NOT quote the article summarize only Turn in your summary to wwwturnitincom before the
first day of school
Consequences and future of plant and animal domestication Jared Diamond
Domestication interests us as the most momentous change in Holocene human history Why did it
operate on so few wild species in so few geographic areas Why did people adopt it at all why did they
adopt it when they did and how did it spread The answers to these questions determined the remaking of
the modern world as farmers spread at the expense of hunterndashgatherers and of other farmers
Plant and animal domestication is the most important development in the past 13000 years of
human history It interests all of us scientists and non-scientists alike because it provides most of our
food today it was prerequisite to the rise of civilization and it transformed global demography Because
domestication ultimately yielded agents of conquest (for example guns germs and steel) but arose in only
a few areas of the world and in certain of those areas earlier than in others the peoples who through
biogeographic luck first acquired domesticates acquired enormous advantages over other peoples and
expanded As a result of those replacements about 88 of all humans alive today speak some language
belonging to one or another of a mere seven language families confined in the early Holocene to two
small areas of Eurasia that happened to become the earliest centers of domestication mdash the Fertile
Crescent and parts of China Through that head start the inhabitants of those two areas spread their
languages and genes over much of the rest of the world Those localized origins of domestication
ultimately explain why this international journal of science is published in an Indo-European language
rather than in Basque Swahili Quechua or Pitjantjatjara
The past of domestication Our decision to domesticate
The question why farm strikes most of us modern humans as silly Of course it is better to grow
wheat and cows than to forage for roots and snails But in reality that perspective is flawed by hindsight
Food production could not possibly have arisen through a conscious decision because the worlds first
farmers had around them no model of farming to observe hence they could not have known that there
was a goal of domestication to strive for and could not have guessed the consequences that domestication
would bring for them If they had actually foreseen the consequences they would surely have outlawed
the first steps towards domestication because the archaeological and ethnographic record throughout the
world shows that the transition from hunting and gathering to farming eventually resulted in more work
lower adult stature worse nutritional condition and heavier disease burdens The only peoples who could
make a conscious choice about becoming farmers were hunterndashgatherers living adjacent to the first
farming communities and they generally disliked what they saw and rejected farming for the good
reasons just mentioned and others
Instead the origins of domestication involved unforeseen consequences of two sets of changes mdash
changes in plants and animals and changes in human behavior As initially recognized by Darwin many
of the differences between domestic plants and their wild ancestors evolved as consequences of wild
plants being selected gathered and brought back to camp by hunterndashgatherers while the roots of animal
domestication included the ubiquitous tendency of all peoples to try to tame or manage wild animals
(including such unlikely candidates as ospreys hyenas and grizzly bears) Although humans had been
manipulating wild plants and animals for a long time hunterndashgatherer behavior began to change at the
end of the Pleistocene because of increasingly unpredictable climate decreases in big-game species that
were hunters first-choice prey and increasing human occupation of available habitats To decrease the
risk of unpredictable variation in food supply people broadened their diets to second- and third-choice
foods which included more small game plus plant foods requiring much preparation such as grinding
leaching and soaking Eventually people transported some wild plants (such as wild cereals) from their
natural habitats to more productive habitats and began intentional cultivation
The emerging agricultural lifestyle had to compete with the established hunterndashgatherer lifestyle
Once domestication began to arise the changes of plants and animals that followed automatically under
domestication and the competitive advantages that domestication conveyed upon the first farmers
(despite their small stature and poor health) made the transition from the hunterndashgatherer lifestyle to food
production autocatalytic mdash but the speed of that transition varied considerably among regions Thus the
real question about the origins of agriculture which I consider below is why did food production
eventually out-compete the hunterndashgatherer lifestyle over almost the whole world at the particular times
and places that it did but not at earlier times and other places
Changes of wild species under domestication
These changes are particularly well understood for southwest Asias Fertile Crescent the site of
domestication that was earliest in the world and that yielded what are still the worlds most valuable
domestic plant and animal species For most species domesticated there the wild ancestor and its wild
geographic range have been identified its relation to the domesticate proven by genetic and chromosomal
studies its changes under domestication delineated (often at the gene level) those changes traced in
successive layers of the archaeological record and the approximate time and place of its domestication
identified
For example wild wheat and barley bear their seeds on top of a stalk that spontaneously shatters
dropping the seeds to the ground where they can germinate (but where they also become difficult for
humans to gather) An occasional single-gene mutation that prevents shattering is lethal in the wild
(because the seeds fail to drop) but conveniently concentrates the seeds for human gatherers Once people
started harvesting those wild cereal seeds bringing them back to camp accidentally spilling some and
eventually planting others seeds with a non-shattering mutation became unconsciously selected for rather
than against
Individual wild animals also vary in traits affecting their desirability to humans Chickens were
selected to be larger wild cattle (aurochs) to be smaller and sheep to lose their bristly outer hairs and not
to shed their soft inner hairs (the wool) Most domestic animals including even recently domesticated
trout have smaller brains and less acute sense organs than do their wild ancestors Good brains and keen
eyes are essential to survival in the wild but represent a quantitatively important waste of energy in the
barnyard as far as humans are concerned
Especially instructive are cases in which the same ancestral species became selected under
domestication for alternative purposes resulting in very different-appearing breeds or crops For instance
dogs were variously selected to kill wolves dig out rats race be eaten or be cuddled in our laps What
naive zoologist glancing at wolfhounds terriers greyhounds Mexican hairless dogs and chihuahuas
would even guess them to belong to the same species Similarly cabbage was variously selected for its
leaves (cabbage and kale) stems (kohlrabi) flower shoots (broccoli and cauliflower) and buds (brussels
sprouts)
Why so few wild species were domesticated
The wild animal species that most plausibly could have yielded valuable domesticates were large
terrestrial mammalian herbivores and omnivores of which the world holds 148 species weighing 45 kg or
more Yet only 14 of those 148 species were actually domesticated prompting us to ask what prevented
domestication of the other 134 species Similarly worldwide there are about 200000 wild species of
higher plants of which only about 100 yielded valuable domesticates Especially surprising are the many
cases in which only one of a closely related group of species became domesticated For example horses
and donkeys were domesticated but none of the four zebra species were
The key question concerning this selectivity of domestication is as follows in the cases of all
those species never domesticated did the difficulty lie with the species itself or with the people
indigenous to the area to which the species was native For instance is the abundance of large wild
mammals the reason why no mammal species was ever domesticated in subequatorial Africa making
domestication superfluous for Africans If that explanation were correct then African people should also
have ignored Eurasian domestic mammals when those were finally introduced to Africa and European
animal breeders on arriving in Africa should have succeeded in domesticating some African wild
mammals but both of those predictions are refuted by the actual course of history
Six independent lines of evidence converge to prove that in most cases the obstacle lay with the
species itself not with the local people the rapid acceptance of introduced Eurasian domesticates by non-
Eurasian peoples the rapid ancient domestication of the most valuable wild species the repeated
independent domestications of many of them the failure of even modern European plant and animal
breeders to add significantly to our short list of valuable domesticates ancient discoveries of the value of
thousands of species that were regularly harvested in the wild but that never became domesticated and
the identification of the particular reasons preventing the domestication of many of those species
Comparisons of domesticated wild species with never-domesticated close relatives illustrate the subtle
factors that can derail domestication For example it is initially surprising that oak trees the most
important wild food plant in many parts of Eurasia and North America were never domesticated Like
wild almonds acorns of most individual wild oaks contain bitter poisons with occasional non-poisonous
mutant trees preferred by human foragers However the non-poisonous condition is controlled by a single
dominant gene in almonds but polygenically in oaks so that offspring of the occasional non-poisonous
individuals are often non-poisonous in almonds but rarely so in oaks preventing selection of edible oak
varieties to this day A second example is provided by the European horse breeders who settled in South
Africa in the 1600s and mdash like African herders for previous millennia mdash tried to domesticate zebras
They gave up after several centuries for two reasons First zebras are incurably vicious have the bad
habit of biting a handler and not letting go until the handler is dead and thereby injure more zoo-keepers
each year than do tigers Second zebras have better peripheral vision than horses making them
impossible even for professional rodeo cowboys to lasso (they see the rope coming and flick away their
head)
Figure 1 Comparisons of domesticated wild species (left of each pair) and their never-
domesticated close relatives (right) reveal the subtle factors that can derail domestication
Among wild mammal species
that were never domesticated the six
main obstacles proved to be a diet not
easily supplied by humans (hence no
domestic anteaters) slow growth rate
and long birth spacing (for example
elephants and gorillas) nasty
disposition (grizzly bears and
rhinoceroses) reluctance to breed in
captivity (pandas and cheetahs) lack
of follow-the-leader dominance
hierarchies (bighorn sheep and
antelope) and tendency to panic in
enclosures or when faced with
predators (gazelles and deer except
reindeer) Many species passed five of
these six tests but were still not
domesticated because they failed a
sixth test Conclusions about non-domesticability from the fact of non-domestication are not circular
because these six obstacles can be assessed independently
Why there were so few homelands of agriculture
Food production bestowed on farmers enormous demographic technological political and
military advantages over neighboring hunterndashgatherers The history of the past 13000 years consists of
tales of hunterndashgatherer societies becoming driven out infected conquered or exterminated by farming
societies in every area of the world suitable for farming One might therefore have naively anticipated
that in any part of the world one or more of the local hunterndashgatherer societies would have stumbled
upon domestication become farmers and thereby outcompeted the other local hunterndashgatherer societies
In fact food production arose independently in at most nine areas of the world (Fertile Crescent China
Mesoamerica AndesAmazonia eastern United States Sahel tropical West Africa Ethiopia and New
Guinea)
The puzzle increases when one scrutinizes that list of homelands One might again naively have
expected the areas most productive for farming today to correspond at least roughly to the areas most
productive in the past In reality the list of homelands and the list of breadbaskets of the modern world
are almost mutually exclusive (Fig 2) The latter list includes California North Americas Great Plains
Europe the pampas of Argentina the cape of southern Africa the Indian subcontinent Java and
Australias wheat belt Because these areas are evidently so well suited to farming or herding today why
were they not so in the past
Figure 2 Ancient and modern centers of agriculture
Ancient centers of origin of plant and animal domestication mdash the nine homelands of food
production mdash are indicated by the orange-shaded areas on the map The most agriculturally productive
areas of the modern world as judged by cereals and major staples are indicated by the yellow-shaded
areas Note that there is almost no overlap between the areas highlighted except that China appears on
both distributions and that the most productive areas of the central United States today approach areas of
the eastern United States where domestication originated The reason why the two distributions are so
different is that agriculture arose in areas to which the wild ancestors of the most valuable domesticable
crops and animals were native but other areas proved much more productive when those valuable
domesticates reached them
The explanation is that the homelands of agriculture were instead merely those regions to which
the most numerous and most valuable domesticable wild plant and animal species were native Only in
those areas were incipient early farmers able to out-compete local hunterndashgatherers Once those locally
available wild species had been domesticated and had spread outside the homelands societies of
homelands had no further advantage other than that of a head start and they were eventually overtaken by
societies of more fertile or climatically more favored areas outside the homelands
For instance the Fertile Crescent of southwest Asia was home to wild wheats barley peas sheep
goats cows and pigs mdash a list that includes what are still the most valuable crops and livestock of the
modern world Hence hunterndashgatherers of the Fertile Crescent domesticated those species and became the
worlds first farmers and herders beginning around 8500 BCE That head start in food production led to
them and their close neighbors also developing the worlds first metal tools writing empires and
professional armies Those tools of conquest and Fertile Crescent human genes gradually spread west
into Europe and North Africa and east into the western Indian subcontinent and central Asia However
once those crops livestock and human inventions had spread Fertile Crescent societies possessed no
other advantages As all of those elements slowly spread northwest across Europe farming and power
also shifted northwest from the Fertile Crescent to areas where farming had never arisen independently mdash
first to Greece then to Italy and finally to northwest Europe Human societies of the Fertile Crescent
inadvertently committed slow ecological suicide in a zone of low rainfall prone to deforestation soil
erosion and salinization
The spread of food production
From the homelands of domestication food production spread around the world in either of two
ways The much less common way was for hunterndashgatherers outside the homelands to acquire crops or
livestock from the homelands enabling them to settle down as farmers or herders as attested by
archaeological evidence for substantial continuity of material culture and by genetic linguistic and
skeletal evidence of continuity of human populations The clearest such example of local adoption of food
production is in southern Africa where around 2000 years ago some Khoisan hunterndashgatherers acquired
Eurasian livestock (cattle sheep and goats) arriving from the north and became herders (so-called
Hottentots) Much more often however local hunterndashgatherers had no opportunity to acquire crops and
livestock before they were overrun or replaced by farmers expanding out of the homelands exploiting
their demographic technological political and military advantages over the hunterndashgatherers
Expansions of crops livestock and even people and technologies tended to occur more rapidly along
eastndashwest axes than along northndashsouth axes1 (Fig 3) The reason is obvious locations at the same latitude
share identical day-lengths and seasonalities often share similar climates habitats and diseases and hence
require less evolutionary change or adaptation of domesticates technologies and cultures than do
locations at different latitudes Examples include the rapid westwards and eastwards dispersal of wheat
horses wheels and writing of western Asian origin and the westwards dispersal of chickens citrus and
peaches of Chinese origin along the eastndashwest axis of Eurasia This can be contrasted with the slow
spread of Eurasian livestock and non-spread of Eurasian crops southwards along Africas northndashsouth
axis the slow spread of Mexican corn and the non-spread of Mexican writing and wheels and Andean
llamas and potatoes along the Americas northndashsouth axis and the slow spread of food production
southwards along the northndashsouth axis of the Indian subcontinent
Figure 3 The continental major axis is oriented eastndashwest
for Eurasia but northndashsouth for the Americas and Africa
The spread of food production tended to occur more
rapidly along eastndashwest axes than along northndashsouth axes mainly
because locations at the same latitudes required less evolutionary
change or adaptation of domesticates than did locations at
different latitudes
This is not to deny the existence of ecological barriers at
the same latitude within Asia and North America but the general
pattern remains Eurasias eastndashwest axis and the resulting rapid enrichment of societies in each part of
Eurasia by crops and technologies from other parts of Eurasia became one of the main ultimate reasons
why Eurasian peoples conquered Native American peoples rather than vice versa Eurasias eastndashwest
axis also explains why there is much less evidence for multiple independent domestications of the same
plant species (see below) and much more evidence for agriculturally driven language expansions in
Eurasia than in the Americas
Consequences of domestication Consequences for human societies
Beginning around 8500 BCE the transition from the hunterndashgatherer lifestyle to food production
enabled people to settle down next to their permanent gardens orchards and pastures instead of migrating
to follow seasonal shifts in wild food supplies (Some hunterndashgatherer societies in especially productive
environments were also sedentary but most were not) Food production was accompanied by a human
population explosion that has continued unabated to this day resulting from two separate factors First
the sedentary lifestyle permitted shorter birth intervals Nomadic hunterndashgatherers had previously spaced
out birth intervals at four years or more because a mother shifting camp can carry only one infant or slow
toddler Second plant and animal species that are edible to humans can be cultivated in much higher
density in our gardens orchards and pastures than in wild habitats
Food production also led to an explosion of technology because sedentary living permitted the
accumulation of heavy technology (such as forges and printing presses) that nomadic hunterndashgatherers
could not carry and because the storable food surpluses resulting from agriculture could be used to feed
full-time craftspeople and inventors By also feeding full-time kings bureaucrats nobles and soldiers
those food surpluses led to social stratification political centralization and standing armies All of these
overwhelming advantages are what enabled farmers eventually to displace hunterndashgatherers
Evolution of epidemic infectious diseases
The main killers of humans since the advent of agriculture have been acute highly infectious
epidemic diseases that are confined to humans and that either kill the victim quickly or if the victim
recovers immunize himher for life Such diseases could not have existed before the origins of
agriculture because they can sustain themselves only in large dense populations that did not exist before
agriculture hence they are often termed crowd diseases The mystery of the origins of many of these
diseases has been solved by molecular biological studies of recent decades demonstrating that they
evolved from similar epidemic diseases of our herd domestic animals with which we began to come into
close contact 10000 years ago Thus the evolution of these diseases depended on two separate roles of
domestication in creating much denser human populations and in permitting much more frequent
transmission of animal diseases from our domesticates than from hunted wild animals For instance
measles and tuberculosis arose from diseases of cattle influenza from a disease of pigs and ducks1 An
outstanding mystery remains the origins of smallpox did it reach us from camels or from cattle
Crowd diseases paradoxically became agents of conquest because exposed individuals acquired
immune resistance from childhood exposure and exposed populations gradually evolved genetic
resistance but unexposed populations had neither type of resistance In practice because 13 of our 14
large domestic mammals were Eurasian species evolution of crowd diseases was concentrated in Eurasia
and the diseases became the most important agents by which Eurasian colonists expanding overseas killed
indigenous peoples of the Americas Australia Pacific islands and southern Africa
The agricultural expansions
Because some peoples acquired domesticates before other peoples could and because
domesticates conferred eventual advantages such as guns germs and steel on the possessors the history
of the past 10000 years has consisted of farmers replacing hunterndashgatherers or less advanced farmers
These agricultural expansions originating mainly from the nine homelands of agriculture remade genetic
and linguistic maps of the world Among the most discussed (and often highly controversial) possible
examples are the expansions of Bantu-speaking farmers out of tropical West Africa over subequatorial
Africa Austronesian-speaking farmers out of Taiwan over Island Southeast Asia Fertile Crescent farmers
over Europe and Korean farmers over Japan
Activity three Without the ability to translate their writing script archaeologists today do not
understand nearly as much about the Indus River Valley civilization that flourished from 2600 to
1900 BCE although the artifacts found there have enhanced our knowledge of these ancient
peoples One mystery is what exactly happened to the civilizations of the Indus River Valley
Mesopotamia and Egypt were later absorbed into a broader Hellenistic and later Roman cultural
zone but civilization in the Indus River Valley instead disappeared Study the map and read the
articles ldquoThe Myth of the Aryan Invasion of Indiardquo ldquoWere they Copycats or Geniusesrdquo
ldquoEnvironment and Technology Environmental Stress in the Indus River Valleyrdquo and ldquoDid Aryans
kill them or a depressionrdquo Write an 800 word essay that addresses the following question
What are the debates that center around the disappearance of this ancient civilization (Include
examples from the articles) Do NOT go on-line and attempt to find any more information Do
NOT quote from the articles Turn in your essay to wwwturnitincom before the first day of
school
River Valley Civilizations
The Indus Valley Civilization was the first major urban culture of South Asia It reached its peak
from 2600 BC to 1900 BC roughly a period called by some archaeologists Mature Harappan as
distinguished from the earlier Neolithic Early Harappan regional cultures Spatially it is huge
comprising of about 1000 settlements of varying sizes and geographically includes almost all of modern
Pakistan parts of India as far east as Delhi and as far south as Bombay and parts of Afghanistan
The main corpus of writing dated from the Indus Civilization is in the form of some two thousand
inscribed seals in good legible conditions (In case you dont know what seals are they are used to make
impressions on malleable material like clay)
Although these seals and samples of Indus writing have been floating around the scholastic world
for close to 70 years little progress has been made on deciphering this elegant script However we should
not blame scholars for their lack of progress for there are some major impediments to decipherment
1 Very short and brief texts The average number of symbols on the seals is 5 and the longest is
only 26
2 The language underneath is unknown
3 Lack of bilingual texts
For instance consider Champollion who deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs with all of these 3
important clues there were very long Egyptian texts he knew Coptic a descendant of Egyptian and the
Rosetta Stone a bilingual text between Greek and two written forms of Egyptian
But the script isnt as bad as undecipherable For one even though scholars dont have long texts
and bilingual texts they can still theorize about the language underneath the writing system There are
several competing theories about the language that the Indus script represent
A The language is completely unrelated to anything else meaning an isolate Well this doesnt get
us anywhere
B The language is Aryan (some form of Indian-Iranian Indo-European) The historical languages
spoken in Northern India and Pakistan all belong to the Indic branch of Indo-European including
Sanskrit Hindi Punjabi etc so maybe the people of the Indus valley spoke a very old Indo-
European language
The major problem with this model is the fact that horses played a very important role in all Indo-
European cultures being a people constantly on the move There is no escape from the fact that
the horse played a central role in the Vedic and Iranian cultures (Parpola 1986) Sidenote
Vedic means from the time of the Vedas the earliest text in India and the Vedic culture is from
around 1500 to 500 BC However no depiction of horses on seals nor any remains of horses have
been found so far before 2000 BC They only appear after 2000 BC Very likely there were no
Aryan speakers present before 2000 BC in the Indus Valley
C The language belongs to the Munda family of languages The Munda family is spoken largely in
eastern India and related to some Southeast Asian languages Like Aryan the reconstructed
vocabulary of early Munda does not reflect the Harappan culture So its candidacy for being the
language of the Indus Civilization is dim
D The language is Dravidian The Dravidian family of languages is spoken in Southern Indian but
Brahui is spoken in modern Pakistan So far this is the most promising model as in the following
points
o There are many Dravidian influences visible in the Vedic texts If the Aryan language
gradually replaced the Dravidian features from Dravidian would form a substratum in
Aryan One of these features is the appearance of retroflex consonants in Indian languages
both Indo-European and Dravidian In contrast retroflex consonants do not appear in any
other Indo-European language not even Iranian ones which are closest to Indic (For more
information on retroflex consonants please visit my Phonetics page)
o Another possible indication of Dravidian in the Indus texts is from structural analysis of
the texts which suggests that the language underneath is possibly agglutinative from the
fact that sign groups often have the same initial signs but different final signs The number
of these final signs range between 1 to 3 The final signs possibly represent grammatical
suffixes that modify the word (represented by the initial signs) Each suffix would
represent one specific modification and the entire cluster of suffixes would therefore put
the word through a series of modifications This suffix system can be found in Dravidian
but not Indo-European Indo-European tongues tend to change the final sounds to modify
the meaning of a word (a process called inflection) but repeated addition of sounds to the
end of word is extremely rare Often many suffixes in an agglutinative language
correspond to a single inflectional ending in an inflectional language
The Dravidian model isnt just an unapplicable theoryBut first we have to know what kind of
writing system is the Indus script
A count of the number of signs reveal a lot about the type of system being used Alphabetic
systems rarely have more than 40 symbols Syllabic systems like Linear B or Cherokee typically have 40
to 100 or so symbols The third ranges from logophonetic to logographic running upwards of hundreds of
signs (like 500 signs in Hieroglyphic Luwian and 5000 symbols in modern Chinese)
It appears that the maximum number of Indus script symbols is 400 although there are 200 basic
signs (ie signs that are not combined from others) This means that the Indus script is probably
logophonetic in that it has both signs used for their meanings and signs used for their phonetic values
Many signs start off as pictorial representation of a physical object often misleadingly called
pictograms They really are should be called logograms because they represent words in the language
However its next to impossible to write out a word with abstract meaning pictorially What all early
writers figured out was to use a logogram not for the object or idea it was originally supposed to stand for
but for all words sounding similar to the original word for that object or idea For example in English to
write leave we can use a picture of a leaf This is called rebus writing and is a tremendously common
pattern in all early writing systems We could also then use the same leaf symbol to stand for the sound
in relief adding another symbol in front of the leaf symbol in order to indicate the re sound So the
logogram gained a phonetic value as well
Testing the theory How can we take the theoretical framework so far and apply it to archaeological data
Numerals seem to represented by vertical lines (represented by number of lines in the glyph) but
they only go up to 7 Analysis reveal 4 more signs that appear in the same context as these numerals and
so they likely represent numbers higher than 7
The fact that no vertical-line numeral sign denotes 8 very likely means the Harappan language is
based 8 (For example the Arabic numerals that we use has symbols from 0 to 9 and to write ten we
have to combined the symbols 1 and 0 which identify our number system as based ten)
Base 8 languages are rare in the world but it does appear that early Dravidian is base 8 but later
changed to base 10 (possibly under Indo-European influence) When translated the count from 1 to 7 is
familiar to us one two three four five six seven However above seven the numbers
etymologies become non-numerical 8 is number 9 is many minus one and 10 is many (Fairservis
1983)
But can we actually read (not interpret) any symbol on the seals We should start with pictograms as
this one
Many scholars (Knorozov Parpola Mahadevan etc) see this sign as a fish
Fish in reconstructed Proto-Dravidian is micircn Coincidentally micircn is also the word for star
On many pots from Mohenjo Daro an Indus site there are drawings of fish and stars together and so
affirming this linguistic association
Going further often the numeral six appears before the fish Either it means 6 fish or
6 stars Old Tamil (a Dravidian language still spoken today) texts from just around the 1st
century AD recorded the name of the Pleiades a star cluster visible during autumn and
winter just above Orion as Six-Stars or aru-micircn Throughout the world titles with celestial
connotations are very common and the clause Six Stars forming part or whole of a Harappan title is not
unreasonable (Parpola 1986)
Sometimes symbols are added to the basic sign to make new signs Of these the one that
looks like a circumflex accent placed on top of the fish is quite interesting It is theorized to mean
roof and in Proto-Dravidian it is vecircymecircy This is phonetically similar to Proto-Dravidian word
for black may Together with fish it spells out mai-m-micircn or black star which in Old Tamil
means the planet Saturn In Sanskrit texts Saturn is associate the color black The god of death Yama is
the presiding of this planet and is usually depicted as riding on a dark buffalo
But the fish reading isnt accepted by all scholars William Fairservis saw it as a combination of
a loom twist and a human sign and form a honorific title pertaining to rulership (Fairservis 1983) I
however am more inclined to accept the fish identification
This is a quick overview of the current process in the decipherment of the Indus script For more
information you can either go to the following links or go to a good library for books and articles (check
out my references)
The Myth of the Aryan Invasion of India Richard Hooker 1996
They called themselves the noble ones or the superior ones Their names are lost their tribal names
are lost But when they found themselves conquerors they gave themselves the name superior or
noble
They were a tribal and nomadic peoples living in the far reaches of Euro-Asia in hostile steppe lands
barely scratching out a living They were unquestionably a tough people and they were fierce and war-
like Their religion reflects it dominated as it is by a storm-god or sky-god that enjoins warfare and
conquest This god was called something like Dyaus a word related to Zeus deus (the Latin word
for god) deva (the Sanskrit word for god) and of course the English word divine Their culture
was oriented around warfare and they were very good at it They were superior on horseback and rushed
into battle in chariots They were a tribal people ruled over by a war-chief or raja (the Latin word rex
(king) comes from the same root word along with the English regal) Somewhere in the early centuries
of the second millennium BC they began to migrate southwards in waves of steady conquest across the
face of Persia and the lands of India
There they would take on the name superior or noble to distinguish themselves from the people
they conquered Their name is derived from the Indo-European root word ar meaning noble In
Sanskrit they were the Aryas (Aryans) but that root ar would also serve as the foundation of the
name of the conquered Persian territories Iran This concept of nobility in fact seems to lie at the heart
of Indo-European consciousness for it appears in another countrys name Ireland or Eire You can
bet however that when a people go around calling themselves superior that it spells bad news for other
people
And there is no question that they were bad news for the southern Asians They swept over Persia with
lightening speed and spread across the northern river plains of India Their natures as a warlike
conquering people are still preserved in Vedic religion the foundation of Hinduism In the Rig Veda the
collection of praises to the gods the god Indra towers over the poetry as a conquering god one that
smashes cities and slays enemies The invading Aryans were originally nomadic peoples not agricultural
They penetrated India from the north-west settling first in the Indus valley Unlike the Harappans
however they eventually concentrated their populations along the Ganges floodplain The Ganges unlike
the Indus is far milder and more predictable in its flooding It must have been a paradise to a people from
the dry steppes of central Asia and Iran a paradise full of water and forest When they arrived the vast
northern plains were almost certainly densely forested Where now bare fields stretch to the horizon
when the Aryans arrived lush forests stretched to those very same horizons Clearing the forests over the
centuries was an epic project and one that is still preserved in Indian literature
The Aryans or Vedic civilization were a new start in Indian culture Harappa was more or less a dead
end (at least as far as we know) the Aryans adopted almost nothing of Harappan culture They built no
cities no states no granaries and used no writing Instead they were a warlike people that organized
themselves in individual tribal kinship units the jana The jana was ruled over by a war-chief These
tribes spread quickly over northern India and the Deccan In a process that we do not understand the basic
social unit of Aryan culture the jana slowly developed from an organization based on kinship to one
based on geography The jana became a janapada or nation and the jana-rajya or tribal kingdom
became the jana-rajyapada or national kingdom So powerfully ingrained into Indian culture is the
jana-pada that Indians still define themselves mainly by their territorial origins All the major territories
of modern India with their separate cultures and separate languages can be dated back to the early jana-
padas of Vedic India
The earliest history of the Aryans in India is called the Rigvedic Period (1700-1000 BC) after the
religious praise poems that are the oldest pieces of literature in India These poems the Rig Veda are
believed to represent the most primitive layer of
Indo-European religion and have many characteristics in common with Persian religion since the two
peoples are closely related in time In this early period their population was restricted to the Punjab in the
northern reaches of the Indus River and the Yamuna River near the Ganges They maintained the Aryan
tribal structure with a raja ruling over the tribal group in tandem with a council Each jana seems to have
had a chief priest the religion was focused almost entirely on a series of sacrifices to the gods The
Rigvedic peoples originally had only two social classes nobles and commoners Eventually they added a
third Dasas or darks These were we presume the darker-skinned people they had conquered By the
end of the Rigvedic period social class had settled into four rigid castes the caturvarnas or four
colors At the top of the caturvarnas were the priests or Brahmans Below the priests were the warriors
or nobles (Kshatriya) the craftspeople and merchants (Vaishya) and the servants (Shudra) who made
up the bulk of society These economic classes were legitimated by an elaborate religious system and
would be eventually subdivided into a huge number of economic sub-classes which we call castes
Social class by the end of the Rigvedic period became completely inflexible there was no such thing as
social mobility
In the early centuries of Later Vedic Period or Brahmanic Period (1000-500 BC) the Aryans
migrated across the Doab which is a large plain which separates the Yamuna River from the Ganges It
was a difficult project for the Doab was thickly forested the Aryans slowly burned and settled the Doab
until they reached the Ganges While the Rig Veda represents the most primitive religion of the Aryans
during the Rigvedic Period the religion of the Later Vedic period is dominated by the Brahmanas or
priestly book which was composed sometime between 1000 and 850 BC Later Vedic society is
dominated by the Brahmans and every aspect of Aryan life comes under the control of priestly rituals and
spells In history as the Indians understand it the Later Vedic Period is the Epic Age the great literary
heroic epics of Indian culture the Mahabharata and the Ramayana though they were composed
between 500 and 200 BC were probably originally formulated and told in the Later Vedic Period Both of
these epics deal with heroes from this period and demonstrate how Aryan cultural values as we can
understand them from the Rig Veda are being transformed by mixing with Indus cultures
What did the Aryans do with their time They seem to have had a well-developed musical culture and
song and dance dominated their society They were not greatly invested in the visual arts but their interest
in lyric poetry was unmatched They loved gambling They did not however have much interest in
writing even though they could have inherited a civilization and a writing system when they originally
settled India We do not know exactly when they became interested in writing but it may have been at the
end of the Brahmanic period somewhere between 650 and 500 BC Still there are no Aryan writings until
the Mauryan periodmdashfrom Harappa (2500-1750 BC) to Maurya (300 BC) is quite a long time The script
that the Mauryans used is called Brahmi script and was used to write not only the religious and literary
language of the time Sanskrit but also the vernacular languages This script Brahmi is the national
alphabet of India
The Vedic period then is a period of cultural mixing not of conquest Although the Aryans were a
conquering people when they first spread into India the culture of the Aryans would gradually mix with
indigenous cultures and the war-religion of the Aryans still preserved in parts of the Rig Veda slowly
became more ritualized and more meditative By 200 BC this process of mixing and transforming was
more or less complete and the culture we call Indian was fully formed
Were they Copycats or Geniuses How did the Harappans take the great leap from self-contained agricultural societies to a trade-oriented
luxury-conscious sophisticated urban civilization that gave the world the concept of town planning
Analyzing the evidence from various sites Possehl found that between 2600 BC and 2500 BC the
Harappans experienced a century of cathartic changes Before this he finds no breadboard models of the
expansion to come be it the invention of writing or the awesome town-planning techniques A
tremendous jump in human ability is evident So what or who caused it
In the past the reputed British archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler argued that ideas have wings and that
the Harappans were influenced by their trade contacts with the Sumerians But the diffusion theory of
civilization as it is called is slowly being given the heave-ho Cambridge historian Raymond Allchin an
authority on the subject says We are now beginning to see the foundation being laid in the preceding
100 to 200 years in smaller sites There appears to be a completely organic process of growth that threw
up the Harappan culture as we know it
Yet the evidence of that process continues to be scanty In Kunal in Haryana archaeologists recently
found what are known as proto Indus seals On pottery on many of the smaller sites in both India and
Pakistan graffiti similar to some figures on the script begin to appear And at Dholavira and at Banawali
in Haryana the distinction between the citadel and the lower city is beginning to evolve There is
however a huge jump in scale in such activity in those critical 100 years For in Harappa as in most
Indus sites the distinct gridiron pattern for streets appear a scientific system of drainage that linked up to
even the smallest house in the lower city is established precise weights and measures begin to circulate
and the writing system evolves So were the Harappans copycats Archaeologists say the Indus people
couldnrsquot have copied their town-planning from Egypt and Mesopotamia because in those civilizations the
roads meandered like village streets Nor was the writing similar to Sumer`s cuneiform or the Egyptian
hieroglyphics The Harappans had their own distinctive style Lal explains the dramatic change as a result
of centuries of growth reaching a critical mass that caused an unparalleled urban explosion Trade he
believes was the driving force of the revolution Even a skeptic like Possehl maintains that these are
indeed an expression of the Indian genius
Did Aryans kill them or a Depression Archaeologists are known to stumble but the kind of knocking Wheeler has taken over his Aryan
invasion theory has few parallels When the British archaeologist discovered a dozen skeletons in
Mohenjodaro he propounded a theory about the final massacre by marauding invaders that put an end to
the Indus civilization When an Indian scholar told him of Hariyuppa being mentioned in the Rigveda he
took it to mean Harappa And since a fort was known as pur and Indira the Aryan god was known as
Purandhara or destroyer of forts it all fitted neatly
After all werenrsquot the Indus cities among the most fortified Yet the past 50 years and more so the last
decade has shown just how wrong Wheeler was The last massacre theory was his imagination running
riot Far from being snuffed out there was a brilliant resurgence of Indus culture further south for a while
Possehl who made a recent study found that in 2000 BC in Pakistanrsquos Sindh district the sites were down
from 86 to 6 and in Cholistan 174 to 41 But in India the sites in Haryana Punjab and Rajasthan exploded
from 218 to 853 Possehl asks How can this be construed as an eclipse We are looking at a highly
mobile people
Allchin argues that there is clear indication that the rainfall pattern which had initially brought fertility
had become adverse in the Sindh region And theories that given the instability of the Himalayan region
there may have been a massive earthquake that possibly changed the course of rivers such as the Sarasvati
and affected many Indus cities The Indus people then migrated eastward Lal talks of steep decline in
trade because of problems in Sumer that resulted in a Great Depression and turned many urban centers
into ghost cities
Bisht concurs with Lal but goes a step further He says that after the quake hit the heart of the civilization
the Indus people migrated east which acted like a sort of bypass to their woes And like a dying candle it
shone brilliantly again but briefly before being snuffed out Dholavira Banawali Mehrgarh Harappa -- in
fact all the major cities show that as the cities declined encroachments on streets that were unseen at its
peak began to occur with alarming regularity There was a breakdown in sanitation and cities like their
modern-day counterparts in India simply ran themselves aground They were replaced by massive squatter
colonies and an explosion of rural sites as people disillusioned with cities went back to farming
communities A giant step backward
Yet it wasnrsquot as if all came to naught as was earlier believed Some of the writings survived in the pottery
of the following ages The weight and decimal system too lived on And so did the bullock-cart
technology that the Indus had perfected Rather than a violent transition there may have been an orderly
interaction with oncoming Aryans Lal in his most recent book even puts across the most audacious
theory Could the Bronze Age Harappans be Aryans themselves He says this because of the presence of
fire worship and the discovery of horse remains and idols in Indus sites Meadows dismisses it as
premature and points out that it was more likely that ass remains were mistaken for that of a horsersquos And
that the Vedas showed a great antipathy for urban centers
Whatever the cause it would take another 1000 years for a semblance of civilization to return to the
subcontinent -- a dire warning to modern India of the catastrophe that can befall an errant populace
Environmental Stress in the Indus Valley Source Quotation from D P Agarwal and R K Sood in Gregory L Possehl ed Harappan Civilization A Contemporary Perspective (Warminster
England Aris and Phillips 1982)229
The three river-valley civilizations discussed in this chapter were located in arid or semiarid regions Such
regions are particularly vulnerable to changes in the environment Scholars debates about the existence
and impact of changes in the climate and landscape of the Indus Valley illuminate some of the potential
factors at work as well as the difficulties of verifying and interpreting such long-ago changes
One of the points at issue is climatic change An earlier generation of scholars believed that the climate
of the Indus Valley was considerably wetter during the height of that civilization than it is now As
evidence they cited the enormous quantities of timber cut from extensive forests that would have been
needed to bake the millions of mud bricks used to construct the cities (see photo) the distribution of
human settlements on land that is now unfavorable for agriculture and the representation of jungle and
marsh animals on decorated seals This approach assumes that the growth of population prosperity and
complexity in the Indus Valley in the third millennium BCE required wet conditions and it concludes
that the change to a drier climate in the early second millennium BCE pushed this civilization into
decline
Other experts skeptical about a radical climatic change countered with alternative calculations of the
amount of timber needed and evidence of plant remains-particularly barley a grain that is tolerant of dry
conditions However recent studies of the stabilization of sand dunes which occurs in periods of heavy
rainfall and analysis of the sediment deposited by rivers and winds have been used to strengthen the
claim that the Indus Valley used to be wetter and in the early-to-mid second millennium BCE entered a
period of relatively dry conditions that have persisted to the present
A much clearer case can be made for changes in the landscape caused by shifts in the courses of rivers
These shifts are due in many cases to tectonic forces such as earthquakes Dry channels whether
detected in satellite photographs or by on-the-ground inspection reveal the location of old riverbeds and
it appears that a second major river system the Hakra once ran parallel to the Indus some distance to the
east The Hakra with teeming towns and fertile fields along its banks appears to have been a second axis
of this civilization Either the Sutlej which now feeds into the Indus or the Yamuna which now pours
into the Ganges may have been the main source of water for this long-gone system before undergoing a
change of course The consequences of the drying-up of this major waterway must have been immense-
the loss of huge amounts of arable land and the food that it produced the abandonment of cities and
villages and consequent migration of their populations shifts in the trade routes and desperate
competition for shrinking resources
As for the Indus itself the present-day course of the lower reaches of the river has shifted 100 miles
(161 kilometers) to the west since the arrival of the Greek conqueror Alexander the Great in the late
fourth century BCE and the deposit of massive volumes of silt has pushed the mouth of the river 50
miles (80 kilometers) farther south Such a shift of the river bed and buildup of alluvial deposits also may
have occurred in the third and second millennia BCE
A recent study concludes It is obvious that ecological stresses caused both climatically and
technically played an important role in the life and decay of the Indus civilization
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity four Read the article below about the early Chinese dynasties Using information from
the article write an 800 word essay that describes the influence of the environment religion and
gender on the formation of the government of ancient China Again do NOT look up additional
information use only what is provided Also do NOT quote from the articles paraphrase and
summarize only Turn in your essay to wwwturnitincom before the first day of school
The Shang and Zhou Dynasties By 5000 BCE agricultural communities had spread through much of what is now called China and there
were agricultural villages from the Wei River Valley eastward parallel with the great Yellow River
(Huang He) which flowed out of the Kunlun Mountains to the deciduous forest and loess soil region of
the North China Plain Where people were free of forest and had access to water they grew millet -- as
early as 5500 BCE -- while they continued to hunt deer and other game to fish and gather food And they
raised dogs pigs and chickens They built one-room homes dug into the earth with roofs of clay or
thatch pit homes grouped in villages They had spinning wheels and knitted and wove fibers And they
made pottery decorated with art
Flooding along the Yellow River was worse than it was along the Yangzi River to the south Along the
Yangzi River through the Hubei Basin and on the coastal plain to Hangzhou Bay farming had also
developed but people along the Yellow River had to work harder at flood control and irrigation and
perhaps this stimulated a greater effort at organization At any rate the North China Plain became the
largest area with a relatively dense population
Where people were producing more food than they needed to survive warriors had the incentive not only
to plunder but also to conquer And conquering kings arose on the North China Plain as they did in West
Asia The first dynasty of kings in the North China Plain has been described as belonging to the Xia
family - whose rule is thought to have begun around 2200 BCE But the first dynasty of which there is
historical evidence is that of the Shang family The Shang clan came out of the Wei River Valley just west
of the North China Plain By around 1500 BCE give or take a century or so the Shang unified people
along the North China Plain The military had chariots each with an aristocrat archer a driver and
sometimes also a man with a spear The Shang built an empire in much the same way as other conquerors
by leaving behind a garrison force to police local people by turning a local king into a subservient ally
free to manage local matters and by taxing the conquered
Around 1384 BCE the Shang moved their capital to Yin As a regular pastime the Shang emperors and
nobles hunted in organized game drives Emperors and aristocrats had splendid homes with walls of
pounded earth or earthen bricks while common people continued to live in their pit homes of earlier times
A Shang emperor was chief priest and he had an administrative bureaucracy with councilors lesser
priests and diviners As with other warring civilizations slaves were taken the slaves laboring at growing
crops And women in Shang civilization were subservient to men with aristocratic women enjoying a
greater freedom and equality than common women The role of the woman was to be gentle calm
respectful and to obey her husband Women were lower than men and were subjected to womenrsquos work
(tending to the children and needs of the husband) Men also married multiple times and women were
used as concubines
During the Shang dynasty the civilization along the Yellow River had canals for irrigating crops
Communities had drains that ran water out of town They made beer from millet The stable government
allowed for extended trading and use of money in the form of cowry shells Shang merchants traded in
salt iron copper tin lead and antimony some of which had to be imported from far away As early as
the 1300 BCE a bronze casting industry had developed This was later than the rise of bronze casting in
Europe and West Asia but it was the most advanced in the world
It was around 1300 BCE that the first known writing appeared in Shang civilization because the
government officials needed to have questions answered that would allow them to better govern This
writing was for divination done on plate-like portions of the bones of cattle or deer on seashells and
turtle shells and perhaps on wood By applying a pointed heated rod to a bone or shell the item cracked
and to which written symbol the crack traveled gave answers for various questions what the weather was
going to be like would there be flood would a harvest succeed or fail when might be the best time for
hunting or fishing there were also personal questions about illness or whether one should make a journey
Shang Violence and Splendor
To the east north and south of Shang civilization were those the Shang saw as barbarians including the
farming people along the Yangzi River Shang emperors sent out armies to repulse invaders and the
Shang emperors went beyond their domains to plunder and to capture foreign peoples needed for sacrifice
to their gods Uncovered tombs of emperors from the Shang period indicate that they could put into the
field as many as three to five thousand soldiers Found buried with the emperors were their personal
ornaments and spears with bronze blades and the remains of what had been bows and arrows Buried with
the emperors were also horses and chariots for transporting soldiers to battle And with the emperors in
death were their charioteers dogs servants and people in groups of ten -- people who had been
ceremonially beheaded with bronze axes
Zhou Empire Religion and Human Sacrifice
Shang rule was threatened by forces from outside and from within its empire To the west of Shang
civilization in the Wei River Valley lived a pastoral people called Zhou who led an alliance that included
other tribal peoples neighboring Shang civilization While the Shang emperor Zhouxin was occupied by
a war against tribal people to his southeast rebellions broke out among people that Shang monarchs
before him had conquered The Zhou and their allies saw the Shang emperors troubles as an opportunity
to move against him and in 1045 BCE they overpowered him at the battle of Mu-ye and had him
beheaded
A dynasty of Zhou emperors began ruling what had been Shang civilization They claimed that all lands
belonged to heaven that they were the sons of heaven and therefore that all lands and all people were
their subjects Seeing the lands they had conquered as too vast for one man to dominate the Zhou
emperors divided these lands into regions and assigned someone to rule each region in their name
choosing for this position a close family member a trusted member of their clan or the chief of a tribe
that had been allied with them against the Shang
Each local ruler had at his disposal all the lands around him He had his own militia And from the Zhou
emperors the local rulers received gifts such as chariots bronze weapons servants and animals The local
rulers received the title of lord (gong) Local rulers passed their positions to their sons their titles of lord
becoming hereditary And to control their areas better the lords made sub-lords of those who had
dominated the common people before they arrived A hierarchy of status and obligations emerged among
families and within families with older brothers ranking higher than younger brothers with rules of
succession as to which of the males would head his family If a married aristocrat became infatuated with
another woman rather than drive his wife from his home he could bring the other woman into the family
as a concubine where she would rank beneath his wife
Zhou emperors told those they had conquered that they the Zhou had ousted the ancestors of Shang
emperors from heaven and that heaven was occupied by their supreme god a god they called The Lord
on High who they said had commanded the downfall of the Shang emperors Like emperors in West
Asia Zhou emperors claimed that they ruled by divine right They claimed that they represented on earth
the Lord on High and that it was their duty to mediate with the Lord on High to perform appropriate
sacrifices and to maintain a proper relationship between heaven and their subjects They claimed that any
opposition to their rule was opposition to the will of heaven
It was from the Zhou emperors that local lords received the right to act as a priest to perform sacrifices
to have certain hymns sung and certain dances performed the right to propitiate the gods of local
mountains streams and of the soil and crops Meanwhile local aristocrats continued to keep track of their
ancestral heritage They married with religious rites and sanctions while common folk continued to have
no such marriages no surnames or recorded ancestors They merely lived together and were recognized as
a couple by their neighbors
Ancestor worship was also very important to the Shang It was thought that the success of crops and the
health and well being of people were based on the happiness of dead ancestors
The worship of various gods from the Shang period included gods of grain rain and agriculture -- one of
whom was believed to have had a virgin birth Among these gods was a god of the Yellow River who had
the body of a fish but the face of a man
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity five Research the social hierarchy religion political organization writing systems and
technological aspects of the societies listed on the SNAPSHOT Early Agricultural Societies Describe each aspect
of the society using specific evidence - in one or two clear sentences (SEE EXAMPLE of Olmec Society) Write
VERY neatly in ink Bring this chart with you on the FIRST DAY of school
picked roots and berries from surrounding trees When the resources dried up the band or tribe moved to
a new area with sustainable resources
The early tribes also developed a form of government This organization was based on chiefs
leaders and religious figures to head the tribe They were to main figure to these early hunter-gatherer
societies and are responsible for keeping them together The early tribes also worshipped deities and
practiced a variety of religious rituals It is said that Cro-Magnon buried their dead over 100000 years
ago indicating the belief in an afterlife The religious ceremonies became more sophisticated with the
sacrificing to gods goddesses and spirits The early tribes were very artistic people they were known to
play music and paint on cave walls
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Case Study Neander Valley
Modern man was really forced to stop and think when unusual fossils (bones) were found in 1856 near
Duesseldorf Germany in the Neander Valley Workers were mining for limestone in a cave when they
came across a skull and other various bones This is of course how Neanderthal gets its name
This was not the first discovery of Neanderthal fossils though It was about 1829 or 1830 when fragments
from the skull of a Neanderthal child were found in Belgium and in 1848 a full skull of an adult was
found in Gibraltar But the find in the Neander Valley began all of the excitement it stirred up many
questions and theories
These remains found in the cave near Duesseldorf were examined by Rudolf Vichow a German
Anatomist He concluded that it was just a Homo sapiens (modern human) with rickets Vichow claimed
that the flattened head was due to some form of injury
A biologist named Thomas Huxley declared that it was
an ancestor of modern humans Paleontologist Marcellin
Boule argued that Neanderthals were not direct
ancestors of Homo sapiens sapiens and so called them
Homo neanderthalensis Boule also gave the impression
that these creatures were stupid Of course this is
disputable with the evidence of the average brain size of
a Neanderthal compared with that of a modern human
There was a dispute to whether Neanderthals were direct ancestors or an extinct species of their own
Immediately they were portrayed as slouched over violent bruteape-like cavemen And this image was
carried on until almost 1960 At this time scientists realized that the first found Neanderthal had arthritis
and they did in fact walk upright It is said that if you were to put a cleaned up Neanderthal with a group
of modern day humans there would not be much difference at all
The average height is thought to be about 5 feet tall Their
bodies were probably quite stocky or muscular with very
strong legs-most likely due to traveling or wandering They
had low brow ridges Their front teeth were quite large larger
than the modern humanrsquos and worn - indicating much use for
chewing Neanderthalsrsquo average brain size is larger than
some modern humans
According to evidence they lived between 130000 and
35000 years ago dating back to the fourth glaciation Neanderthals seemed to live primarily in Europe
and in Western Asia this is concluded because most of the fossils were found in these areas
Many Mousterian tools were found with the fossil remains consisting of different kinds of scrapers and
points Many believe they primarily hunted reindeer and whenever possible the larger animals such as
mammoths cave bears etc Neanderthals were probably huntergatherer groups If so their diets
consisted of mainly small animals vegetation and less often the larger animals They would have used
whatever was in their environment for food and tools
Evidence shows that they possibly buried their dead Remains have been found in shallow graves often
buried with items such as flowers tool etc perhaps as offerings to the dead
Sources
Fagan Brian M The Journey From Eden Thames and Hudson Ltd London 1990
Wenke Robert J Patterns in Prehistory humankindrsquos first three million years Oxford University
Press Inc New York 1980 1984 1990
___________________________________________________________________________________
What are the key characteristics of Paleolithic art
It seems a bit flippant to try to characterize the art from a period that encompasses most of human history
Paleolithic art is intricately bound to anthropological and archaeological studies that professionals have
devoted entire lives toward researching and compiling The truly curious should head in those directions
That said to make some sweeping generalizations Paleolithic art
Concerned itself with either food (hunting scenes animal carvings) or fertility (Venus figurines)
Its predominant theme was animals
Is considered to be an attempt by Stone Age peoples to gain some sort of control
over their environment whether by magic or ritual
Represents a giant leap in human cognition abstract thinking
Engines of our Ingenuity No 1908 BLOMBOS CAVE Dr John H Lienhard
Today lets visit Blombos Cave The University of Houstons College of Engineering presents this series
about the machines that make our civilization run and the people whose ingenuity created them
You and I have to struggle with our of Clan-of-the-Cave-Bear thinking Weve been trained to believe that
only about thirty-five-thousand years ago the fine upright Cro-Magnons arose to displace the brutish Neanderthals
Well thats all being turned on its ear by the Blombos Cave site
Blombos Cave overlooks the Indian Ocean on the south coast of South Africa In 1993 it stunned the
anthropological world when it yielded hundred-thousand-year-old finely-formed bone tools -- two or three times
the age of such tools from Europe And the people who made them were anatomically Modern Humans -- like you
and me
Let me give some benchmark dating here the Paleolithic Era (which means the Era of Old Stone) It starts
with the first human tool-making two and a half million years ago It ends after the last Ice Age and the beginnings
of agriculture After that we talk about the Neolithic Era (the Era of New Stone) It lasted until we took up
metalworking and we invented writing
The older Paleolithic Era took place in two parts Lower and Upper During the latter part the Upper
Paleolithic Era Modern Humans appeared and rapidly extended tool making beyond simple chipped rocks For a
long time wed believed all thatd started just a little over thirty thousand years ago
But most of the evidence for that had come out of Europe Now Blombos Cave has moved the rise of
Modern Humans back to a time long before the Neanderthals vanished It has tripled the length of the Upper
Paleolithic Era and it places the cradle of Modern Humans down at the far tip of the African continent
Among those oldest-known bone tools we find spear points awls spatulas We find standard forms of
tools We find the first evidence of fishing We find fine stonework of a kind that didnt turn up in Europe until
twenty-thousand years ago We find different areas of the cave devoted to specific activities
The most remarkable discovery is that of purely artistic technologies Ochre was widely used Ochre is a
form of iron ore that makes a fine paint It can be used on human bodies or on walls And those chunks of ochre
themselves have been scribed with abstract designs The cave has also yielded up a seventy-five-thousand-year-old
snail-shell necklace -- the oldest ever found
All this suggests something beyond just tool making These uses of an esthetic symbolic language would
hardly have been possible without speech as well And speech was also something wed thought was only thirty
thousand years old
Its neat to find our grandparents doing so well so long ago As I was reading about that old necklace my
wife showed me a simi-lar one in a jewelry catalog She said I guess we havent come as far as wed thought
Well its true We really did not start being smart just the day before yesterday
Earliest evidence for cheese making in the 6th millennium BCE
in northern Europe Melanie Salque et al (Nature International Journal of Science Dec 2012)
The introduction of dairying was a critical step in early agriculture with milk products being rapidly
adopted as a major component of the diets of prehistoric farmers and pottery-using late hunter-gatherers The
processing of milk particularly the production of cheese would have been a critical development because it not
only allowed the preservation of milk products in a non-perishable and transportable form but also it made milk a
more digestible commodity for early prehistoric farmers The finding of abundant milk residues in pottery vessels
from seventh millennium sites from north-western Anatolia provided the earliest evidence of milk processing
although the exact practice could not be explicitly defined1 Notably the discovery of potsherds pierced with small
holes appear at early Neolithic sites in temperate Europe in the sixth millennium BC and have been interpreted
typologically as lsquocheese-strainersrsquo although a direct association with milk processing has not yet been
demonstrated Organic residues preserved in pottery vessels have provided direct evidence for early milk use in the
Neolithic period in the Near East and south-eastern Europe north Africa Denmark and the British Isles based on
the δ13
C and Δ13
C values of the major fatty acids in milk Here we apply the same approach to investigate the
function of sievesstrainer vessels providing direct chemical evidence for their use in milk processing The
presence of abundant milk fat in these specialized vessels comparable in form to modern cheese strainers provides
compelling evidence for the vessels having being used to separate fat-rich milk curds from the lactose-containing
whey This new evidence emphasizes the importance of pottery vessels in processing dairy products particularly in
the manufacture of reduced-lactose milk products among lactose-intolerant prehistoric farming communities
The emergence of dairying was a major innovation in prehistoric societies enabling the supply of nutritious
food without the slaughtering of precious livestock The processing of milk particularly the production of cheese
would have been an important development however the origins of cheese making are currently unknown
Iconographic and written evidence from the mid-third-millennium BCE weakly documents the history of cheese
making although its origins probably lie much earlier in prehistoryhellip
Activity two Read ldquoConsequences and future of plant and animal domesticationrdquo by Jared
Diamond (below) and write an 800-1200 word summary (1-1 frac12 pages typed Times New Roman
font single spaced size 12 standard margins)
o Explain why humans began to domesticate plants and animals and how the species subsequently
changed
o Describe the reasons why so few species were suitable and why certain areas became
agricultural hearths
o Finally explain the consequences of domestication
Do NOT quote the article summarize only Turn in your summary to wwwturnitincom before the
first day of school
Consequences and future of plant and animal domestication Jared Diamond
Domestication interests us as the most momentous change in Holocene human history Why did it
operate on so few wild species in so few geographic areas Why did people adopt it at all why did they
adopt it when they did and how did it spread The answers to these questions determined the remaking of
the modern world as farmers spread at the expense of hunterndashgatherers and of other farmers
Plant and animal domestication is the most important development in the past 13000 years of
human history It interests all of us scientists and non-scientists alike because it provides most of our
food today it was prerequisite to the rise of civilization and it transformed global demography Because
domestication ultimately yielded agents of conquest (for example guns germs and steel) but arose in only
a few areas of the world and in certain of those areas earlier than in others the peoples who through
biogeographic luck first acquired domesticates acquired enormous advantages over other peoples and
expanded As a result of those replacements about 88 of all humans alive today speak some language
belonging to one or another of a mere seven language families confined in the early Holocene to two
small areas of Eurasia that happened to become the earliest centers of domestication mdash the Fertile
Crescent and parts of China Through that head start the inhabitants of those two areas spread their
languages and genes over much of the rest of the world Those localized origins of domestication
ultimately explain why this international journal of science is published in an Indo-European language
rather than in Basque Swahili Quechua or Pitjantjatjara
The past of domestication Our decision to domesticate
The question why farm strikes most of us modern humans as silly Of course it is better to grow
wheat and cows than to forage for roots and snails But in reality that perspective is flawed by hindsight
Food production could not possibly have arisen through a conscious decision because the worlds first
farmers had around them no model of farming to observe hence they could not have known that there
was a goal of domestication to strive for and could not have guessed the consequences that domestication
would bring for them If they had actually foreseen the consequences they would surely have outlawed
the first steps towards domestication because the archaeological and ethnographic record throughout the
world shows that the transition from hunting and gathering to farming eventually resulted in more work
lower adult stature worse nutritional condition and heavier disease burdens The only peoples who could
make a conscious choice about becoming farmers were hunterndashgatherers living adjacent to the first
farming communities and they generally disliked what they saw and rejected farming for the good
reasons just mentioned and others
Instead the origins of domestication involved unforeseen consequences of two sets of changes mdash
changes in plants and animals and changes in human behavior As initially recognized by Darwin many
of the differences between domestic plants and their wild ancestors evolved as consequences of wild
plants being selected gathered and brought back to camp by hunterndashgatherers while the roots of animal
domestication included the ubiquitous tendency of all peoples to try to tame or manage wild animals
(including such unlikely candidates as ospreys hyenas and grizzly bears) Although humans had been
manipulating wild plants and animals for a long time hunterndashgatherer behavior began to change at the
end of the Pleistocene because of increasingly unpredictable climate decreases in big-game species that
were hunters first-choice prey and increasing human occupation of available habitats To decrease the
risk of unpredictable variation in food supply people broadened their diets to second- and third-choice
foods which included more small game plus plant foods requiring much preparation such as grinding
leaching and soaking Eventually people transported some wild plants (such as wild cereals) from their
natural habitats to more productive habitats and began intentional cultivation
The emerging agricultural lifestyle had to compete with the established hunterndashgatherer lifestyle
Once domestication began to arise the changes of plants and animals that followed automatically under
domestication and the competitive advantages that domestication conveyed upon the first farmers
(despite their small stature and poor health) made the transition from the hunterndashgatherer lifestyle to food
production autocatalytic mdash but the speed of that transition varied considerably among regions Thus the
real question about the origins of agriculture which I consider below is why did food production
eventually out-compete the hunterndashgatherer lifestyle over almost the whole world at the particular times
and places that it did but not at earlier times and other places
Changes of wild species under domestication
These changes are particularly well understood for southwest Asias Fertile Crescent the site of
domestication that was earliest in the world and that yielded what are still the worlds most valuable
domestic plant and animal species For most species domesticated there the wild ancestor and its wild
geographic range have been identified its relation to the domesticate proven by genetic and chromosomal
studies its changes under domestication delineated (often at the gene level) those changes traced in
successive layers of the archaeological record and the approximate time and place of its domestication
identified
For example wild wheat and barley bear their seeds on top of a stalk that spontaneously shatters
dropping the seeds to the ground where they can germinate (but where they also become difficult for
humans to gather) An occasional single-gene mutation that prevents shattering is lethal in the wild
(because the seeds fail to drop) but conveniently concentrates the seeds for human gatherers Once people
started harvesting those wild cereal seeds bringing them back to camp accidentally spilling some and
eventually planting others seeds with a non-shattering mutation became unconsciously selected for rather
than against
Individual wild animals also vary in traits affecting their desirability to humans Chickens were
selected to be larger wild cattle (aurochs) to be smaller and sheep to lose their bristly outer hairs and not
to shed their soft inner hairs (the wool) Most domestic animals including even recently domesticated
trout have smaller brains and less acute sense organs than do their wild ancestors Good brains and keen
eyes are essential to survival in the wild but represent a quantitatively important waste of energy in the
barnyard as far as humans are concerned
Especially instructive are cases in which the same ancestral species became selected under
domestication for alternative purposes resulting in very different-appearing breeds or crops For instance
dogs were variously selected to kill wolves dig out rats race be eaten or be cuddled in our laps What
naive zoologist glancing at wolfhounds terriers greyhounds Mexican hairless dogs and chihuahuas
would even guess them to belong to the same species Similarly cabbage was variously selected for its
leaves (cabbage and kale) stems (kohlrabi) flower shoots (broccoli and cauliflower) and buds (brussels
sprouts)
Why so few wild species were domesticated
The wild animal species that most plausibly could have yielded valuable domesticates were large
terrestrial mammalian herbivores and omnivores of which the world holds 148 species weighing 45 kg or
more Yet only 14 of those 148 species were actually domesticated prompting us to ask what prevented
domestication of the other 134 species Similarly worldwide there are about 200000 wild species of
higher plants of which only about 100 yielded valuable domesticates Especially surprising are the many
cases in which only one of a closely related group of species became domesticated For example horses
and donkeys were domesticated but none of the four zebra species were
The key question concerning this selectivity of domestication is as follows in the cases of all
those species never domesticated did the difficulty lie with the species itself or with the people
indigenous to the area to which the species was native For instance is the abundance of large wild
mammals the reason why no mammal species was ever domesticated in subequatorial Africa making
domestication superfluous for Africans If that explanation were correct then African people should also
have ignored Eurasian domestic mammals when those were finally introduced to Africa and European
animal breeders on arriving in Africa should have succeeded in domesticating some African wild
mammals but both of those predictions are refuted by the actual course of history
Six independent lines of evidence converge to prove that in most cases the obstacle lay with the
species itself not with the local people the rapid acceptance of introduced Eurasian domesticates by non-
Eurasian peoples the rapid ancient domestication of the most valuable wild species the repeated
independent domestications of many of them the failure of even modern European plant and animal
breeders to add significantly to our short list of valuable domesticates ancient discoveries of the value of
thousands of species that were regularly harvested in the wild but that never became domesticated and
the identification of the particular reasons preventing the domestication of many of those species
Comparisons of domesticated wild species with never-domesticated close relatives illustrate the subtle
factors that can derail domestication For example it is initially surprising that oak trees the most
important wild food plant in many parts of Eurasia and North America were never domesticated Like
wild almonds acorns of most individual wild oaks contain bitter poisons with occasional non-poisonous
mutant trees preferred by human foragers However the non-poisonous condition is controlled by a single
dominant gene in almonds but polygenically in oaks so that offspring of the occasional non-poisonous
individuals are often non-poisonous in almonds but rarely so in oaks preventing selection of edible oak
varieties to this day A second example is provided by the European horse breeders who settled in South
Africa in the 1600s and mdash like African herders for previous millennia mdash tried to domesticate zebras
They gave up after several centuries for two reasons First zebras are incurably vicious have the bad
habit of biting a handler and not letting go until the handler is dead and thereby injure more zoo-keepers
each year than do tigers Second zebras have better peripheral vision than horses making them
impossible even for professional rodeo cowboys to lasso (they see the rope coming and flick away their
head)
Figure 1 Comparisons of domesticated wild species (left of each pair) and their never-
domesticated close relatives (right) reveal the subtle factors that can derail domestication
Among wild mammal species
that were never domesticated the six
main obstacles proved to be a diet not
easily supplied by humans (hence no
domestic anteaters) slow growth rate
and long birth spacing (for example
elephants and gorillas) nasty
disposition (grizzly bears and
rhinoceroses) reluctance to breed in
captivity (pandas and cheetahs) lack
of follow-the-leader dominance
hierarchies (bighorn sheep and
antelope) and tendency to panic in
enclosures or when faced with
predators (gazelles and deer except
reindeer) Many species passed five of
these six tests but were still not
domesticated because they failed a
sixth test Conclusions about non-domesticability from the fact of non-domestication are not circular
because these six obstacles can be assessed independently
Why there were so few homelands of agriculture
Food production bestowed on farmers enormous demographic technological political and
military advantages over neighboring hunterndashgatherers The history of the past 13000 years consists of
tales of hunterndashgatherer societies becoming driven out infected conquered or exterminated by farming
societies in every area of the world suitable for farming One might therefore have naively anticipated
that in any part of the world one or more of the local hunterndashgatherer societies would have stumbled
upon domestication become farmers and thereby outcompeted the other local hunterndashgatherer societies
In fact food production arose independently in at most nine areas of the world (Fertile Crescent China
Mesoamerica AndesAmazonia eastern United States Sahel tropical West Africa Ethiopia and New
Guinea)
The puzzle increases when one scrutinizes that list of homelands One might again naively have
expected the areas most productive for farming today to correspond at least roughly to the areas most
productive in the past In reality the list of homelands and the list of breadbaskets of the modern world
are almost mutually exclusive (Fig 2) The latter list includes California North Americas Great Plains
Europe the pampas of Argentina the cape of southern Africa the Indian subcontinent Java and
Australias wheat belt Because these areas are evidently so well suited to farming or herding today why
were they not so in the past
Figure 2 Ancient and modern centers of agriculture
Ancient centers of origin of plant and animal domestication mdash the nine homelands of food
production mdash are indicated by the orange-shaded areas on the map The most agriculturally productive
areas of the modern world as judged by cereals and major staples are indicated by the yellow-shaded
areas Note that there is almost no overlap between the areas highlighted except that China appears on
both distributions and that the most productive areas of the central United States today approach areas of
the eastern United States where domestication originated The reason why the two distributions are so
different is that agriculture arose in areas to which the wild ancestors of the most valuable domesticable
crops and animals were native but other areas proved much more productive when those valuable
domesticates reached them
The explanation is that the homelands of agriculture were instead merely those regions to which
the most numerous and most valuable domesticable wild plant and animal species were native Only in
those areas were incipient early farmers able to out-compete local hunterndashgatherers Once those locally
available wild species had been domesticated and had spread outside the homelands societies of
homelands had no further advantage other than that of a head start and they were eventually overtaken by
societies of more fertile or climatically more favored areas outside the homelands
For instance the Fertile Crescent of southwest Asia was home to wild wheats barley peas sheep
goats cows and pigs mdash a list that includes what are still the most valuable crops and livestock of the
modern world Hence hunterndashgatherers of the Fertile Crescent domesticated those species and became the
worlds first farmers and herders beginning around 8500 BCE That head start in food production led to
them and their close neighbors also developing the worlds first metal tools writing empires and
professional armies Those tools of conquest and Fertile Crescent human genes gradually spread west
into Europe and North Africa and east into the western Indian subcontinent and central Asia However
once those crops livestock and human inventions had spread Fertile Crescent societies possessed no
other advantages As all of those elements slowly spread northwest across Europe farming and power
also shifted northwest from the Fertile Crescent to areas where farming had never arisen independently mdash
first to Greece then to Italy and finally to northwest Europe Human societies of the Fertile Crescent
inadvertently committed slow ecological suicide in a zone of low rainfall prone to deforestation soil
erosion and salinization
The spread of food production
From the homelands of domestication food production spread around the world in either of two
ways The much less common way was for hunterndashgatherers outside the homelands to acquire crops or
livestock from the homelands enabling them to settle down as farmers or herders as attested by
archaeological evidence for substantial continuity of material culture and by genetic linguistic and
skeletal evidence of continuity of human populations The clearest such example of local adoption of food
production is in southern Africa where around 2000 years ago some Khoisan hunterndashgatherers acquired
Eurasian livestock (cattle sheep and goats) arriving from the north and became herders (so-called
Hottentots) Much more often however local hunterndashgatherers had no opportunity to acquire crops and
livestock before they were overrun or replaced by farmers expanding out of the homelands exploiting
their demographic technological political and military advantages over the hunterndashgatherers
Expansions of crops livestock and even people and technologies tended to occur more rapidly along
eastndashwest axes than along northndashsouth axes1 (Fig 3) The reason is obvious locations at the same latitude
share identical day-lengths and seasonalities often share similar climates habitats and diseases and hence
require less evolutionary change or adaptation of domesticates technologies and cultures than do
locations at different latitudes Examples include the rapid westwards and eastwards dispersal of wheat
horses wheels and writing of western Asian origin and the westwards dispersal of chickens citrus and
peaches of Chinese origin along the eastndashwest axis of Eurasia This can be contrasted with the slow
spread of Eurasian livestock and non-spread of Eurasian crops southwards along Africas northndashsouth
axis the slow spread of Mexican corn and the non-spread of Mexican writing and wheels and Andean
llamas and potatoes along the Americas northndashsouth axis and the slow spread of food production
southwards along the northndashsouth axis of the Indian subcontinent
Figure 3 The continental major axis is oriented eastndashwest
for Eurasia but northndashsouth for the Americas and Africa
The spread of food production tended to occur more
rapidly along eastndashwest axes than along northndashsouth axes mainly
because locations at the same latitudes required less evolutionary
change or adaptation of domesticates than did locations at
different latitudes
This is not to deny the existence of ecological barriers at
the same latitude within Asia and North America but the general
pattern remains Eurasias eastndashwest axis and the resulting rapid enrichment of societies in each part of
Eurasia by crops and technologies from other parts of Eurasia became one of the main ultimate reasons
why Eurasian peoples conquered Native American peoples rather than vice versa Eurasias eastndashwest
axis also explains why there is much less evidence for multiple independent domestications of the same
plant species (see below) and much more evidence for agriculturally driven language expansions in
Eurasia than in the Americas
Consequences of domestication Consequences for human societies
Beginning around 8500 BCE the transition from the hunterndashgatherer lifestyle to food production
enabled people to settle down next to their permanent gardens orchards and pastures instead of migrating
to follow seasonal shifts in wild food supplies (Some hunterndashgatherer societies in especially productive
environments were also sedentary but most were not) Food production was accompanied by a human
population explosion that has continued unabated to this day resulting from two separate factors First
the sedentary lifestyle permitted shorter birth intervals Nomadic hunterndashgatherers had previously spaced
out birth intervals at four years or more because a mother shifting camp can carry only one infant or slow
toddler Second plant and animal species that are edible to humans can be cultivated in much higher
density in our gardens orchards and pastures than in wild habitats
Food production also led to an explosion of technology because sedentary living permitted the
accumulation of heavy technology (such as forges and printing presses) that nomadic hunterndashgatherers
could not carry and because the storable food surpluses resulting from agriculture could be used to feed
full-time craftspeople and inventors By also feeding full-time kings bureaucrats nobles and soldiers
those food surpluses led to social stratification political centralization and standing armies All of these
overwhelming advantages are what enabled farmers eventually to displace hunterndashgatherers
Evolution of epidemic infectious diseases
The main killers of humans since the advent of agriculture have been acute highly infectious
epidemic diseases that are confined to humans and that either kill the victim quickly or if the victim
recovers immunize himher for life Such diseases could not have existed before the origins of
agriculture because they can sustain themselves only in large dense populations that did not exist before
agriculture hence they are often termed crowd diseases The mystery of the origins of many of these
diseases has been solved by molecular biological studies of recent decades demonstrating that they
evolved from similar epidemic diseases of our herd domestic animals with which we began to come into
close contact 10000 years ago Thus the evolution of these diseases depended on two separate roles of
domestication in creating much denser human populations and in permitting much more frequent
transmission of animal diseases from our domesticates than from hunted wild animals For instance
measles and tuberculosis arose from diseases of cattle influenza from a disease of pigs and ducks1 An
outstanding mystery remains the origins of smallpox did it reach us from camels or from cattle
Crowd diseases paradoxically became agents of conquest because exposed individuals acquired
immune resistance from childhood exposure and exposed populations gradually evolved genetic
resistance but unexposed populations had neither type of resistance In practice because 13 of our 14
large domestic mammals were Eurasian species evolution of crowd diseases was concentrated in Eurasia
and the diseases became the most important agents by which Eurasian colonists expanding overseas killed
indigenous peoples of the Americas Australia Pacific islands and southern Africa
The agricultural expansions
Because some peoples acquired domesticates before other peoples could and because
domesticates conferred eventual advantages such as guns germs and steel on the possessors the history
of the past 10000 years has consisted of farmers replacing hunterndashgatherers or less advanced farmers
These agricultural expansions originating mainly from the nine homelands of agriculture remade genetic
and linguistic maps of the world Among the most discussed (and often highly controversial) possible
examples are the expansions of Bantu-speaking farmers out of tropical West Africa over subequatorial
Africa Austronesian-speaking farmers out of Taiwan over Island Southeast Asia Fertile Crescent farmers
over Europe and Korean farmers over Japan
Activity three Without the ability to translate their writing script archaeologists today do not
understand nearly as much about the Indus River Valley civilization that flourished from 2600 to
1900 BCE although the artifacts found there have enhanced our knowledge of these ancient
peoples One mystery is what exactly happened to the civilizations of the Indus River Valley
Mesopotamia and Egypt were later absorbed into a broader Hellenistic and later Roman cultural
zone but civilization in the Indus River Valley instead disappeared Study the map and read the
articles ldquoThe Myth of the Aryan Invasion of Indiardquo ldquoWere they Copycats or Geniusesrdquo
ldquoEnvironment and Technology Environmental Stress in the Indus River Valleyrdquo and ldquoDid Aryans
kill them or a depressionrdquo Write an 800 word essay that addresses the following question
What are the debates that center around the disappearance of this ancient civilization (Include
examples from the articles) Do NOT go on-line and attempt to find any more information Do
NOT quote from the articles Turn in your essay to wwwturnitincom before the first day of
school
River Valley Civilizations
The Indus Valley Civilization was the first major urban culture of South Asia It reached its peak
from 2600 BC to 1900 BC roughly a period called by some archaeologists Mature Harappan as
distinguished from the earlier Neolithic Early Harappan regional cultures Spatially it is huge
comprising of about 1000 settlements of varying sizes and geographically includes almost all of modern
Pakistan parts of India as far east as Delhi and as far south as Bombay and parts of Afghanistan
The main corpus of writing dated from the Indus Civilization is in the form of some two thousand
inscribed seals in good legible conditions (In case you dont know what seals are they are used to make
impressions on malleable material like clay)
Although these seals and samples of Indus writing have been floating around the scholastic world
for close to 70 years little progress has been made on deciphering this elegant script However we should
not blame scholars for their lack of progress for there are some major impediments to decipherment
1 Very short and brief texts The average number of symbols on the seals is 5 and the longest is
only 26
2 The language underneath is unknown
3 Lack of bilingual texts
For instance consider Champollion who deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs with all of these 3
important clues there were very long Egyptian texts he knew Coptic a descendant of Egyptian and the
Rosetta Stone a bilingual text between Greek and two written forms of Egyptian
But the script isnt as bad as undecipherable For one even though scholars dont have long texts
and bilingual texts they can still theorize about the language underneath the writing system There are
several competing theories about the language that the Indus script represent
A The language is completely unrelated to anything else meaning an isolate Well this doesnt get
us anywhere
B The language is Aryan (some form of Indian-Iranian Indo-European) The historical languages
spoken in Northern India and Pakistan all belong to the Indic branch of Indo-European including
Sanskrit Hindi Punjabi etc so maybe the people of the Indus valley spoke a very old Indo-
European language
The major problem with this model is the fact that horses played a very important role in all Indo-
European cultures being a people constantly on the move There is no escape from the fact that
the horse played a central role in the Vedic and Iranian cultures (Parpola 1986) Sidenote
Vedic means from the time of the Vedas the earliest text in India and the Vedic culture is from
around 1500 to 500 BC However no depiction of horses on seals nor any remains of horses have
been found so far before 2000 BC They only appear after 2000 BC Very likely there were no
Aryan speakers present before 2000 BC in the Indus Valley
C The language belongs to the Munda family of languages The Munda family is spoken largely in
eastern India and related to some Southeast Asian languages Like Aryan the reconstructed
vocabulary of early Munda does not reflect the Harappan culture So its candidacy for being the
language of the Indus Civilization is dim
D The language is Dravidian The Dravidian family of languages is spoken in Southern Indian but
Brahui is spoken in modern Pakistan So far this is the most promising model as in the following
points
o There are many Dravidian influences visible in the Vedic texts If the Aryan language
gradually replaced the Dravidian features from Dravidian would form a substratum in
Aryan One of these features is the appearance of retroflex consonants in Indian languages
both Indo-European and Dravidian In contrast retroflex consonants do not appear in any
other Indo-European language not even Iranian ones which are closest to Indic (For more
information on retroflex consonants please visit my Phonetics page)
o Another possible indication of Dravidian in the Indus texts is from structural analysis of
the texts which suggests that the language underneath is possibly agglutinative from the
fact that sign groups often have the same initial signs but different final signs The number
of these final signs range between 1 to 3 The final signs possibly represent grammatical
suffixes that modify the word (represented by the initial signs) Each suffix would
represent one specific modification and the entire cluster of suffixes would therefore put
the word through a series of modifications This suffix system can be found in Dravidian
but not Indo-European Indo-European tongues tend to change the final sounds to modify
the meaning of a word (a process called inflection) but repeated addition of sounds to the
end of word is extremely rare Often many suffixes in an agglutinative language
correspond to a single inflectional ending in an inflectional language
The Dravidian model isnt just an unapplicable theoryBut first we have to know what kind of
writing system is the Indus script
A count of the number of signs reveal a lot about the type of system being used Alphabetic
systems rarely have more than 40 symbols Syllabic systems like Linear B or Cherokee typically have 40
to 100 or so symbols The third ranges from logophonetic to logographic running upwards of hundreds of
signs (like 500 signs in Hieroglyphic Luwian and 5000 symbols in modern Chinese)
It appears that the maximum number of Indus script symbols is 400 although there are 200 basic
signs (ie signs that are not combined from others) This means that the Indus script is probably
logophonetic in that it has both signs used for their meanings and signs used for their phonetic values
Many signs start off as pictorial representation of a physical object often misleadingly called
pictograms They really are should be called logograms because they represent words in the language
However its next to impossible to write out a word with abstract meaning pictorially What all early
writers figured out was to use a logogram not for the object or idea it was originally supposed to stand for
but for all words sounding similar to the original word for that object or idea For example in English to
write leave we can use a picture of a leaf This is called rebus writing and is a tremendously common
pattern in all early writing systems We could also then use the same leaf symbol to stand for the sound
in relief adding another symbol in front of the leaf symbol in order to indicate the re sound So the
logogram gained a phonetic value as well
Testing the theory How can we take the theoretical framework so far and apply it to archaeological data
Numerals seem to represented by vertical lines (represented by number of lines in the glyph) but
they only go up to 7 Analysis reveal 4 more signs that appear in the same context as these numerals and
so they likely represent numbers higher than 7
The fact that no vertical-line numeral sign denotes 8 very likely means the Harappan language is
based 8 (For example the Arabic numerals that we use has symbols from 0 to 9 and to write ten we
have to combined the symbols 1 and 0 which identify our number system as based ten)
Base 8 languages are rare in the world but it does appear that early Dravidian is base 8 but later
changed to base 10 (possibly under Indo-European influence) When translated the count from 1 to 7 is
familiar to us one two three four five six seven However above seven the numbers
etymologies become non-numerical 8 is number 9 is many minus one and 10 is many (Fairservis
1983)
But can we actually read (not interpret) any symbol on the seals We should start with pictograms as
this one
Many scholars (Knorozov Parpola Mahadevan etc) see this sign as a fish
Fish in reconstructed Proto-Dravidian is micircn Coincidentally micircn is also the word for star
On many pots from Mohenjo Daro an Indus site there are drawings of fish and stars together and so
affirming this linguistic association
Going further often the numeral six appears before the fish Either it means 6 fish or
6 stars Old Tamil (a Dravidian language still spoken today) texts from just around the 1st
century AD recorded the name of the Pleiades a star cluster visible during autumn and
winter just above Orion as Six-Stars or aru-micircn Throughout the world titles with celestial
connotations are very common and the clause Six Stars forming part or whole of a Harappan title is not
unreasonable (Parpola 1986)
Sometimes symbols are added to the basic sign to make new signs Of these the one that
looks like a circumflex accent placed on top of the fish is quite interesting It is theorized to mean
roof and in Proto-Dravidian it is vecircymecircy This is phonetically similar to Proto-Dravidian word
for black may Together with fish it spells out mai-m-micircn or black star which in Old Tamil
means the planet Saturn In Sanskrit texts Saturn is associate the color black The god of death Yama is
the presiding of this planet and is usually depicted as riding on a dark buffalo
But the fish reading isnt accepted by all scholars William Fairservis saw it as a combination of
a loom twist and a human sign and form a honorific title pertaining to rulership (Fairservis 1983) I
however am more inclined to accept the fish identification
This is a quick overview of the current process in the decipherment of the Indus script For more
information you can either go to the following links or go to a good library for books and articles (check
out my references)
The Myth of the Aryan Invasion of India Richard Hooker 1996
They called themselves the noble ones or the superior ones Their names are lost their tribal names
are lost But when they found themselves conquerors they gave themselves the name superior or
noble
They were a tribal and nomadic peoples living in the far reaches of Euro-Asia in hostile steppe lands
barely scratching out a living They were unquestionably a tough people and they were fierce and war-
like Their religion reflects it dominated as it is by a storm-god or sky-god that enjoins warfare and
conquest This god was called something like Dyaus a word related to Zeus deus (the Latin word
for god) deva (the Sanskrit word for god) and of course the English word divine Their culture
was oriented around warfare and they were very good at it They were superior on horseback and rushed
into battle in chariots They were a tribal people ruled over by a war-chief or raja (the Latin word rex
(king) comes from the same root word along with the English regal) Somewhere in the early centuries
of the second millennium BC they began to migrate southwards in waves of steady conquest across the
face of Persia and the lands of India
There they would take on the name superior or noble to distinguish themselves from the people
they conquered Their name is derived from the Indo-European root word ar meaning noble In
Sanskrit they were the Aryas (Aryans) but that root ar would also serve as the foundation of the
name of the conquered Persian territories Iran This concept of nobility in fact seems to lie at the heart
of Indo-European consciousness for it appears in another countrys name Ireland or Eire You can
bet however that when a people go around calling themselves superior that it spells bad news for other
people
And there is no question that they were bad news for the southern Asians They swept over Persia with
lightening speed and spread across the northern river plains of India Their natures as a warlike
conquering people are still preserved in Vedic religion the foundation of Hinduism In the Rig Veda the
collection of praises to the gods the god Indra towers over the poetry as a conquering god one that
smashes cities and slays enemies The invading Aryans were originally nomadic peoples not agricultural
They penetrated India from the north-west settling first in the Indus valley Unlike the Harappans
however they eventually concentrated their populations along the Ganges floodplain The Ganges unlike
the Indus is far milder and more predictable in its flooding It must have been a paradise to a people from
the dry steppes of central Asia and Iran a paradise full of water and forest When they arrived the vast
northern plains were almost certainly densely forested Where now bare fields stretch to the horizon
when the Aryans arrived lush forests stretched to those very same horizons Clearing the forests over the
centuries was an epic project and one that is still preserved in Indian literature
The Aryans or Vedic civilization were a new start in Indian culture Harappa was more or less a dead
end (at least as far as we know) the Aryans adopted almost nothing of Harappan culture They built no
cities no states no granaries and used no writing Instead they were a warlike people that organized
themselves in individual tribal kinship units the jana The jana was ruled over by a war-chief These
tribes spread quickly over northern India and the Deccan In a process that we do not understand the basic
social unit of Aryan culture the jana slowly developed from an organization based on kinship to one
based on geography The jana became a janapada or nation and the jana-rajya or tribal kingdom
became the jana-rajyapada or national kingdom So powerfully ingrained into Indian culture is the
jana-pada that Indians still define themselves mainly by their territorial origins All the major territories
of modern India with their separate cultures and separate languages can be dated back to the early jana-
padas of Vedic India
The earliest history of the Aryans in India is called the Rigvedic Period (1700-1000 BC) after the
religious praise poems that are the oldest pieces of literature in India These poems the Rig Veda are
believed to represent the most primitive layer of
Indo-European religion and have many characteristics in common with Persian religion since the two
peoples are closely related in time In this early period their population was restricted to the Punjab in the
northern reaches of the Indus River and the Yamuna River near the Ganges They maintained the Aryan
tribal structure with a raja ruling over the tribal group in tandem with a council Each jana seems to have
had a chief priest the religion was focused almost entirely on a series of sacrifices to the gods The
Rigvedic peoples originally had only two social classes nobles and commoners Eventually they added a
third Dasas or darks These were we presume the darker-skinned people they had conquered By the
end of the Rigvedic period social class had settled into four rigid castes the caturvarnas or four
colors At the top of the caturvarnas were the priests or Brahmans Below the priests were the warriors
or nobles (Kshatriya) the craftspeople and merchants (Vaishya) and the servants (Shudra) who made
up the bulk of society These economic classes were legitimated by an elaborate religious system and
would be eventually subdivided into a huge number of economic sub-classes which we call castes
Social class by the end of the Rigvedic period became completely inflexible there was no such thing as
social mobility
In the early centuries of Later Vedic Period or Brahmanic Period (1000-500 BC) the Aryans
migrated across the Doab which is a large plain which separates the Yamuna River from the Ganges It
was a difficult project for the Doab was thickly forested the Aryans slowly burned and settled the Doab
until they reached the Ganges While the Rig Veda represents the most primitive religion of the Aryans
during the Rigvedic Period the religion of the Later Vedic period is dominated by the Brahmanas or
priestly book which was composed sometime between 1000 and 850 BC Later Vedic society is
dominated by the Brahmans and every aspect of Aryan life comes under the control of priestly rituals and
spells In history as the Indians understand it the Later Vedic Period is the Epic Age the great literary
heroic epics of Indian culture the Mahabharata and the Ramayana though they were composed
between 500 and 200 BC were probably originally formulated and told in the Later Vedic Period Both of
these epics deal with heroes from this period and demonstrate how Aryan cultural values as we can
understand them from the Rig Veda are being transformed by mixing with Indus cultures
What did the Aryans do with their time They seem to have had a well-developed musical culture and
song and dance dominated their society They were not greatly invested in the visual arts but their interest
in lyric poetry was unmatched They loved gambling They did not however have much interest in
writing even though they could have inherited a civilization and a writing system when they originally
settled India We do not know exactly when they became interested in writing but it may have been at the
end of the Brahmanic period somewhere between 650 and 500 BC Still there are no Aryan writings until
the Mauryan periodmdashfrom Harappa (2500-1750 BC) to Maurya (300 BC) is quite a long time The script
that the Mauryans used is called Brahmi script and was used to write not only the religious and literary
language of the time Sanskrit but also the vernacular languages This script Brahmi is the national
alphabet of India
The Vedic period then is a period of cultural mixing not of conquest Although the Aryans were a
conquering people when they first spread into India the culture of the Aryans would gradually mix with
indigenous cultures and the war-religion of the Aryans still preserved in parts of the Rig Veda slowly
became more ritualized and more meditative By 200 BC this process of mixing and transforming was
more or less complete and the culture we call Indian was fully formed
Were they Copycats or Geniuses How did the Harappans take the great leap from self-contained agricultural societies to a trade-oriented
luxury-conscious sophisticated urban civilization that gave the world the concept of town planning
Analyzing the evidence from various sites Possehl found that between 2600 BC and 2500 BC the
Harappans experienced a century of cathartic changes Before this he finds no breadboard models of the
expansion to come be it the invention of writing or the awesome town-planning techniques A
tremendous jump in human ability is evident So what or who caused it
In the past the reputed British archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler argued that ideas have wings and that
the Harappans were influenced by their trade contacts with the Sumerians But the diffusion theory of
civilization as it is called is slowly being given the heave-ho Cambridge historian Raymond Allchin an
authority on the subject says We are now beginning to see the foundation being laid in the preceding
100 to 200 years in smaller sites There appears to be a completely organic process of growth that threw
up the Harappan culture as we know it
Yet the evidence of that process continues to be scanty In Kunal in Haryana archaeologists recently
found what are known as proto Indus seals On pottery on many of the smaller sites in both India and
Pakistan graffiti similar to some figures on the script begin to appear And at Dholavira and at Banawali
in Haryana the distinction between the citadel and the lower city is beginning to evolve There is
however a huge jump in scale in such activity in those critical 100 years For in Harappa as in most
Indus sites the distinct gridiron pattern for streets appear a scientific system of drainage that linked up to
even the smallest house in the lower city is established precise weights and measures begin to circulate
and the writing system evolves So were the Harappans copycats Archaeologists say the Indus people
couldnrsquot have copied their town-planning from Egypt and Mesopotamia because in those civilizations the
roads meandered like village streets Nor was the writing similar to Sumer`s cuneiform or the Egyptian
hieroglyphics The Harappans had their own distinctive style Lal explains the dramatic change as a result
of centuries of growth reaching a critical mass that caused an unparalleled urban explosion Trade he
believes was the driving force of the revolution Even a skeptic like Possehl maintains that these are
indeed an expression of the Indian genius
Did Aryans kill them or a Depression Archaeologists are known to stumble but the kind of knocking Wheeler has taken over his Aryan
invasion theory has few parallels When the British archaeologist discovered a dozen skeletons in
Mohenjodaro he propounded a theory about the final massacre by marauding invaders that put an end to
the Indus civilization When an Indian scholar told him of Hariyuppa being mentioned in the Rigveda he
took it to mean Harappa And since a fort was known as pur and Indira the Aryan god was known as
Purandhara or destroyer of forts it all fitted neatly
After all werenrsquot the Indus cities among the most fortified Yet the past 50 years and more so the last
decade has shown just how wrong Wheeler was The last massacre theory was his imagination running
riot Far from being snuffed out there was a brilliant resurgence of Indus culture further south for a while
Possehl who made a recent study found that in 2000 BC in Pakistanrsquos Sindh district the sites were down
from 86 to 6 and in Cholistan 174 to 41 But in India the sites in Haryana Punjab and Rajasthan exploded
from 218 to 853 Possehl asks How can this be construed as an eclipse We are looking at a highly
mobile people
Allchin argues that there is clear indication that the rainfall pattern which had initially brought fertility
had become adverse in the Sindh region And theories that given the instability of the Himalayan region
there may have been a massive earthquake that possibly changed the course of rivers such as the Sarasvati
and affected many Indus cities The Indus people then migrated eastward Lal talks of steep decline in
trade because of problems in Sumer that resulted in a Great Depression and turned many urban centers
into ghost cities
Bisht concurs with Lal but goes a step further He says that after the quake hit the heart of the civilization
the Indus people migrated east which acted like a sort of bypass to their woes And like a dying candle it
shone brilliantly again but briefly before being snuffed out Dholavira Banawali Mehrgarh Harappa -- in
fact all the major cities show that as the cities declined encroachments on streets that were unseen at its
peak began to occur with alarming regularity There was a breakdown in sanitation and cities like their
modern-day counterparts in India simply ran themselves aground They were replaced by massive squatter
colonies and an explosion of rural sites as people disillusioned with cities went back to farming
communities A giant step backward
Yet it wasnrsquot as if all came to naught as was earlier believed Some of the writings survived in the pottery
of the following ages The weight and decimal system too lived on And so did the bullock-cart
technology that the Indus had perfected Rather than a violent transition there may have been an orderly
interaction with oncoming Aryans Lal in his most recent book even puts across the most audacious
theory Could the Bronze Age Harappans be Aryans themselves He says this because of the presence of
fire worship and the discovery of horse remains and idols in Indus sites Meadows dismisses it as
premature and points out that it was more likely that ass remains were mistaken for that of a horsersquos And
that the Vedas showed a great antipathy for urban centers
Whatever the cause it would take another 1000 years for a semblance of civilization to return to the
subcontinent -- a dire warning to modern India of the catastrophe that can befall an errant populace
Environmental Stress in the Indus Valley Source Quotation from D P Agarwal and R K Sood in Gregory L Possehl ed Harappan Civilization A Contemporary Perspective (Warminster
England Aris and Phillips 1982)229
The three river-valley civilizations discussed in this chapter were located in arid or semiarid regions Such
regions are particularly vulnerable to changes in the environment Scholars debates about the existence
and impact of changes in the climate and landscape of the Indus Valley illuminate some of the potential
factors at work as well as the difficulties of verifying and interpreting such long-ago changes
One of the points at issue is climatic change An earlier generation of scholars believed that the climate
of the Indus Valley was considerably wetter during the height of that civilization than it is now As
evidence they cited the enormous quantities of timber cut from extensive forests that would have been
needed to bake the millions of mud bricks used to construct the cities (see photo) the distribution of
human settlements on land that is now unfavorable for agriculture and the representation of jungle and
marsh animals on decorated seals This approach assumes that the growth of population prosperity and
complexity in the Indus Valley in the third millennium BCE required wet conditions and it concludes
that the change to a drier climate in the early second millennium BCE pushed this civilization into
decline
Other experts skeptical about a radical climatic change countered with alternative calculations of the
amount of timber needed and evidence of plant remains-particularly barley a grain that is tolerant of dry
conditions However recent studies of the stabilization of sand dunes which occurs in periods of heavy
rainfall and analysis of the sediment deposited by rivers and winds have been used to strengthen the
claim that the Indus Valley used to be wetter and in the early-to-mid second millennium BCE entered a
period of relatively dry conditions that have persisted to the present
A much clearer case can be made for changes in the landscape caused by shifts in the courses of rivers
These shifts are due in many cases to tectonic forces such as earthquakes Dry channels whether
detected in satellite photographs or by on-the-ground inspection reveal the location of old riverbeds and
it appears that a second major river system the Hakra once ran parallel to the Indus some distance to the
east The Hakra with teeming towns and fertile fields along its banks appears to have been a second axis
of this civilization Either the Sutlej which now feeds into the Indus or the Yamuna which now pours
into the Ganges may have been the main source of water for this long-gone system before undergoing a
change of course The consequences of the drying-up of this major waterway must have been immense-
the loss of huge amounts of arable land and the food that it produced the abandonment of cities and
villages and consequent migration of their populations shifts in the trade routes and desperate
competition for shrinking resources
As for the Indus itself the present-day course of the lower reaches of the river has shifted 100 miles
(161 kilometers) to the west since the arrival of the Greek conqueror Alexander the Great in the late
fourth century BCE and the deposit of massive volumes of silt has pushed the mouth of the river 50
miles (80 kilometers) farther south Such a shift of the river bed and buildup of alluvial deposits also may
have occurred in the third and second millennia BCE
A recent study concludes It is obvious that ecological stresses caused both climatically and
technically played an important role in the life and decay of the Indus civilization
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity four Read the article below about the early Chinese dynasties Using information from
the article write an 800 word essay that describes the influence of the environment religion and
gender on the formation of the government of ancient China Again do NOT look up additional
information use only what is provided Also do NOT quote from the articles paraphrase and
summarize only Turn in your essay to wwwturnitincom before the first day of school
The Shang and Zhou Dynasties By 5000 BCE agricultural communities had spread through much of what is now called China and there
were agricultural villages from the Wei River Valley eastward parallel with the great Yellow River
(Huang He) which flowed out of the Kunlun Mountains to the deciduous forest and loess soil region of
the North China Plain Where people were free of forest and had access to water they grew millet -- as
early as 5500 BCE -- while they continued to hunt deer and other game to fish and gather food And they
raised dogs pigs and chickens They built one-room homes dug into the earth with roofs of clay or
thatch pit homes grouped in villages They had spinning wheels and knitted and wove fibers And they
made pottery decorated with art
Flooding along the Yellow River was worse than it was along the Yangzi River to the south Along the
Yangzi River through the Hubei Basin and on the coastal plain to Hangzhou Bay farming had also
developed but people along the Yellow River had to work harder at flood control and irrigation and
perhaps this stimulated a greater effort at organization At any rate the North China Plain became the
largest area with a relatively dense population
Where people were producing more food than they needed to survive warriors had the incentive not only
to plunder but also to conquer And conquering kings arose on the North China Plain as they did in West
Asia The first dynasty of kings in the North China Plain has been described as belonging to the Xia
family - whose rule is thought to have begun around 2200 BCE But the first dynasty of which there is
historical evidence is that of the Shang family The Shang clan came out of the Wei River Valley just west
of the North China Plain By around 1500 BCE give or take a century or so the Shang unified people
along the North China Plain The military had chariots each with an aristocrat archer a driver and
sometimes also a man with a spear The Shang built an empire in much the same way as other conquerors
by leaving behind a garrison force to police local people by turning a local king into a subservient ally
free to manage local matters and by taxing the conquered
Around 1384 BCE the Shang moved their capital to Yin As a regular pastime the Shang emperors and
nobles hunted in organized game drives Emperors and aristocrats had splendid homes with walls of
pounded earth or earthen bricks while common people continued to live in their pit homes of earlier times
A Shang emperor was chief priest and he had an administrative bureaucracy with councilors lesser
priests and diviners As with other warring civilizations slaves were taken the slaves laboring at growing
crops And women in Shang civilization were subservient to men with aristocratic women enjoying a
greater freedom and equality than common women The role of the woman was to be gentle calm
respectful and to obey her husband Women were lower than men and were subjected to womenrsquos work
(tending to the children and needs of the husband) Men also married multiple times and women were
used as concubines
During the Shang dynasty the civilization along the Yellow River had canals for irrigating crops
Communities had drains that ran water out of town They made beer from millet The stable government
allowed for extended trading and use of money in the form of cowry shells Shang merchants traded in
salt iron copper tin lead and antimony some of which had to be imported from far away As early as
the 1300 BCE a bronze casting industry had developed This was later than the rise of bronze casting in
Europe and West Asia but it was the most advanced in the world
It was around 1300 BCE that the first known writing appeared in Shang civilization because the
government officials needed to have questions answered that would allow them to better govern This
writing was for divination done on plate-like portions of the bones of cattle or deer on seashells and
turtle shells and perhaps on wood By applying a pointed heated rod to a bone or shell the item cracked
and to which written symbol the crack traveled gave answers for various questions what the weather was
going to be like would there be flood would a harvest succeed or fail when might be the best time for
hunting or fishing there were also personal questions about illness or whether one should make a journey
Shang Violence and Splendor
To the east north and south of Shang civilization were those the Shang saw as barbarians including the
farming people along the Yangzi River Shang emperors sent out armies to repulse invaders and the
Shang emperors went beyond their domains to plunder and to capture foreign peoples needed for sacrifice
to their gods Uncovered tombs of emperors from the Shang period indicate that they could put into the
field as many as three to five thousand soldiers Found buried with the emperors were their personal
ornaments and spears with bronze blades and the remains of what had been bows and arrows Buried with
the emperors were also horses and chariots for transporting soldiers to battle And with the emperors in
death were their charioteers dogs servants and people in groups of ten -- people who had been
ceremonially beheaded with bronze axes
Zhou Empire Religion and Human Sacrifice
Shang rule was threatened by forces from outside and from within its empire To the west of Shang
civilization in the Wei River Valley lived a pastoral people called Zhou who led an alliance that included
other tribal peoples neighboring Shang civilization While the Shang emperor Zhouxin was occupied by
a war against tribal people to his southeast rebellions broke out among people that Shang monarchs
before him had conquered The Zhou and their allies saw the Shang emperors troubles as an opportunity
to move against him and in 1045 BCE they overpowered him at the battle of Mu-ye and had him
beheaded
A dynasty of Zhou emperors began ruling what had been Shang civilization They claimed that all lands
belonged to heaven that they were the sons of heaven and therefore that all lands and all people were
their subjects Seeing the lands they had conquered as too vast for one man to dominate the Zhou
emperors divided these lands into regions and assigned someone to rule each region in their name
choosing for this position a close family member a trusted member of their clan or the chief of a tribe
that had been allied with them against the Shang
Each local ruler had at his disposal all the lands around him He had his own militia And from the Zhou
emperors the local rulers received gifts such as chariots bronze weapons servants and animals The local
rulers received the title of lord (gong) Local rulers passed their positions to their sons their titles of lord
becoming hereditary And to control their areas better the lords made sub-lords of those who had
dominated the common people before they arrived A hierarchy of status and obligations emerged among
families and within families with older brothers ranking higher than younger brothers with rules of
succession as to which of the males would head his family If a married aristocrat became infatuated with
another woman rather than drive his wife from his home he could bring the other woman into the family
as a concubine where she would rank beneath his wife
Zhou emperors told those they had conquered that they the Zhou had ousted the ancestors of Shang
emperors from heaven and that heaven was occupied by their supreme god a god they called The Lord
on High who they said had commanded the downfall of the Shang emperors Like emperors in West
Asia Zhou emperors claimed that they ruled by divine right They claimed that they represented on earth
the Lord on High and that it was their duty to mediate with the Lord on High to perform appropriate
sacrifices and to maintain a proper relationship between heaven and their subjects They claimed that any
opposition to their rule was opposition to the will of heaven
It was from the Zhou emperors that local lords received the right to act as a priest to perform sacrifices
to have certain hymns sung and certain dances performed the right to propitiate the gods of local
mountains streams and of the soil and crops Meanwhile local aristocrats continued to keep track of their
ancestral heritage They married with religious rites and sanctions while common folk continued to have
no such marriages no surnames or recorded ancestors They merely lived together and were recognized as
a couple by their neighbors
Ancestor worship was also very important to the Shang It was thought that the success of crops and the
health and well being of people were based on the happiness of dead ancestors
The worship of various gods from the Shang period included gods of grain rain and agriculture -- one of
whom was believed to have had a virgin birth Among these gods was a god of the Yellow River who had
the body of a fish but the face of a man
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity five Research the social hierarchy religion political organization writing systems and
technological aspects of the societies listed on the SNAPSHOT Early Agricultural Societies Describe each aspect
of the society using specific evidence - in one or two clear sentences (SEE EXAMPLE of Olmec Society) Write
VERY neatly in ink Bring this chart with you on the FIRST DAY of school
35000 years ago dating back to the fourth glaciation Neanderthals seemed to live primarily in Europe
and in Western Asia this is concluded because most of the fossils were found in these areas
Many Mousterian tools were found with the fossil remains consisting of different kinds of scrapers and
points Many believe they primarily hunted reindeer and whenever possible the larger animals such as
mammoths cave bears etc Neanderthals were probably huntergatherer groups If so their diets
consisted of mainly small animals vegetation and less often the larger animals They would have used
whatever was in their environment for food and tools
Evidence shows that they possibly buried their dead Remains have been found in shallow graves often
buried with items such as flowers tool etc perhaps as offerings to the dead
Sources
Fagan Brian M The Journey From Eden Thames and Hudson Ltd London 1990
Wenke Robert J Patterns in Prehistory humankindrsquos first three million years Oxford University
Press Inc New York 1980 1984 1990
___________________________________________________________________________________
What are the key characteristics of Paleolithic art
It seems a bit flippant to try to characterize the art from a period that encompasses most of human history
Paleolithic art is intricately bound to anthropological and archaeological studies that professionals have
devoted entire lives toward researching and compiling The truly curious should head in those directions
That said to make some sweeping generalizations Paleolithic art
Concerned itself with either food (hunting scenes animal carvings) or fertility (Venus figurines)
Its predominant theme was animals
Is considered to be an attempt by Stone Age peoples to gain some sort of control
over their environment whether by magic or ritual
Represents a giant leap in human cognition abstract thinking
Engines of our Ingenuity No 1908 BLOMBOS CAVE Dr John H Lienhard
Today lets visit Blombos Cave The University of Houstons College of Engineering presents this series
about the machines that make our civilization run and the people whose ingenuity created them
You and I have to struggle with our of Clan-of-the-Cave-Bear thinking Weve been trained to believe that
only about thirty-five-thousand years ago the fine upright Cro-Magnons arose to displace the brutish Neanderthals
Well thats all being turned on its ear by the Blombos Cave site
Blombos Cave overlooks the Indian Ocean on the south coast of South Africa In 1993 it stunned the
anthropological world when it yielded hundred-thousand-year-old finely-formed bone tools -- two or three times
the age of such tools from Europe And the people who made them were anatomically Modern Humans -- like you
and me
Let me give some benchmark dating here the Paleolithic Era (which means the Era of Old Stone) It starts
with the first human tool-making two and a half million years ago It ends after the last Ice Age and the beginnings
of agriculture After that we talk about the Neolithic Era (the Era of New Stone) It lasted until we took up
metalworking and we invented writing
The older Paleolithic Era took place in two parts Lower and Upper During the latter part the Upper
Paleolithic Era Modern Humans appeared and rapidly extended tool making beyond simple chipped rocks For a
long time wed believed all thatd started just a little over thirty thousand years ago
But most of the evidence for that had come out of Europe Now Blombos Cave has moved the rise of
Modern Humans back to a time long before the Neanderthals vanished It has tripled the length of the Upper
Paleolithic Era and it places the cradle of Modern Humans down at the far tip of the African continent
Among those oldest-known bone tools we find spear points awls spatulas We find standard forms of
tools We find the first evidence of fishing We find fine stonework of a kind that didnt turn up in Europe until
twenty-thousand years ago We find different areas of the cave devoted to specific activities
The most remarkable discovery is that of purely artistic technologies Ochre was widely used Ochre is a
form of iron ore that makes a fine paint It can be used on human bodies or on walls And those chunks of ochre
themselves have been scribed with abstract designs The cave has also yielded up a seventy-five-thousand-year-old
snail-shell necklace -- the oldest ever found
All this suggests something beyond just tool making These uses of an esthetic symbolic language would
hardly have been possible without speech as well And speech was also something wed thought was only thirty
thousand years old
Its neat to find our grandparents doing so well so long ago As I was reading about that old necklace my
wife showed me a simi-lar one in a jewelry catalog She said I guess we havent come as far as wed thought
Well its true We really did not start being smart just the day before yesterday
Earliest evidence for cheese making in the 6th millennium BCE
in northern Europe Melanie Salque et al (Nature International Journal of Science Dec 2012)
The introduction of dairying was a critical step in early agriculture with milk products being rapidly
adopted as a major component of the diets of prehistoric farmers and pottery-using late hunter-gatherers The
processing of milk particularly the production of cheese would have been a critical development because it not
only allowed the preservation of milk products in a non-perishable and transportable form but also it made milk a
more digestible commodity for early prehistoric farmers The finding of abundant milk residues in pottery vessels
from seventh millennium sites from north-western Anatolia provided the earliest evidence of milk processing
although the exact practice could not be explicitly defined1 Notably the discovery of potsherds pierced with small
holes appear at early Neolithic sites in temperate Europe in the sixth millennium BC and have been interpreted
typologically as lsquocheese-strainersrsquo although a direct association with milk processing has not yet been
demonstrated Organic residues preserved in pottery vessels have provided direct evidence for early milk use in the
Neolithic period in the Near East and south-eastern Europe north Africa Denmark and the British Isles based on
the δ13
C and Δ13
C values of the major fatty acids in milk Here we apply the same approach to investigate the
function of sievesstrainer vessels providing direct chemical evidence for their use in milk processing The
presence of abundant milk fat in these specialized vessels comparable in form to modern cheese strainers provides
compelling evidence for the vessels having being used to separate fat-rich milk curds from the lactose-containing
whey This new evidence emphasizes the importance of pottery vessels in processing dairy products particularly in
the manufacture of reduced-lactose milk products among lactose-intolerant prehistoric farming communities
The emergence of dairying was a major innovation in prehistoric societies enabling the supply of nutritious
food without the slaughtering of precious livestock The processing of milk particularly the production of cheese
would have been an important development however the origins of cheese making are currently unknown
Iconographic and written evidence from the mid-third-millennium BCE weakly documents the history of cheese
making although its origins probably lie much earlier in prehistoryhellip
Activity two Read ldquoConsequences and future of plant and animal domesticationrdquo by Jared
Diamond (below) and write an 800-1200 word summary (1-1 frac12 pages typed Times New Roman
font single spaced size 12 standard margins)
o Explain why humans began to domesticate plants and animals and how the species subsequently
changed
o Describe the reasons why so few species were suitable and why certain areas became
agricultural hearths
o Finally explain the consequences of domestication
Do NOT quote the article summarize only Turn in your summary to wwwturnitincom before the
first day of school
Consequences and future of plant and animal domestication Jared Diamond
Domestication interests us as the most momentous change in Holocene human history Why did it
operate on so few wild species in so few geographic areas Why did people adopt it at all why did they
adopt it when they did and how did it spread The answers to these questions determined the remaking of
the modern world as farmers spread at the expense of hunterndashgatherers and of other farmers
Plant and animal domestication is the most important development in the past 13000 years of
human history It interests all of us scientists and non-scientists alike because it provides most of our
food today it was prerequisite to the rise of civilization and it transformed global demography Because
domestication ultimately yielded agents of conquest (for example guns germs and steel) but arose in only
a few areas of the world and in certain of those areas earlier than in others the peoples who through
biogeographic luck first acquired domesticates acquired enormous advantages over other peoples and
expanded As a result of those replacements about 88 of all humans alive today speak some language
belonging to one or another of a mere seven language families confined in the early Holocene to two
small areas of Eurasia that happened to become the earliest centers of domestication mdash the Fertile
Crescent and parts of China Through that head start the inhabitants of those two areas spread their
languages and genes over much of the rest of the world Those localized origins of domestication
ultimately explain why this international journal of science is published in an Indo-European language
rather than in Basque Swahili Quechua or Pitjantjatjara
The past of domestication Our decision to domesticate
The question why farm strikes most of us modern humans as silly Of course it is better to grow
wheat and cows than to forage for roots and snails But in reality that perspective is flawed by hindsight
Food production could not possibly have arisen through a conscious decision because the worlds first
farmers had around them no model of farming to observe hence they could not have known that there
was a goal of domestication to strive for and could not have guessed the consequences that domestication
would bring for them If they had actually foreseen the consequences they would surely have outlawed
the first steps towards domestication because the archaeological and ethnographic record throughout the
world shows that the transition from hunting and gathering to farming eventually resulted in more work
lower adult stature worse nutritional condition and heavier disease burdens The only peoples who could
make a conscious choice about becoming farmers were hunterndashgatherers living adjacent to the first
farming communities and they generally disliked what they saw and rejected farming for the good
reasons just mentioned and others
Instead the origins of domestication involved unforeseen consequences of two sets of changes mdash
changes in plants and animals and changes in human behavior As initially recognized by Darwin many
of the differences between domestic plants and their wild ancestors evolved as consequences of wild
plants being selected gathered and brought back to camp by hunterndashgatherers while the roots of animal
domestication included the ubiquitous tendency of all peoples to try to tame or manage wild animals
(including such unlikely candidates as ospreys hyenas and grizzly bears) Although humans had been
manipulating wild plants and animals for a long time hunterndashgatherer behavior began to change at the
end of the Pleistocene because of increasingly unpredictable climate decreases in big-game species that
were hunters first-choice prey and increasing human occupation of available habitats To decrease the
risk of unpredictable variation in food supply people broadened their diets to second- and third-choice
foods which included more small game plus plant foods requiring much preparation such as grinding
leaching and soaking Eventually people transported some wild plants (such as wild cereals) from their
natural habitats to more productive habitats and began intentional cultivation
The emerging agricultural lifestyle had to compete with the established hunterndashgatherer lifestyle
Once domestication began to arise the changes of plants and animals that followed automatically under
domestication and the competitive advantages that domestication conveyed upon the first farmers
(despite their small stature and poor health) made the transition from the hunterndashgatherer lifestyle to food
production autocatalytic mdash but the speed of that transition varied considerably among regions Thus the
real question about the origins of agriculture which I consider below is why did food production
eventually out-compete the hunterndashgatherer lifestyle over almost the whole world at the particular times
and places that it did but not at earlier times and other places
Changes of wild species under domestication
These changes are particularly well understood for southwest Asias Fertile Crescent the site of
domestication that was earliest in the world and that yielded what are still the worlds most valuable
domestic plant and animal species For most species domesticated there the wild ancestor and its wild
geographic range have been identified its relation to the domesticate proven by genetic and chromosomal
studies its changes under domestication delineated (often at the gene level) those changes traced in
successive layers of the archaeological record and the approximate time and place of its domestication
identified
For example wild wheat and barley bear their seeds on top of a stalk that spontaneously shatters
dropping the seeds to the ground where they can germinate (but where they also become difficult for
humans to gather) An occasional single-gene mutation that prevents shattering is lethal in the wild
(because the seeds fail to drop) but conveniently concentrates the seeds for human gatherers Once people
started harvesting those wild cereal seeds bringing them back to camp accidentally spilling some and
eventually planting others seeds with a non-shattering mutation became unconsciously selected for rather
than against
Individual wild animals also vary in traits affecting their desirability to humans Chickens were
selected to be larger wild cattle (aurochs) to be smaller and sheep to lose their bristly outer hairs and not
to shed their soft inner hairs (the wool) Most domestic animals including even recently domesticated
trout have smaller brains and less acute sense organs than do their wild ancestors Good brains and keen
eyes are essential to survival in the wild but represent a quantitatively important waste of energy in the
barnyard as far as humans are concerned
Especially instructive are cases in which the same ancestral species became selected under
domestication for alternative purposes resulting in very different-appearing breeds or crops For instance
dogs were variously selected to kill wolves dig out rats race be eaten or be cuddled in our laps What
naive zoologist glancing at wolfhounds terriers greyhounds Mexican hairless dogs and chihuahuas
would even guess them to belong to the same species Similarly cabbage was variously selected for its
leaves (cabbage and kale) stems (kohlrabi) flower shoots (broccoli and cauliflower) and buds (brussels
sprouts)
Why so few wild species were domesticated
The wild animal species that most plausibly could have yielded valuable domesticates were large
terrestrial mammalian herbivores and omnivores of which the world holds 148 species weighing 45 kg or
more Yet only 14 of those 148 species were actually domesticated prompting us to ask what prevented
domestication of the other 134 species Similarly worldwide there are about 200000 wild species of
higher plants of which only about 100 yielded valuable domesticates Especially surprising are the many
cases in which only one of a closely related group of species became domesticated For example horses
and donkeys were domesticated but none of the four zebra species were
The key question concerning this selectivity of domestication is as follows in the cases of all
those species never domesticated did the difficulty lie with the species itself or with the people
indigenous to the area to which the species was native For instance is the abundance of large wild
mammals the reason why no mammal species was ever domesticated in subequatorial Africa making
domestication superfluous for Africans If that explanation were correct then African people should also
have ignored Eurasian domestic mammals when those were finally introduced to Africa and European
animal breeders on arriving in Africa should have succeeded in domesticating some African wild
mammals but both of those predictions are refuted by the actual course of history
Six independent lines of evidence converge to prove that in most cases the obstacle lay with the
species itself not with the local people the rapid acceptance of introduced Eurasian domesticates by non-
Eurasian peoples the rapid ancient domestication of the most valuable wild species the repeated
independent domestications of many of them the failure of even modern European plant and animal
breeders to add significantly to our short list of valuable domesticates ancient discoveries of the value of
thousands of species that were regularly harvested in the wild but that never became domesticated and
the identification of the particular reasons preventing the domestication of many of those species
Comparisons of domesticated wild species with never-domesticated close relatives illustrate the subtle
factors that can derail domestication For example it is initially surprising that oak trees the most
important wild food plant in many parts of Eurasia and North America were never domesticated Like
wild almonds acorns of most individual wild oaks contain bitter poisons with occasional non-poisonous
mutant trees preferred by human foragers However the non-poisonous condition is controlled by a single
dominant gene in almonds but polygenically in oaks so that offspring of the occasional non-poisonous
individuals are often non-poisonous in almonds but rarely so in oaks preventing selection of edible oak
varieties to this day A second example is provided by the European horse breeders who settled in South
Africa in the 1600s and mdash like African herders for previous millennia mdash tried to domesticate zebras
They gave up after several centuries for two reasons First zebras are incurably vicious have the bad
habit of biting a handler and not letting go until the handler is dead and thereby injure more zoo-keepers
each year than do tigers Second zebras have better peripheral vision than horses making them
impossible even for professional rodeo cowboys to lasso (they see the rope coming and flick away their
head)
Figure 1 Comparisons of domesticated wild species (left of each pair) and their never-
domesticated close relatives (right) reveal the subtle factors that can derail domestication
Among wild mammal species
that were never domesticated the six
main obstacles proved to be a diet not
easily supplied by humans (hence no
domestic anteaters) slow growth rate
and long birth spacing (for example
elephants and gorillas) nasty
disposition (grizzly bears and
rhinoceroses) reluctance to breed in
captivity (pandas and cheetahs) lack
of follow-the-leader dominance
hierarchies (bighorn sheep and
antelope) and tendency to panic in
enclosures or when faced with
predators (gazelles and deer except
reindeer) Many species passed five of
these six tests but were still not
domesticated because they failed a
sixth test Conclusions about non-domesticability from the fact of non-domestication are not circular
because these six obstacles can be assessed independently
Why there were so few homelands of agriculture
Food production bestowed on farmers enormous demographic technological political and
military advantages over neighboring hunterndashgatherers The history of the past 13000 years consists of
tales of hunterndashgatherer societies becoming driven out infected conquered or exterminated by farming
societies in every area of the world suitable for farming One might therefore have naively anticipated
that in any part of the world one or more of the local hunterndashgatherer societies would have stumbled
upon domestication become farmers and thereby outcompeted the other local hunterndashgatherer societies
In fact food production arose independently in at most nine areas of the world (Fertile Crescent China
Mesoamerica AndesAmazonia eastern United States Sahel tropical West Africa Ethiopia and New
Guinea)
The puzzle increases when one scrutinizes that list of homelands One might again naively have
expected the areas most productive for farming today to correspond at least roughly to the areas most
productive in the past In reality the list of homelands and the list of breadbaskets of the modern world
are almost mutually exclusive (Fig 2) The latter list includes California North Americas Great Plains
Europe the pampas of Argentina the cape of southern Africa the Indian subcontinent Java and
Australias wheat belt Because these areas are evidently so well suited to farming or herding today why
were they not so in the past
Figure 2 Ancient and modern centers of agriculture
Ancient centers of origin of plant and animal domestication mdash the nine homelands of food
production mdash are indicated by the orange-shaded areas on the map The most agriculturally productive
areas of the modern world as judged by cereals and major staples are indicated by the yellow-shaded
areas Note that there is almost no overlap between the areas highlighted except that China appears on
both distributions and that the most productive areas of the central United States today approach areas of
the eastern United States where domestication originated The reason why the two distributions are so
different is that agriculture arose in areas to which the wild ancestors of the most valuable domesticable
crops and animals were native but other areas proved much more productive when those valuable
domesticates reached them
The explanation is that the homelands of agriculture were instead merely those regions to which
the most numerous and most valuable domesticable wild plant and animal species were native Only in
those areas were incipient early farmers able to out-compete local hunterndashgatherers Once those locally
available wild species had been domesticated and had spread outside the homelands societies of
homelands had no further advantage other than that of a head start and they were eventually overtaken by
societies of more fertile or climatically more favored areas outside the homelands
For instance the Fertile Crescent of southwest Asia was home to wild wheats barley peas sheep
goats cows and pigs mdash a list that includes what are still the most valuable crops and livestock of the
modern world Hence hunterndashgatherers of the Fertile Crescent domesticated those species and became the
worlds first farmers and herders beginning around 8500 BCE That head start in food production led to
them and their close neighbors also developing the worlds first metal tools writing empires and
professional armies Those tools of conquest and Fertile Crescent human genes gradually spread west
into Europe and North Africa and east into the western Indian subcontinent and central Asia However
once those crops livestock and human inventions had spread Fertile Crescent societies possessed no
other advantages As all of those elements slowly spread northwest across Europe farming and power
also shifted northwest from the Fertile Crescent to areas where farming had never arisen independently mdash
first to Greece then to Italy and finally to northwest Europe Human societies of the Fertile Crescent
inadvertently committed slow ecological suicide in a zone of low rainfall prone to deforestation soil
erosion and salinization
The spread of food production
From the homelands of domestication food production spread around the world in either of two
ways The much less common way was for hunterndashgatherers outside the homelands to acquire crops or
livestock from the homelands enabling them to settle down as farmers or herders as attested by
archaeological evidence for substantial continuity of material culture and by genetic linguistic and
skeletal evidence of continuity of human populations The clearest such example of local adoption of food
production is in southern Africa where around 2000 years ago some Khoisan hunterndashgatherers acquired
Eurasian livestock (cattle sheep and goats) arriving from the north and became herders (so-called
Hottentots) Much more often however local hunterndashgatherers had no opportunity to acquire crops and
livestock before they were overrun or replaced by farmers expanding out of the homelands exploiting
their demographic technological political and military advantages over the hunterndashgatherers
Expansions of crops livestock and even people and technologies tended to occur more rapidly along
eastndashwest axes than along northndashsouth axes1 (Fig 3) The reason is obvious locations at the same latitude
share identical day-lengths and seasonalities often share similar climates habitats and diseases and hence
require less evolutionary change or adaptation of domesticates technologies and cultures than do
locations at different latitudes Examples include the rapid westwards and eastwards dispersal of wheat
horses wheels and writing of western Asian origin and the westwards dispersal of chickens citrus and
peaches of Chinese origin along the eastndashwest axis of Eurasia This can be contrasted with the slow
spread of Eurasian livestock and non-spread of Eurasian crops southwards along Africas northndashsouth
axis the slow spread of Mexican corn and the non-spread of Mexican writing and wheels and Andean
llamas and potatoes along the Americas northndashsouth axis and the slow spread of food production
southwards along the northndashsouth axis of the Indian subcontinent
Figure 3 The continental major axis is oriented eastndashwest
for Eurasia but northndashsouth for the Americas and Africa
The spread of food production tended to occur more
rapidly along eastndashwest axes than along northndashsouth axes mainly
because locations at the same latitudes required less evolutionary
change or adaptation of domesticates than did locations at
different latitudes
This is not to deny the existence of ecological barriers at
the same latitude within Asia and North America but the general
pattern remains Eurasias eastndashwest axis and the resulting rapid enrichment of societies in each part of
Eurasia by crops and technologies from other parts of Eurasia became one of the main ultimate reasons
why Eurasian peoples conquered Native American peoples rather than vice versa Eurasias eastndashwest
axis also explains why there is much less evidence for multiple independent domestications of the same
plant species (see below) and much more evidence for agriculturally driven language expansions in
Eurasia than in the Americas
Consequences of domestication Consequences for human societies
Beginning around 8500 BCE the transition from the hunterndashgatherer lifestyle to food production
enabled people to settle down next to their permanent gardens orchards and pastures instead of migrating
to follow seasonal shifts in wild food supplies (Some hunterndashgatherer societies in especially productive
environments were also sedentary but most were not) Food production was accompanied by a human
population explosion that has continued unabated to this day resulting from two separate factors First
the sedentary lifestyle permitted shorter birth intervals Nomadic hunterndashgatherers had previously spaced
out birth intervals at four years or more because a mother shifting camp can carry only one infant or slow
toddler Second plant and animal species that are edible to humans can be cultivated in much higher
density in our gardens orchards and pastures than in wild habitats
Food production also led to an explosion of technology because sedentary living permitted the
accumulation of heavy technology (such as forges and printing presses) that nomadic hunterndashgatherers
could not carry and because the storable food surpluses resulting from agriculture could be used to feed
full-time craftspeople and inventors By also feeding full-time kings bureaucrats nobles and soldiers
those food surpluses led to social stratification political centralization and standing armies All of these
overwhelming advantages are what enabled farmers eventually to displace hunterndashgatherers
Evolution of epidemic infectious diseases
The main killers of humans since the advent of agriculture have been acute highly infectious
epidemic diseases that are confined to humans and that either kill the victim quickly or if the victim
recovers immunize himher for life Such diseases could not have existed before the origins of
agriculture because they can sustain themselves only in large dense populations that did not exist before
agriculture hence they are often termed crowd diseases The mystery of the origins of many of these
diseases has been solved by molecular biological studies of recent decades demonstrating that they
evolved from similar epidemic diseases of our herd domestic animals with which we began to come into
close contact 10000 years ago Thus the evolution of these diseases depended on two separate roles of
domestication in creating much denser human populations and in permitting much more frequent
transmission of animal diseases from our domesticates than from hunted wild animals For instance
measles and tuberculosis arose from diseases of cattle influenza from a disease of pigs and ducks1 An
outstanding mystery remains the origins of smallpox did it reach us from camels or from cattle
Crowd diseases paradoxically became agents of conquest because exposed individuals acquired
immune resistance from childhood exposure and exposed populations gradually evolved genetic
resistance but unexposed populations had neither type of resistance In practice because 13 of our 14
large domestic mammals were Eurasian species evolution of crowd diseases was concentrated in Eurasia
and the diseases became the most important agents by which Eurasian colonists expanding overseas killed
indigenous peoples of the Americas Australia Pacific islands and southern Africa
The agricultural expansions
Because some peoples acquired domesticates before other peoples could and because
domesticates conferred eventual advantages such as guns germs and steel on the possessors the history
of the past 10000 years has consisted of farmers replacing hunterndashgatherers or less advanced farmers
These agricultural expansions originating mainly from the nine homelands of agriculture remade genetic
and linguistic maps of the world Among the most discussed (and often highly controversial) possible
examples are the expansions of Bantu-speaking farmers out of tropical West Africa over subequatorial
Africa Austronesian-speaking farmers out of Taiwan over Island Southeast Asia Fertile Crescent farmers
over Europe and Korean farmers over Japan
Activity three Without the ability to translate their writing script archaeologists today do not
understand nearly as much about the Indus River Valley civilization that flourished from 2600 to
1900 BCE although the artifacts found there have enhanced our knowledge of these ancient
peoples One mystery is what exactly happened to the civilizations of the Indus River Valley
Mesopotamia and Egypt were later absorbed into a broader Hellenistic and later Roman cultural
zone but civilization in the Indus River Valley instead disappeared Study the map and read the
articles ldquoThe Myth of the Aryan Invasion of Indiardquo ldquoWere they Copycats or Geniusesrdquo
ldquoEnvironment and Technology Environmental Stress in the Indus River Valleyrdquo and ldquoDid Aryans
kill them or a depressionrdquo Write an 800 word essay that addresses the following question
What are the debates that center around the disappearance of this ancient civilization (Include
examples from the articles) Do NOT go on-line and attempt to find any more information Do
NOT quote from the articles Turn in your essay to wwwturnitincom before the first day of
school
River Valley Civilizations
The Indus Valley Civilization was the first major urban culture of South Asia It reached its peak
from 2600 BC to 1900 BC roughly a period called by some archaeologists Mature Harappan as
distinguished from the earlier Neolithic Early Harappan regional cultures Spatially it is huge
comprising of about 1000 settlements of varying sizes and geographically includes almost all of modern
Pakistan parts of India as far east as Delhi and as far south as Bombay and parts of Afghanistan
The main corpus of writing dated from the Indus Civilization is in the form of some two thousand
inscribed seals in good legible conditions (In case you dont know what seals are they are used to make
impressions on malleable material like clay)
Although these seals and samples of Indus writing have been floating around the scholastic world
for close to 70 years little progress has been made on deciphering this elegant script However we should
not blame scholars for their lack of progress for there are some major impediments to decipherment
1 Very short and brief texts The average number of symbols on the seals is 5 and the longest is
only 26
2 The language underneath is unknown
3 Lack of bilingual texts
For instance consider Champollion who deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs with all of these 3
important clues there were very long Egyptian texts he knew Coptic a descendant of Egyptian and the
Rosetta Stone a bilingual text between Greek and two written forms of Egyptian
But the script isnt as bad as undecipherable For one even though scholars dont have long texts
and bilingual texts they can still theorize about the language underneath the writing system There are
several competing theories about the language that the Indus script represent
A The language is completely unrelated to anything else meaning an isolate Well this doesnt get
us anywhere
B The language is Aryan (some form of Indian-Iranian Indo-European) The historical languages
spoken in Northern India and Pakistan all belong to the Indic branch of Indo-European including
Sanskrit Hindi Punjabi etc so maybe the people of the Indus valley spoke a very old Indo-
European language
The major problem with this model is the fact that horses played a very important role in all Indo-
European cultures being a people constantly on the move There is no escape from the fact that
the horse played a central role in the Vedic and Iranian cultures (Parpola 1986) Sidenote
Vedic means from the time of the Vedas the earliest text in India and the Vedic culture is from
around 1500 to 500 BC However no depiction of horses on seals nor any remains of horses have
been found so far before 2000 BC They only appear after 2000 BC Very likely there were no
Aryan speakers present before 2000 BC in the Indus Valley
C The language belongs to the Munda family of languages The Munda family is spoken largely in
eastern India and related to some Southeast Asian languages Like Aryan the reconstructed
vocabulary of early Munda does not reflect the Harappan culture So its candidacy for being the
language of the Indus Civilization is dim
D The language is Dravidian The Dravidian family of languages is spoken in Southern Indian but
Brahui is spoken in modern Pakistan So far this is the most promising model as in the following
points
o There are many Dravidian influences visible in the Vedic texts If the Aryan language
gradually replaced the Dravidian features from Dravidian would form a substratum in
Aryan One of these features is the appearance of retroflex consonants in Indian languages
both Indo-European and Dravidian In contrast retroflex consonants do not appear in any
other Indo-European language not even Iranian ones which are closest to Indic (For more
information on retroflex consonants please visit my Phonetics page)
o Another possible indication of Dravidian in the Indus texts is from structural analysis of
the texts which suggests that the language underneath is possibly agglutinative from the
fact that sign groups often have the same initial signs but different final signs The number
of these final signs range between 1 to 3 The final signs possibly represent grammatical
suffixes that modify the word (represented by the initial signs) Each suffix would
represent one specific modification and the entire cluster of suffixes would therefore put
the word through a series of modifications This suffix system can be found in Dravidian
but not Indo-European Indo-European tongues tend to change the final sounds to modify
the meaning of a word (a process called inflection) but repeated addition of sounds to the
end of word is extremely rare Often many suffixes in an agglutinative language
correspond to a single inflectional ending in an inflectional language
The Dravidian model isnt just an unapplicable theoryBut first we have to know what kind of
writing system is the Indus script
A count of the number of signs reveal a lot about the type of system being used Alphabetic
systems rarely have more than 40 symbols Syllabic systems like Linear B or Cherokee typically have 40
to 100 or so symbols The third ranges from logophonetic to logographic running upwards of hundreds of
signs (like 500 signs in Hieroglyphic Luwian and 5000 symbols in modern Chinese)
It appears that the maximum number of Indus script symbols is 400 although there are 200 basic
signs (ie signs that are not combined from others) This means that the Indus script is probably
logophonetic in that it has both signs used for their meanings and signs used for their phonetic values
Many signs start off as pictorial representation of a physical object often misleadingly called
pictograms They really are should be called logograms because they represent words in the language
However its next to impossible to write out a word with abstract meaning pictorially What all early
writers figured out was to use a logogram not for the object or idea it was originally supposed to stand for
but for all words sounding similar to the original word for that object or idea For example in English to
write leave we can use a picture of a leaf This is called rebus writing and is a tremendously common
pattern in all early writing systems We could also then use the same leaf symbol to stand for the sound
in relief adding another symbol in front of the leaf symbol in order to indicate the re sound So the
logogram gained a phonetic value as well
Testing the theory How can we take the theoretical framework so far and apply it to archaeological data
Numerals seem to represented by vertical lines (represented by number of lines in the glyph) but
they only go up to 7 Analysis reveal 4 more signs that appear in the same context as these numerals and
so they likely represent numbers higher than 7
The fact that no vertical-line numeral sign denotes 8 very likely means the Harappan language is
based 8 (For example the Arabic numerals that we use has symbols from 0 to 9 and to write ten we
have to combined the symbols 1 and 0 which identify our number system as based ten)
Base 8 languages are rare in the world but it does appear that early Dravidian is base 8 but later
changed to base 10 (possibly under Indo-European influence) When translated the count from 1 to 7 is
familiar to us one two three four five six seven However above seven the numbers
etymologies become non-numerical 8 is number 9 is many minus one and 10 is many (Fairservis
1983)
But can we actually read (not interpret) any symbol on the seals We should start with pictograms as
this one
Many scholars (Knorozov Parpola Mahadevan etc) see this sign as a fish
Fish in reconstructed Proto-Dravidian is micircn Coincidentally micircn is also the word for star
On many pots from Mohenjo Daro an Indus site there are drawings of fish and stars together and so
affirming this linguistic association
Going further often the numeral six appears before the fish Either it means 6 fish or
6 stars Old Tamil (a Dravidian language still spoken today) texts from just around the 1st
century AD recorded the name of the Pleiades a star cluster visible during autumn and
winter just above Orion as Six-Stars or aru-micircn Throughout the world titles with celestial
connotations are very common and the clause Six Stars forming part or whole of a Harappan title is not
unreasonable (Parpola 1986)
Sometimes symbols are added to the basic sign to make new signs Of these the one that
looks like a circumflex accent placed on top of the fish is quite interesting It is theorized to mean
roof and in Proto-Dravidian it is vecircymecircy This is phonetically similar to Proto-Dravidian word
for black may Together with fish it spells out mai-m-micircn or black star which in Old Tamil
means the planet Saturn In Sanskrit texts Saturn is associate the color black The god of death Yama is
the presiding of this planet and is usually depicted as riding on a dark buffalo
But the fish reading isnt accepted by all scholars William Fairservis saw it as a combination of
a loom twist and a human sign and form a honorific title pertaining to rulership (Fairservis 1983) I
however am more inclined to accept the fish identification
This is a quick overview of the current process in the decipherment of the Indus script For more
information you can either go to the following links or go to a good library for books and articles (check
out my references)
The Myth of the Aryan Invasion of India Richard Hooker 1996
They called themselves the noble ones or the superior ones Their names are lost their tribal names
are lost But when they found themselves conquerors they gave themselves the name superior or
noble
They were a tribal and nomadic peoples living in the far reaches of Euro-Asia in hostile steppe lands
barely scratching out a living They were unquestionably a tough people and they were fierce and war-
like Their religion reflects it dominated as it is by a storm-god or sky-god that enjoins warfare and
conquest This god was called something like Dyaus a word related to Zeus deus (the Latin word
for god) deva (the Sanskrit word for god) and of course the English word divine Their culture
was oriented around warfare and they were very good at it They were superior on horseback and rushed
into battle in chariots They were a tribal people ruled over by a war-chief or raja (the Latin word rex
(king) comes from the same root word along with the English regal) Somewhere in the early centuries
of the second millennium BC they began to migrate southwards in waves of steady conquest across the
face of Persia and the lands of India
There they would take on the name superior or noble to distinguish themselves from the people
they conquered Their name is derived from the Indo-European root word ar meaning noble In
Sanskrit they were the Aryas (Aryans) but that root ar would also serve as the foundation of the
name of the conquered Persian territories Iran This concept of nobility in fact seems to lie at the heart
of Indo-European consciousness for it appears in another countrys name Ireland or Eire You can
bet however that when a people go around calling themselves superior that it spells bad news for other
people
And there is no question that they were bad news for the southern Asians They swept over Persia with
lightening speed and spread across the northern river plains of India Their natures as a warlike
conquering people are still preserved in Vedic religion the foundation of Hinduism In the Rig Veda the
collection of praises to the gods the god Indra towers over the poetry as a conquering god one that
smashes cities and slays enemies The invading Aryans were originally nomadic peoples not agricultural
They penetrated India from the north-west settling first in the Indus valley Unlike the Harappans
however they eventually concentrated their populations along the Ganges floodplain The Ganges unlike
the Indus is far milder and more predictable in its flooding It must have been a paradise to a people from
the dry steppes of central Asia and Iran a paradise full of water and forest When they arrived the vast
northern plains were almost certainly densely forested Where now bare fields stretch to the horizon
when the Aryans arrived lush forests stretched to those very same horizons Clearing the forests over the
centuries was an epic project and one that is still preserved in Indian literature
The Aryans or Vedic civilization were a new start in Indian culture Harappa was more or less a dead
end (at least as far as we know) the Aryans adopted almost nothing of Harappan culture They built no
cities no states no granaries and used no writing Instead they were a warlike people that organized
themselves in individual tribal kinship units the jana The jana was ruled over by a war-chief These
tribes spread quickly over northern India and the Deccan In a process that we do not understand the basic
social unit of Aryan culture the jana slowly developed from an organization based on kinship to one
based on geography The jana became a janapada or nation and the jana-rajya or tribal kingdom
became the jana-rajyapada or national kingdom So powerfully ingrained into Indian culture is the
jana-pada that Indians still define themselves mainly by their territorial origins All the major territories
of modern India with their separate cultures and separate languages can be dated back to the early jana-
padas of Vedic India
The earliest history of the Aryans in India is called the Rigvedic Period (1700-1000 BC) after the
religious praise poems that are the oldest pieces of literature in India These poems the Rig Veda are
believed to represent the most primitive layer of
Indo-European religion and have many characteristics in common with Persian religion since the two
peoples are closely related in time In this early period their population was restricted to the Punjab in the
northern reaches of the Indus River and the Yamuna River near the Ganges They maintained the Aryan
tribal structure with a raja ruling over the tribal group in tandem with a council Each jana seems to have
had a chief priest the religion was focused almost entirely on a series of sacrifices to the gods The
Rigvedic peoples originally had only two social classes nobles and commoners Eventually they added a
third Dasas or darks These were we presume the darker-skinned people they had conquered By the
end of the Rigvedic period social class had settled into four rigid castes the caturvarnas or four
colors At the top of the caturvarnas were the priests or Brahmans Below the priests were the warriors
or nobles (Kshatriya) the craftspeople and merchants (Vaishya) and the servants (Shudra) who made
up the bulk of society These economic classes were legitimated by an elaborate religious system and
would be eventually subdivided into a huge number of economic sub-classes which we call castes
Social class by the end of the Rigvedic period became completely inflexible there was no such thing as
social mobility
In the early centuries of Later Vedic Period or Brahmanic Period (1000-500 BC) the Aryans
migrated across the Doab which is a large plain which separates the Yamuna River from the Ganges It
was a difficult project for the Doab was thickly forested the Aryans slowly burned and settled the Doab
until they reached the Ganges While the Rig Veda represents the most primitive religion of the Aryans
during the Rigvedic Period the religion of the Later Vedic period is dominated by the Brahmanas or
priestly book which was composed sometime between 1000 and 850 BC Later Vedic society is
dominated by the Brahmans and every aspect of Aryan life comes under the control of priestly rituals and
spells In history as the Indians understand it the Later Vedic Period is the Epic Age the great literary
heroic epics of Indian culture the Mahabharata and the Ramayana though they were composed
between 500 and 200 BC were probably originally formulated and told in the Later Vedic Period Both of
these epics deal with heroes from this period and demonstrate how Aryan cultural values as we can
understand them from the Rig Veda are being transformed by mixing with Indus cultures
What did the Aryans do with their time They seem to have had a well-developed musical culture and
song and dance dominated their society They were not greatly invested in the visual arts but their interest
in lyric poetry was unmatched They loved gambling They did not however have much interest in
writing even though they could have inherited a civilization and a writing system when they originally
settled India We do not know exactly when they became interested in writing but it may have been at the
end of the Brahmanic period somewhere between 650 and 500 BC Still there are no Aryan writings until
the Mauryan periodmdashfrom Harappa (2500-1750 BC) to Maurya (300 BC) is quite a long time The script
that the Mauryans used is called Brahmi script and was used to write not only the religious and literary
language of the time Sanskrit but also the vernacular languages This script Brahmi is the national
alphabet of India
The Vedic period then is a period of cultural mixing not of conquest Although the Aryans were a
conquering people when they first spread into India the culture of the Aryans would gradually mix with
indigenous cultures and the war-religion of the Aryans still preserved in parts of the Rig Veda slowly
became more ritualized and more meditative By 200 BC this process of mixing and transforming was
more or less complete and the culture we call Indian was fully formed
Were they Copycats or Geniuses How did the Harappans take the great leap from self-contained agricultural societies to a trade-oriented
luxury-conscious sophisticated urban civilization that gave the world the concept of town planning
Analyzing the evidence from various sites Possehl found that between 2600 BC and 2500 BC the
Harappans experienced a century of cathartic changes Before this he finds no breadboard models of the
expansion to come be it the invention of writing or the awesome town-planning techniques A
tremendous jump in human ability is evident So what or who caused it
In the past the reputed British archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler argued that ideas have wings and that
the Harappans were influenced by their trade contacts with the Sumerians But the diffusion theory of
civilization as it is called is slowly being given the heave-ho Cambridge historian Raymond Allchin an
authority on the subject says We are now beginning to see the foundation being laid in the preceding
100 to 200 years in smaller sites There appears to be a completely organic process of growth that threw
up the Harappan culture as we know it
Yet the evidence of that process continues to be scanty In Kunal in Haryana archaeologists recently
found what are known as proto Indus seals On pottery on many of the smaller sites in both India and
Pakistan graffiti similar to some figures on the script begin to appear And at Dholavira and at Banawali
in Haryana the distinction between the citadel and the lower city is beginning to evolve There is
however a huge jump in scale in such activity in those critical 100 years For in Harappa as in most
Indus sites the distinct gridiron pattern for streets appear a scientific system of drainage that linked up to
even the smallest house in the lower city is established precise weights and measures begin to circulate
and the writing system evolves So were the Harappans copycats Archaeologists say the Indus people
couldnrsquot have copied their town-planning from Egypt and Mesopotamia because in those civilizations the
roads meandered like village streets Nor was the writing similar to Sumer`s cuneiform or the Egyptian
hieroglyphics The Harappans had their own distinctive style Lal explains the dramatic change as a result
of centuries of growth reaching a critical mass that caused an unparalleled urban explosion Trade he
believes was the driving force of the revolution Even a skeptic like Possehl maintains that these are
indeed an expression of the Indian genius
Did Aryans kill them or a Depression Archaeologists are known to stumble but the kind of knocking Wheeler has taken over his Aryan
invasion theory has few parallels When the British archaeologist discovered a dozen skeletons in
Mohenjodaro he propounded a theory about the final massacre by marauding invaders that put an end to
the Indus civilization When an Indian scholar told him of Hariyuppa being mentioned in the Rigveda he
took it to mean Harappa And since a fort was known as pur and Indira the Aryan god was known as
Purandhara or destroyer of forts it all fitted neatly
After all werenrsquot the Indus cities among the most fortified Yet the past 50 years and more so the last
decade has shown just how wrong Wheeler was The last massacre theory was his imagination running
riot Far from being snuffed out there was a brilliant resurgence of Indus culture further south for a while
Possehl who made a recent study found that in 2000 BC in Pakistanrsquos Sindh district the sites were down
from 86 to 6 and in Cholistan 174 to 41 But in India the sites in Haryana Punjab and Rajasthan exploded
from 218 to 853 Possehl asks How can this be construed as an eclipse We are looking at a highly
mobile people
Allchin argues that there is clear indication that the rainfall pattern which had initially brought fertility
had become adverse in the Sindh region And theories that given the instability of the Himalayan region
there may have been a massive earthquake that possibly changed the course of rivers such as the Sarasvati
and affected many Indus cities The Indus people then migrated eastward Lal talks of steep decline in
trade because of problems in Sumer that resulted in a Great Depression and turned many urban centers
into ghost cities
Bisht concurs with Lal but goes a step further He says that after the quake hit the heart of the civilization
the Indus people migrated east which acted like a sort of bypass to their woes And like a dying candle it
shone brilliantly again but briefly before being snuffed out Dholavira Banawali Mehrgarh Harappa -- in
fact all the major cities show that as the cities declined encroachments on streets that were unseen at its
peak began to occur with alarming regularity There was a breakdown in sanitation and cities like their
modern-day counterparts in India simply ran themselves aground They were replaced by massive squatter
colonies and an explosion of rural sites as people disillusioned with cities went back to farming
communities A giant step backward
Yet it wasnrsquot as if all came to naught as was earlier believed Some of the writings survived in the pottery
of the following ages The weight and decimal system too lived on And so did the bullock-cart
technology that the Indus had perfected Rather than a violent transition there may have been an orderly
interaction with oncoming Aryans Lal in his most recent book even puts across the most audacious
theory Could the Bronze Age Harappans be Aryans themselves He says this because of the presence of
fire worship and the discovery of horse remains and idols in Indus sites Meadows dismisses it as
premature and points out that it was more likely that ass remains were mistaken for that of a horsersquos And
that the Vedas showed a great antipathy for urban centers
Whatever the cause it would take another 1000 years for a semblance of civilization to return to the
subcontinent -- a dire warning to modern India of the catastrophe that can befall an errant populace
Environmental Stress in the Indus Valley Source Quotation from D P Agarwal and R K Sood in Gregory L Possehl ed Harappan Civilization A Contemporary Perspective (Warminster
England Aris and Phillips 1982)229
The three river-valley civilizations discussed in this chapter were located in arid or semiarid regions Such
regions are particularly vulnerable to changes in the environment Scholars debates about the existence
and impact of changes in the climate and landscape of the Indus Valley illuminate some of the potential
factors at work as well as the difficulties of verifying and interpreting such long-ago changes
One of the points at issue is climatic change An earlier generation of scholars believed that the climate
of the Indus Valley was considerably wetter during the height of that civilization than it is now As
evidence they cited the enormous quantities of timber cut from extensive forests that would have been
needed to bake the millions of mud bricks used to construct the cities (see photo) the distribution of
human settlements on land that is now unfavorable for agriculture and the representation of jungle and
marsh animals on decorated seals This approach assumes that the growth of population prosperity and
complexity in the Indus Valley in the third millennium BCE required wet conditions and it concludes
that the change to a drier climate in the early second millennium BCE pushed this civilization into
decline
Other experts skeptical about a radical climatic change countered with alternative calculations of the
amount of timber needed and evidence of plant remains-particularly barley a grain that is tolerant of dry
conditions However recent studies of the stabilization of sand dunes which occurs in periods of heavy
rainfall and analysis of the sediment deposited by rivers and winds have been used to strengthen the
claim that the Indus Valley used to be wetter and in the early-to-mid second millennium BCE entered a
period of relatively dry conditions that have persisted to the present
A much clearer case can be made for changes in the landscape caused by shifts in the courses of rivers
These shifts are due in many cases to tectonic forces such as earthquakes Dry channels whether
detected in satellite photographs or by on-the-ground inspection reveal the location of old riverbeds and
it appears that a second major river system the Hakra once ran parallel to the Indus some distance to the
east The Hakra with teeming towns and fertile fields along its banks appears to have been a second axis
of this civilization Either the Sutlej which now feeds into the Indus or the Yamuna which now pours
into the Ganges may have been the main source of water for this long-gone system before undergoing a
change of course The consequences of the drying-up of this major waterway must have been immense-
the loss of huge amounts of arable land and the food that it produced the abandonment of cities and
villages and consequent migration of their populations shifts in the trade routes and desperate
competition for shrinking resources
As for the Indus itself the present-day course of the lower reaches of the river has shifted 100 miles
(161 kilometers) to the west since the arrival of the Greek conqueror Alexander the Great in the late
fourth century BCE and the deposit of massive volumes of silt has pushed the mouth of the river 50
miles (80 kilometers) farther south Such a shift of the river bed and buildup of alluvial deposits also may
have occurred in the third and second millennia BCE
A recent study concludes It is obvious that ecological stresses caused both climatically and
technically played an important role in the life and decay of the Indus civilization
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity four Read the article below about the early Chinese dynasties Using information from
the article write an 800 word essay that describes the influence of the environment religion and
gender on the formation of the government of ancient China Again do NOT look up additional
information use only what is provided Also do NOT quote from the articles paraphrase and
summarize only Turn in your essay to wwwturnitincom before the first day of school
The Shang and Zhou Dynasties By 5000 BCE agricultural communities had spread through much of what is now called China and there
were agricultural villages from the Wei River Valley eastward parallel with the great Yellow River
(Huang He) which flowed out of the Kunlun Mountains to the deciduous forest and loess soil region of
the North China Plain Where people were free of forest and had access to water they grew millet -- as
early as 5500 BCE -- while they continued to hunt deer and other game to fish and gather food And they
raised dogs pigs and chickens They built one-room homes dug into the earth with roofs of clay or
thatch pit homes grouped in villages They had spinning wheels and knitted and wove fibers And they
made pottery decorated with art
Flooding along the Yellow River was worse than it was along the Yangzi River to the south Along the
Yangzi River through the Hubei Basin and on the coastal plain to Hangzhou Bay farming had also
developed but people along the Yellow River had to work harder at flood control and irrigation and
perhaps this stimulated a greater effort at organization At any rate the North China Plain became the
largest area with a relatively dense population
Where people were producing more food than they needed to survive warriors had the incentive not only
to plunder but also to conquer And conquering kings arose on the North China Plain as they did in West
Asia The first dynasty of kings in the North China Plain has been described as belonging to the Xia
family - whose rule is thought to have begun around 2200 BCE But the first dynasty of which there is
historical evidence is that of the Shang family The Shang clan came out of the Wei River Valley just west
of the North China Plain By around 1500 BCE give or take a century or so the Shang unified people
along the North China Plain The military had chariots each with an aristocrat archer a driver and
sometimes also a man with a spear The Shang built an empire in much the same way as other conquerors
by leaving behind a garrison force to police local people by turning a local king into a subservient ally
free to manage local matters and by taxing the conquered
Around 1384 BCE the Shang moved their capital to Yin As a regular pastime the Shang emperors and
nobles hunted in organized game drives Emperors and aristocrats had splendid homes with walls of
pounded earth or earthen bricks while common people continued to live in their pit homes of earlier times
A Shang emperor was chief priest and he had an administrative bureaucracy with councilors lesser
priests and diviners As with other warring civilizations slaves were taken the slaves laboring at growing
crops And women in Shang civilization were subservient to men with aristocratic women enjoying a
greater freedom and equality than common women The role of the woman was to be gentle calm
respectful and to obey her husband Women were lower than men and were subjected to womenrsquos work
(tending to the children and needs of the husband) Men also married multiple times and women were
used as concubines
During the Shang dynasty the civilization along the Yellow River had canals for irrigating crops
Communities had drains that ran water out of town They made beer from millet The stable government
allowed for extended trading and use of money in the form of cowry shells Shang merchants traded in
salt iron copper tin lead and antimony some of which had to be imported from far away As early as
the 1300 BCE a bronze casting industry had developed This was later than the rise of bronze casting in
Europe and West Asia but it was the most advanced in the world
It was around 1300 BCE that the first known writing appeared in Shang civilization because the
government officials needed to have questions answered that would allow them to better govern This
writing was for divination done on plate-like portions of the bones of cattle or deer on seashells and
turtle shells and perhaps on wood By applying a pointed heated rod to a bone or shell the item cracked
and to which written symbol the crack traveled gave answers for various questions what the weather was
going to be like would there be flood would a harvest succeed or fail when might be the best time for
hunting or fishing there were also personal questions about illness or whether one should make a journey
Shang Violence and Splendor
To the east north and south of Shang civilization were those the Shang saw as barbarians including the
farming people along the Yangzi River Shang emperors sent out armies to repulse invaders and the
Shang emperors went beyond their domains to plunder and to capture foreign peoples needed for sacrifice
to their gods Uncovered tombs of emperors from the Shang period indicate that they could put into the
field as many as three to five thousand soldiers Found buried with the emperors were their personal
ornaments and spears with bronze blades and the remains of what had been bows and arrows Buried with
the emperors were also horses and chariots for transporting soldiers to battle And with the emperors in
death were their charioteers dogs servants and people in groups of ten -- people who had been
ceremonially beheaded with bronze axes
Zhou Empire Religion and Human Sacrifice
Shang rule was threatened by forces from outside and from within its empire To the west of Shang
civilization in the Wei River Valley lived a pastoral people called Zhou who led an alliance that included
other tribal peoples neighboring Shang civilization While the Shang emperor Zhouxin was occupied by
a war against tribal people to his southeast rebellions broke out among people that Shang monarchs
before him had conquered The Zhou and their allies saw the Shang emperors troubles as an opportunity
to move against him and in 1045 BCE they overpowered him at the battle of Mu-ye and had him
beheaded
A dynasty of Zhou emperors began ruling what had been Shang civilization They claimed that all lands
belonged to heaven that they were the sons of heaven and therefore that all lands and all people were
their subjects Seeing the lands they had conquered as too vast for one man to dominate the Zhou
emperors divided these lands into regions and assigned someone to rule each region in their name
choosing for this position a close family member a trusted member of their clan or the chief of a tribe
that had been allied with them against the Shang
Each local ruler had at his disposal all the lands around him He had his own militia And from the Zhou
emperors the local rulers received gifts such as chariots bronze weapons servants and animals The local
rulers received the title of lord (gong) Local rulers passed their positions to their sons their titles of lord
becoming hereditary And to control their areas better the lords made sub-lords of those who had
dominated the common people before they arrived A hierarchy of status and obligations emerged among
families and within families with older brothers ranking higher than younger brothers with rules of
succession as to which of the males would head his family If a married aristocrat became infatuated with
another woman rather than drive his wife from his home he could bring the other woman into the family
as a concubine where she would rank beneath his wife
Zhou emperors told those they had conquered that they the Zhou had ousted the ancestors of Shang
emperors from heaven and that heaven was occupied by their supreme god a god they called The Lord
on High who they said had commanded the downfall of the Shang emperors Like emperors in West
Asia Zhou emperors claimed that they ruled by divine right They claimed that they represented on earth
the Lord on High and that it was their duty to mediate with the Lord on High to perform appropriate
sacrifices and to maintain a proper relationship between heaven and their subjects They claimed that any
opposition to their rule was opposition to the will of heaven
It was from the Zhou emperors that local lords received the right to act as a priest to perform sacrifices
to have certain hymns sung and certain dances performed the right to propitiate the gods of local
mountains streams and of the soil and crops Meanwhile local aristocrats continued to keep track of their
ancestral heritage They married with religious rites and sanctions while common folk continued to have
no such marriages no surnames or recorded ancestors They merely lived together and were recognized as
a couple by their neighbors
Ancestor worship was also very important to the Shang It was thought that the success of crops and the
health and well being of people were based on the happiness of dead ancestors
The worship of various gods from the Shang period included gods of grain rain and agriculture -- one of
whom was believed to have had a virgin birth Among these gods was a god of the Yellow River who had
the body of a fish but the face of a man
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity five Research the social hierarchy religion political organization writing systems and
technological aspects of the societies listed on the SNAPSHOT Early Agricultural Societies Describe each aspect
of the society using specific evidence - in one or two clear sentences (SEE EXAMPLE of Olmec Society) Write
VERY neatly in ink Bring this chart with you on the FIRST DAY of school
Let me give some benchmark dating here the Paleolithic Era (which means the Era of Old Stone) It starts
with the first human tool-making two and a half million years ago It ends after the last Ice Age and the beginnings
of agriculture After that we talk about the Neolithic Era (the Era of New Stone) It lasted until we took up
metalworking and we invented writing
The older Paleolithic Era took place in two parts Lower and Upper During the latter part the Upper
Paleolithic Era Modern Humans appeared and rapidly extended tool making beyond simple chipped rocks For a
long time wed believed all thatd started just a little over thirty thousand years ago
But most of the evidence for that had come out of Europe Now Blombos Cave has moved the rise of
Modern Humans back to a time long before the Neanderthals vanished It has tripled the length of the Upper
Paleolithic Era and it places the cradle of Modern Humans down at the far tip of the African continent
Among those oldest-known bone tools we find spear points awls spatulas We find standard forms of
tools We find the first evidence of fishing We find fine stonework of a kind that didnt turn up in Europe until
twenty-thousand years ago We find different areas of the cave devoted to specific activities
The most remarkable discovery is that of purely artistic technologies Ochre was widely used Ochre is a
form of iron ore that makes a fine paint It can be used on human bodies or on walls And those chunks of ochre
themselves have been scribed with abstract designs The cave has also yielded up a seventy-five-thousand-year-old
snail-shell necklace -- the oldest ever found
All this suggests something beyond just tool making These uses of an esthetic symbolic language would
hardly have been possible without speech as well And speech was also something wed thought was only thirty
thousand years old
Its neat to find our grandparents doing so well so long ago As I was reading about that old necklace my
wife showed me a simi-lar one in a jewelry catalog She said I guess we havent come as far as wed thought
Well its true We really did not start being smart just the day before yesterday
Earliest evidence for cheese making in the 6th millennium BCE
in northern Europe Melanie Salque et al (Nature International Journal of Science Dec 2012)
The introduction of dairying was a critical step in early agriculture with milk products being rapidly
adopted as a major component of the diets of prehistoric farmers and pottery-using late hunter-gatherers The
processing of milk particularly the production of cheese would have been a critical development because it not
only allowed the preservation of milk products in a non-perishable and transportable form but also it made milk a
more digestible commodity for early prehistoric farmers The finding of abundant milk residues in pottery vessels
from seventh millennium sites from north-western Anatolia provided the earliest evidence of milk processing
although the exact practice could not be explicitly defined1 Notably the discovery of potsherds pierced with small
holes appear at early Neolithic sites in temperate Europe in the sixth millennium BC and have been interpreted
typologically as lsquocheese-strainersrsquo although a direct association with milk processing has not yet been
demonstrated Organic residues preserved in pottery vessels have provided direct evidence for early milk use in the
Neolithic period in the Near East and south-eastern Europe north Africa Denmark and the British Isles based on
the δ13
C and Δ13
C values of the major fatty acids in milk Here we apply the same approach to investigate the
function of sievesstrainer vessels providing direct chemical evidence for their use in milk processing The
presence of abundant milk fat in these specialized vessels comparable in form to modern cheese strainers provides
compelling evidence for the vessels having being used to separate fat-rich milk curds from the lactose-containing
whey This new evidence emphasizes the importance of pottery vessels in processing dairy products particularly in
the manufacture of reduced-lactose milk products among lactose-intolerant prehistoric farming communities
The emergence of dairying was a major innovation in prehistoric societies enabling the supply of nutritious
food without the slaughtering of precious livestock The processing of milk particularly the production of cheese
would have been an important development however the origins of cheese making are currently unknown
Iconographic and written evidence from the mid-third-millennium BCE weakly documents the history of cheese
making although its origins probably lie much earlier in prehistoryhellip
Activity two Read ldquoConsequences and future of plant and animal domesticationrdquo by Jared
Diamond (below) and write an 800-1200 word summary (1-1 frac12 pages typed Times New Roman
font single spaced size 12 standard margins)
o Explain why humans began to domesticate plants and animals and how the species subsequently
changed
o Describe the reasons why so few species were suitable and why certain areas became
agricultural hearths
o Finally explain the consequences of domestication
Do NOT quote the article summarize only Turn in your summary to wwwturnitincom before the
first day of school
Consequences and future of plant and animal domestication Jared Diamond
Domestication interests us as the most momentous change in Holocene human history Why did it
operate on so few wild species in so few geographic areas Why did people adopt it at all why did they
adopt it when they did and how did it spread The answers to these questions determined the remaking of
the modern world as farmers spread at the expense of hunterndashgatherers and of other farmers
Plant and animal domestication is the most important development in the past 13000 years of
human history It interests all of us scientists and non-scientists alike because it provides most of our
food today it was prerequisite to the rise of civilization and it transformed global demography Because
domestication ultimately yielded agents of conquest (for example guns germs and steel) but arose in only
a few areas of the world and in certain of those areas earlier than in others the peoples who through
biogeographic luck first acquired domesticates acquired enormous advantages over other peoples and
expanded As a result of those replacements about 88 of all humans alive today speak some language
belonging to one or another of a mere seven language families confined in the early Holocene to two
small areas of Eurasia that happened to become the earliest centers of domestication mdash the Fertile
Crescent and parts of China Through that head start the inhabitants of those two areas spread their
languages and genes over much of the rest of the world Those localized origins of domestication
ultimately explain why this international journal of science is published in an Indo-European language
rather than in Basque Swahili Quechua or Pitjantjatjara
The past of domestication Our decision to domesticate
The question why farm strikes most of us modern humans as silly Of course it is better to grow
wheat and cows than to forage for roots and snails But in reality that perspective is flawed by hindsight
Food production could not possibly have arisen through a conscious decision because the worlds first
farmers had around them no model of farming to observe hence they could not have known that there
was a goal of domestication to strive for and could not have guessed the consequences that domestication
would bring for them If they had actually foreseen the consequences they would surely have outlawed
the first steps towards domestication because the archaeological and ethnographic record throughout the
world shows that the transition from hunting and gathering to farming eventually resulted in more work
lower adult stature worse nutritional condition and heavier disease burdens The only peoples who could
make a conscious choice about becoming farmers were hunterndashgatherers living adjacent to the first
farming communities and they generally disliked what they saw and rejected farming for the good
reasons just mentioned and others
Instead the origins of domestication involved unforeseen consequences of two sets of changes mdash
changes in plants and animals and changes in human behavior As initially recognized by Darwin many
of the differences between domestic plants and their wild ancestors evolved as consequences of wild
plants being selected gathered and brought back to camp by hunterndashgatherers while the roots of animal
domestication included the ubiquitous tendency of all peoples to try to tame or manage wild animals
(including such unlikely candidates as ospreys hyenas and grizzly bears) Although humans had been
manipulating wild plants and animals for a long time hunterndashgatherer behavior began to change at the
end of the Pleistocene because of increasingly unpredictable climate decreases in big-game species that
were hunters first-choice prey and increasing human occupation of available habitats To decrease the
risk of unpredictable variation in food supply people broadened their diets to second- and third-choice
foods which included more small game plus plant foods requiring much preparation such as grinding
leaching and soaking Eventually people transported some wild plants (such as wild cereals) from their
natural habitats to more productive habitats and began intentional cultivation
The emerging agricultural lifestyle had to compete with the established hunterndashgatherer lifestyle
Once domestication began to arise the changes of plants and animals that followed automatically under
domestication and the competitive advantages that domestication conveyed upon the first farmers
(despite their small stature and poor health) made the transition from the hunterndashgatherer lifestyle to food
production autocatalytic mdash but the speed of that transition varied considerably among regions Thus the
real question about the origins of agriculture which I consider below is why did food production
eventually out-compete the hunterndashgatherer lifestyle over almost the whole world at the particular times
and places that it did but not at earlier times and other places
Changes of wild species under domestication
These changes are particularly well understood for southwest Asias Fertile Crescent the site of
domestication that was earliest in the world and that yielded what are still the worlds most valuable
domestic plant and animal species For most species domesticated there the wild ancestor and its wild
geographic range have been identified its relation to the domesticate proven by genetic and chromosomal
studies its changes under domestication delineated (often at the gene level) those changes traced in
successive layers of the archaeological record and the approximate time and place of its domestication
identified
For example wild wheat and barley bear their seeds on top of a stalk that spontaneously shatters
dropping the seeds to the ground where they can germinate (but where they also become difficult for
humans to gather) An occasional single-gene mutation that prevents shattering is lethal in the wild
(because the seeds fail to drop) but conveniently concentrates the seeds for human gatherers Once people
started harvesting those wild cereal seeds bringing them back to camp accidentally spilling some and
eventually planting others seeds with a non-shattering mutation became unconsciously selected for rather
than against
Individual wild animals also vary in traits affecting their desirability to humans Chickens were
selected to be larger wild cattle (aurochs) to be smaller and sheep to lose their bristly outer hairs and not
to shed their soft inner hairs (the wool) Most domestic animals including even recently domesticated
trout have smaller brains and less acute sense organs than do their wild ancestors Good brains and keen
eyes are essential to survival in the wild but represent a quantitatively important waste of energy in the
barnyard as far as humans are concerned
Especially instructive are cases in which the same ancestral species became selected under
domestication for alternative purposes resulting in very different-appearing breeds or crops For instance
dogs were variously selected to kill wolves dig out rats race be eaten or be cuddled in our laps What
naive zoologist glancing at wolfhounds terriers greyhounds Mexican hairless dogs and chihuahuas
would even guess them to belong to the same species Similarly cabbage was variously selected for its
leaves (cabbage and kale) stems (kohlrabi) flower shoots (broccoli and cauliflower) and buds (brussels
sprouts)
Why so few wild species were domesticated
The wild animal species that most plausibly could have yielded valuable domesticates were large
terrestrial mammalian herbivores and omnivores of which the world holds 148 species weighing 45 kg or
more Yet only 14 of those 148 species were actually domesticated prompting us to ask what prevented
domestication of the other 134 species Similarly worldwide there are about 200000 wild species of
higher plants of which only about 100 yielded valuable domesticates Especially surprising are the many
cases in which only one of a closely related group of species became domesticated For example horses
and donkeys were domesticated but none of the four zebra species were
The key question concerning this selectivity of domestication is as follows in the cases of all
those species never domesticated did the difficulty lie with the species itself or with the people
indigenous to the area to which the species was native For instance is the abundance of large wild
mammals the reason why no mammal species was ever domesticated in subequatorial Africa making
domestication superfluous for Africans If that explanation were correct then African people should also
have ignored Eurasian domestic mammals when those were finally introduced to Africa and European
animal breeders on arriving in Africa should have succeeded in domesticating some African wild
mammals but both of those predictions are refuted by the actual course of history
Six independent lines of evidence converge to prove that in most cases the obstacle lay with the
species itself not with the local people the rapid acceptance of introduced Eurasian domesticates by non-
Eurasian peoples the rapid ancient domestication of the most valuable wild species the repeated
independent domestications of many of them the failure of even modern European plant and animal
breeders to add significantly to our short list of valuable domesticates ancient discoveries of the value of
thousands of species that were regularly harvested in the wild but that never became domesticated and
the identification of the particular reasons preventing the domestication of many of those species
Comparisons of domesticated wild species with never-domesticated close relatives illustrate the subtle
factors that can derail domestication For example it is initially surprising that oak trees the most
important wild food plant in many parts of Eurasia and North America were never domesticated Like
wild almonds acorns of most individual wild oaks contain bitter poisons with occasional non-poisonous
mutant trees preferred by human foragers However the non-poisonous condition is controlled by a single
dominant gene in almonds but polygenically in oaks so that offspring of the occasional non-poisonous
individuals are often non-poisonous in almonds but rarely so in oaks preventing selection of edible oak
varieties to this day A second example is provided by the European horse breeders who settled in South
Africa in the 1600s and mdash like African herders for previous millennia mdash tried to domesticate zebras
They gave up after several centuries for two reasons First zebras are incurably vicious have the bad
habit of biting a handler and not letting go until the handler is dead and thereby injure more zoo-keepers
each year than do tigers Second zebras have better peripheral vision than horses making them
impossible even for professional rodeo cowboys to lasso (they see the rope coming and flick away their
head)
Figure 1 Comparisons of domesticated wild species (left of each pair) and their never-
domesticated close relatives (right) reveal the subtle factors that can derail domestication
Among wild mammal species
that were never domesticated the six
main obstacles proved to be a diet not
easily supplied by humans (hence no
domestic anteaters) slow growth rate
and long birth spacing (for example
elephants and gorillas) nasty
disposition (grizzly bears and
rhinoceroses) reluctance to breed in
captivity (pandas and cheetahs) lack
of follow-the-leader dominance
hierarchies (bighorn sheep and
antelope) and tendency to panic in
enclosures or when faced with
predators (gazelles and deer except
reindeer) Many species passed five of
these six tests but were still not
domesticated because they failed a
sixth test Conclusions about non-domesticability from the fact of non-domestication are not circular
because these six obstacles can be assessed independently
Why there were so few homelands of agriculture
Food production bestowed on farmers enormous demographic technological political and
military advantages over neighboring hunterndashgatherers The history of the past 13000 years consists of
tales of hunterndashgatherer societies becoming driven out infected conquered or exterminated by farming
societies in every area of the world suitable for farming One might therefore have naively anticipated
that in any part of the world one or more of the local hunterndashgatherer societies would have stumbled
upon domestication become farmers and thereby outcompeted the other local hunterndashgatherer societies
In fact food production arose independently in at most nine areas of the world (Fertile Crescent China
Mesoamerica AndesAmazonia eastern United States Sahel tropical West Africa Ethiopia and New
Guinea)
The puzzle increases when one scrutinizes that list of homelands One might again naively have
expected the areas most productive for farming today to correspond at least roughly to the areas most
productive in the past In reality the list of homelands and the list of breadbaskets of the modern world
are almost mutually exclusive (Fig 2) The latter list includes California North Americas Great Plains
Europe the pampas of Argentina the cape of southern Africa the Indian subcontinent Java and
Australias wheat belt Because these areas are evidently so well suited to farming or herding today why
were they not so in the past
Figure 2 Ancient and modern centers of agriculture
Ancient centers of origin of plant and animal domestication mdash the nine homelands of food
production mdash are indicated by the orange-shaded areas on the map The most agriculturally productive
areas of the modern world as judged by cereals and major staples are indicated by the yellow-shaded
areas Note that there is almost no overlap between the areas highlighted except that China appears on
both distributions and that the most productive areas of the central United States today approach areas of
the eastern United States where domestication originated The reason why the two distributions are so
different is that agriculture arose in areas to which the wild ancestors of the most valuable domesticable
crops and animals were native but other areas proved much more productive when those valuable
domesticates reached them
The explanation is that the homelands of agriculture were instead merely those regions to which
the most numerous and most valuable domesticable wild plant and animal species were native Only in
those areas were incipient early farmers able to out-compete local hunterndashgatherers Once those locally
available wild species had been domesticated and had spread outside the homelands societies of
homelands had no further advantage other than that of a head start and they were eventually overtaken by
societies of more fertile or climatically more favored areas outside the homelands
For instance the Fertile Crescent of southwest Asia was home to wild wheats barley peas sheep
goats cows and pigs mdash a list that includes what are still the most valuable crops and livestock of the
modern world Hence hunterndashgatherers of the Fertile Crescent domesticated those species and became the
worlds first farmers and herders beginning around 8500 BCE That head start in food production led to
them and their close neighbors also developing the worlds first metal tools writing empires and
professional armies Those tools of conquest and Fertile Crescent human genes gradually spread west
into Europe and North Africa and east into the western Indian subcontinent and central Asia However
once those crops livestock and human inventions had spread Fertile Crescent societies possessed no
other advantages As all of those elements slowly spread northwest across Europe farming and power
also shifted northwest from the Fertile Crescent to areas where farming had never arisen independently mdash
first to Greece then to Italy and finally to northwest Europe Human societies of the Fertile Crescent
inadvertently committed slow ecological suicide in a zone of low rainfall prone to deforestation soil
erosion and salinization
The spread of food production
From the homelands of domestication food production spread around the world in either of two
ways The much less common way was for hunterndashgatherers outside the homelands to acquire crops or
livestock from the homelands enabling them to settle down as farmers or herders as attested by
archaeological evidence for substantial continuity of material culture and by genetic linguistic and
skeletal evidence of continuity of human populations The clearest such example of local adoption of food
production is in southern Africa where around 2000 years ago some Khoisan hunterndashgatherers acquired
Eurasian livestock (cattle sheep and goats) arriving from the north and became herders (so-called
Hottentots) Much more often however local hunterndashgatherers had no opportunity to acquire crops and
livestock before they were overrun or replaced by farmers expanding out of the homelands exploiting
their demographic technological political and military advantages over the hunterndashgatherers
Expansions of crops livestock and even people and technologies tended to occur more rapidly along
eastndashwest axes than along northndashsouth axes1 (Fig 3) The reason is obvious locations at the same latitude
share identical day-lengths and seasonalities often share similar climates habitats and diseases and hence
require less evolutionary change or adaptation of domesticates technologies and cultures than do
locations at different latitudes Examples include the rapid westwards and eastwards dispersal of wheat
horses wheels and writing of western Asian origin and the westwards dispersal of chickens citrus and
peaches of Chinese origin along the eastndashwest axis of Eurasia This can be contrasted with the slow
spread of Eurasian livestock and non-spread of Eurasian crops southwards along Africas northndashsouth
axis the slow spread of Mexican corn and the non-spread of Mexican writing and wheels and Andean
llamas and potatoes along the Americas northndashsouth axis and the slow spread of food production
southwards along the northndashsouth axis of the Indian subcontinent
Figure 3 The continental major axis is oriented eastndashwest
for Eurasia but northndashsouth for the Americas and Africa
The spread of food production tended to occur more
rapidly along eastndashwest axes than along northndashsouth axes mainly
because locations at the same latitudes required less evolutionary
change or adaptation of domesticates than did locations at
different latitudes
This is not to deny the existence of ecological barriers at
the same latitude within Asia and North America but the general
pattern remains Eurasias eastndashwest axis and the resulting rapid enrichment of societies in each part of
Eurasia by crops and technologies from other parts of Eurasia became one of the main ultimate reasons
why Eurasian peoples conquered Native American peoples rather than vice versa Eurasias eastndashwest
axis also explains why there is much less evidence for multiple independent domestications of the same
plant species (see below) and much more evidence for agriculturally driven language expansions in
Eurasia than in the Americas
Consequences of domestication Consequences for human societies
Beginning around 8500 BCE the transition from the hunterndashgatherer lifestyle to food production
enabled people to settle down next to their permanent gardens orchards and pastures instead of migrating
to follow seasonal shifts in wild food supplies (Some hunterndashgatherer societies in especially productive
environments were also sedentary but most were not) Food production was accompanied by a human
population explosion that has continued unabated to this day resulting from two separate factors First
the sedentary lifestyle permitted shorter birth intervals Nomadic hunterndashgatherers had previously spaced
out birth intervals at four years or more because a mother shifting camp can carry only one infant or slow
toddler Second plant and animal species that are edible to humans can be cultivated in much higher
density in our gardens orchards and pastures than in wild habitats
Food production also led to an explosion of technology because sedentary living permitted the
accumulation of heavy technology (such as forges and printing presses) that nomadic hunterndashgatherers
could not carry and because the storable food surpluses resulting from agriculture could be used to feed
full-time craftspeople and inventors By also feeding full-time kings bureaucrats nobles and soldiers
those food surpluses led to social stratification political centralization and standing armies All of these
overwhelming advantages are what enabled farmers eventually to displace hunterndashgatherers
Evolution of epidemic infectious diseases
The main killers of humans since the advent of agriculture have been acute highly infectious
epidemic diseases that are confined to humans and that either kill the victim quickly or if the victim
recovers immunize himher for life Such diseases could not have existed before the origins of
agriculture because they can sustain themselves only in large dense populations that did not exist before
agriculture hence they are often termed crowd diseases The mystery of the origins of many of these
diseases has been solved by molecular biological studies of recent decades demonstrating that they
evolved from similar epidemic diseases of our herd domestic animals with which we began to come into
close contact 10000 years ago Thus the evolution of these diseases depended on two separate roles of
domestication in creating much denser human populations and in permitting much more frequent
transmission of animal diseases from our domesticates than from hunted wild animals For instance
measles and tuberculosis arose from diseases of cattle influenza from a disease of pigs and ducks1 An
outstanding mystery remains the origins of smallpox did it reach us from camels or from cattle
Crowd diseases paradoxically became agents of conquest because exposed individuals acquired
immune resistance from childhood exposure and exposed populations gradually evolved genetic
resistance but unexposed populations had neither type of resistance In practice because 13 of our 14
large domestic mammals were Eurasian species evolution of crowd diseases was concentrated in Eurasia
and the diseases became the most important agents by which Eurasian colonists expanding overseas killed
indigenous peoples of the Americas Australia Pacific islands and southern Africa
The agricultural expansions
Because some peoples acquired domesticates before other peoples could and because
domesticates conferred eventual advantages such as guns germs and steel on the possessors the history
of the past 10000 years has consisted of farmers replacing hunterndashgatherers or less advanced farmers
These agricultural expansions originating mainly from the nine homelands of agriculture remade genetic
and linguistic maps of the world Among the most discussed (and often highly controversial) possible
examples are the expansions of Bantu-speaking farmers out of tropical West Africa over subequatorial
Africa Austronesian-speaking farmers out of Taiwan over Island Southeast Asia Fertile Crescent farmers
over Europe and Korean farmers over Japan
Activity three Without the ability to translate their writing script archaeologists today do not
understand nearly as much about the Indus River Valley civilization that flourished from 2600 to
1900 BCE although the artifacts found there have enhanced our knowledge of these ancient
peoples One mystery is what exactly happened to the civilizations of the Indus River Valley
Mesopotamia and Egypt were later absorbed into a broader Hellenistic and later Roman cultural
zone but civilization in the Indus River Valley instead disappeared Study the map and read the
articles ldquoThe Myth of the Aryan Invasion of Indiardquo ldquoWere they Copycats or Geniusesrdquo
ldquoEnvironment and Technology Environmental Stress in the Indus River Valleyrdquo and ldquoDid Aryans
kill them or a depressionrdquo Write an 800 word essay that addresses the following question
What are the debates that center around the disappearance of this ancient civilization (Include
examples from the articles) Do NOT go on-line and attempt to find any more information Do
NOT quote from the articles Turn in your essay to wwwturnitincom before the first day of
school
River Valley Civilizations
The Indus Valley Civilization was the first major urban culture of South Asia It reached its peak
from 2600 BC to 1900 BC roughly a period called by some archaeologists Mature Harappan as
distinguished from the earlier Neolithic Early Harappan regional cultures Spatially it is huge
comprising of about 1000 settlements of varying sizes and geographically includes almost all of modern
Pakistan parts of India as far east as Delhi and as far south as Bombay and parts of Afghanistan
The main corpus of writing dated from the Indus Civilization is in the form of some two thousand
inscribed seals in good legible conditions (In case you dont know what seals are they are used to make
impressions on malleable material like clay)
Although these seals and samples of Indus writing have been floating around the scholastic world
for close to 70 years little progress has been made on deciphering this elegant script However we should
not blame scholars for their lack of progress for there are some major impediments to decipherment
1 Very short and brief texts The average number of symbols on the seals is 5 and the longest is
only 26
2 The language underneath is unknown
3 Lack of bilingual texts
For instance consider Champollion who deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs with all of these 3
important clues there were very long Egyptian texts he knew Coptic a descendant of Egyptian and the
Rosetta Stone a bilingual text between Greek and two written forms of Egyptian
But the script isnt as bad as undecipherable For one even though scholars dont have long texts
and bilingual texts they can still theorize about the language underneath the writing system There are
several competing theories about the language that the Indus script represent
A The language is completely unrelated to anything else meaning an isolate Well this doesnt get
us anywhere
B The language is Aryan (some form of Indian-Iranian Indo-European) The historical languages
spoken in Northern India and Pakistan all belong to the Indic branch of Indo-European including
Sanskrit Hindi Punjabi etc so maybe the people of the Indus valley spoke a very old Indo-
European language
The major problem with this model is the fact that horses played a very important role in all Indo-
European cultures being a people constantly on the move There is no escape from the fact that
the horse played a central role in the Vedic and Iranian cultures (Parpola 1986) Sidenote
Vedic means from the time of the Vedas the earliest text in India and the Vedic culture is from
around 1500 to 500 BC However no depiction of horses on seals nor any remains of horses have
been found so far before 2000 BC They only appear after 2000 BC Very likely there were no
Aryan speakers present before 2000 BC in the Indus Valley
C The language belongs to the Munda family of languages The Munda family is spoken largely in
eastern India and related to some Southeast Asian languages Like Aryan the reconstructed
vocabulary of early Munda does not reflect the Harappan culture So its candidacy for being the
language of the Indus Civilization is dim
D The language is Dravidian The Dravidian family of languages is spoken in Southern Indian but
Brahui is spoken in modern Pakistan So far this is the most promising model as in the following
points
o There are many Dravidian influences visible in the Vedic texts If the Aryan language
gradually replaced the Dravidian features from Dravidian would form a substratum in
Aryan One of these features is the appearance of retroflex consonants in Indian languages
both Indo-European and Dravidian In contrast retroflex consonants do not appear in any
other Indo-European language not even Iranian ones which are closest to Indic (For more
information on retroflex consonants please visit my Phonetics page)
o Another possible indication of Dravidian in the Indus texts is from structural analysis of
the texts which suggests that the language underneath is possibly agglutinative from the
fact that sign groups often have the same initial signs but different final signs The number
of these final signs range between 1 to 3 The final signs possibly represent grammatical
suffixes that modify the word (represented by the initial signs) Each suffix would
represent one specific modification and the entire cluster of suffixes would therefore put
the word through a series of modifications This suffix system can be found in Dravidian
but not Indo-European Indo-European tongues tend to change the final sounds to modify
the meaning of a word (a process called inflection) but repeated addition of sounds to the
end of word is extremely rare Often many suffixes in an agglutinative language
correspond to a single inflectional ending in an inflectional language
The Dravidian model isnt just an unapplicable theoryBut first we have to know what kind of
writing system is the Indus script
A count of the number of signs reveal a lot about the type of system being used Alphabetic
systems rarely have more than 40 symbols Syllabic systems like Linear B or Cherokee typically have 40
to 100 or so symbols The third ranges from logophonetic to logographic running upwards of hundreds of
signs (like 500 signs in Hieroglyphic Luwian and 5000 symbols in modern Chinese)
It appears that the maximum number of Indus script symbols is 400 although there are 200 basic
signs (ie signs that are not combined from others) This means that the Indus script is probably
logophonetic in that it has both signs used for their meanings and signs used for their phonetic values
Many signs start off as pictorial representation of a physical object often misleadingly called
pictograms They really are should be called logograms because they represent words in the language
However its next to impossible to write out a word with abstract meaning pictorially What all early
writers figured out was to use a logogram not for the object or idea it was originally supposed to stand for
but for all words sounding similar to the original word for that object or idea For example in English to
write leave we can use a picture of a leaf This is called rebus writing and is a tremendously common
pattern in all early writing systems We could also then use the same leaf symbol to stand for the sound
in relief adding another symbol in front of the leaf symbol in order to indicate the re sound So the
logogram gained a phonetic value as well
Testing the theory How can we take the theoretical framework so far and apply it to archaeological data
Numerals seem to represented by vertical lines (represented by number of lines in the glyph) but
they only go up to 7 Analysis reveal 4 more signs that appear in the same context as these numerals and
so they likely represent numbers higher than 7
The fact that no vertical-line numeral sign denotes 8 very likely means the Harappan language is
based 8 (For example the Arabic numerals that we use has symbols from 0 to 9 and to write ten we
have to combined the symbols 1 and 0 which identify our number system as based ten)
Base 8 languages are rare in the world but it does appear that early Dravidian is base 8 but later
changed to base 10 (possibly under Indo-European influence) When translated the count from 1 to 7 is
familiar to us one two three four five six seven However above seven the numbers
etymologies become non-numerical 8 is number 9 is many minus one and 10 is many (Fairservis
1983)
But can we actually read (not interpret) any symbol on the seals We should start with pictograms as
this one
Many scholars (Knorozov Parpola Mahadevan etc) see this sign as a fish
Fish in reconstructed Proto-Dravidian is micircn Coincidentally micircn is also the word for star
On many pots from Mohenjo Daro an Indus site there are drawings of fish and stars together and so
affirming this linguistic association
Going further often the numeral six appears before the fish Either it means 6 fish or
6 stars Old Tamil (a Dravidian language still spoken today) texts from just around the 1st
century AD recorded the name of the Pleiades a star cluster visible during autumn and
winter just above Orion as Six-Stars or aru-micircn Throughout the world titles with celestial
connotations are very common and the clause Six Stars forming part or whole of a Harappan title is not
unreasonable (Parpola 1986)
Sometimes symbols are added to the basic sign to make new signs Of these the one that
looks like a circumflex accent placed on top of the fish is quite interesting It is theorized to mean
roof and in Proto-Dravidian it is vecircymecircy This is phonetically similar to Proto-Dravidian word
for black may Together with fish it spells out mai-m-micircn or black star which in Old Tamil
means the planet Saturn In Sanskrit texts Saturn is associate the color black The god of death Yama is
the presiding of this planet and is usually depicted as riding on a dark buffalo
But the fish reading isnt accepted by all scholars William Fairservis saw it as a combination of
a loom twist and a human sign and form a honorific title pertaining to rulership (Fairservis 1983) I
however am more inclined to accept the fish identification
This is a quick overview of the current process in the decipherment of the Indus script For more
information you can either go to the following links or go to a good library for books and articles (check
out my references)
The Myth of the Aryan Invasion of India Richard Hooker 1996
They called themselves the noble ones or the superior ones Their names are lost their tribal names
are lost But when they found themselves conquerors they gave themselves the name superior or
noble
They were a tribal and nomadic peoples living in the far reaches of Euro-Asia in hostile steppe lands
barely scratching out a living They were unquestionably a tough people and they were fierce and war-
like Their religion reflects it dominated as it is by a storm-god or sky-god that enjoins warfare and
conquest This god was called something like Dyaus a word related to Zeus deus (the Latin word
for god) deva (the Sanskrit word for god) and of course the English word divine Their culture
was oriented around warfare and they were very good at it They were superior on horseback and rushed
into battle in chariots They were a tribal people ruled over by a war-chief or raja (the Latin word rex
(king) comes from the same root word along with the English regal) Somewhere in the early centuries
of the second millennium BC they began to migrate southwards in waves of steady conquest across the
face of Persia and the lands of India
There they would take on the name superior or noble to distinguish themselves from the people
they conquered Their name is derived from the Indo-European root word ar meaning noble In
Sanskrit they were the Aryas (Aryans) but that root ar would also serve as the foundation of the
name of the conquered Persian territories Iran This concept of nobility in fact seems to lie at the heart
of Indo-European consciousness for it appears in another countrys name Ireland or Eire You can
bet however that when a people go around calling themselves superior that it spells bad news for other
people
And there is no question that they were bad news for the southern Asians They swept over Persia with
lightening speed and spread across the northern river plains of India Their natures as a warlike
conquering people are still preserved in Vedic religion the foundation of Hinduism In the Rig Veda the
collection of praises to the gods the god Indra towers over the poetry as a conquering god one that
smashes cities and slays enemies The invading Aryans were originally nomadic peoples not agricultural
They penetrated India from the north-west settling first in the Indus valley Unlike the Harappans
however they eventually concentrated their populations along the Ganges floodplain The Ganges unlike
the Indus is far milder and more predictable in its flooding It must have been a paradise to a people from
the dry steppes of central Asia and Iran a paradise full of water and forest When they arrived the vast
northern plains were almost certainly densely forested Where now bare fields stretch to the horizon
when the Aryans arrived lush forests stretched to those very same horizons Clearing the forests over the
centuries was an epic project and one that is still preserved in Indian literature
The Aryans or Vedic civilization were a new start in Indian culture Harappa was more or less a dead
end (at least as far as we know) the Aryans adopted almost nothing of Harappan culture They built no
cities no states no granaries and used no writing Instead they were a warlike people that organized
themselves in individual tribal kinship units the jana The jana was ruled over by a war-chief These
tribes spread quickly over northern India and the Deccan In a process that we do not understand the basic
social unit of Aryan culture the jana slowly developed from an organization based on kinship to one
based on geography The jana became a janapada or nation and the jana-rajya or tribal kingdom
became the jana-rajyapada or national kingdom So powerfully ingrained into Indian culture is the
jana-pada that Indians still define themselves mainly by their territorial origins All the major territories
of modern India with their separate cultures and separate languages can be dated back to the early jana-
padas of Vedic India
The earliest history of the Aryans in India is called the Rigvedic Period (1700-1000 BC) after the
religious praise poems that are the oldest pieces of literature in India These poems the Rig Veda are
believed to represent the most primitive layer of
Indo-European religion and have many characteristics in common with Persian religion since the two
peoples are closely related in time In this early period their population was restricted to the Punjab in the
northern reaches of the Indus River and the Yamuna River near the Ganges They maintained the Aryan
tribal structure with a raja ruling over the tribal group in tandem with a council Each jana seems to have
had a chief priest the religion was focused almost entirely on a series of sacrifices to the gods The
Rigvedic peoples originally had only two social classes nobles and commoners Eventually they added a
third Dasas or darks These were we presume the darker-skinned people they had conquered By the
end of the Rigvedic period social class had settled into four rigid castes the caturvarnas or four
colors At the top of the caturvarnas were the priests or Brahmans Below the priests were the warriors
or nobles (Kshatriya) the craftspeople and merchants (Vaishya) and the servants (Shudra) who made
up the bulk of society These economic classes were legitimated by an elaborate religious system and
would be eventually subdivided into a huge number of economic sub-classes which we call castes
Social class by the end of the Rigvedic period became completely inflexible there was no such thing as
social mobility
In the early centuries of Later Vedic Period or Brahmanic Period (1000-500 BC) the Aryans
migrated across the Doab which is a large plain which separates the Yamuna River from the Ganges It
was a difficult project for the Doab was thickly forested the Aryans slowly burned and settled the Doab
until they reached the Ganges While the Rig Veda represents the most primitive religion of the Aryans
during the Rigvedic Period the religion of the Later Vedic period is dominated by the Brahmanas or
priestly book which was composed sometime between 1000 and 850 BC Later Vedic society is
dominated by the Brahmans and every aspect of Aryan life comes under the control of priestly rituals and
spells In history as the Indians understand it the Later Vedic Period is the Epic Age the great literary
heroic epics of Indian culture the Mahabharata and the Ramayana though they were composed
between 500 and 200 BC were probably originally formulated and told in the Later Vedic Period Both of
these epics deal with heroes from this period and demonstrate how Aryan cultural values as we can
understand them from the Rig Veda are being transformed by mixing with Indus cultures
What did the Aryans do with their time They seem to have had a well-developed musical culture and
song and dance dominated their society They were not greatly invested in the visual arts but their interest
in lyric poetry was unmatched They loved gambling They did not however have much interest in
writing even though they could have inherited a civilization and a writing system when they originally
settled India We do not know exactly when they became interested in writing but it may have been at the
end of the Brahmanic period somewhere between 650 and 500 BC Still there are no Aryan writings until
the Mauryan periodmdashfrom Harappa (2500-1750 BC) to Maurya (300 BC) is quite a long time The script
that the Mauryans used is called Brahmi script and was used to write not only the religious and literary
language of the time Sanskrit but also the vernacular languages This script Brahmi is the national
alphabet of India
The Vedic period then is a period of cultural mixing not of conquest Although the Aryans were a
conquering people when they first spread into India the culture of the Aryans would gradually mix with
indigenous cultures and the war-religion of the Aryans still preserved in parts of the Rig Veda slowly
became more ritualized and more meditative By 200 BC this process of mixing and transforming was
more or less complete and the culture we call Indian was fully formed
Were they Copycats or Geniuses How did the Harappans take the great leap from self-contained agricultural societies to a trade-oriented
luxury-conscious sophisticated urban civilization that gave the world the concept of town planning
Analyzing the evidence from various sites Possehl found that between 2600 BC and 2500 BC the
Harappans experienced a century of cathartic changes Before this he finds no breadboard models of the
expansion to come be it the invention of writing or the awesome town-planning techniques A
tremendous jump in human ability is evident So what or who caused it
In the past the reputed British archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler argued that ideas have wings and that
the Harappans were influenced by their trade contacts with the Sumerians But the diffusion theory of
civilization as it is called is slowly being given the heave-ho Cambridge historian Raymond Allchin an
authority on the subject says We are now beginning to see the foundation being laid in the preceding
100 to 200 years in smaller sites There appears to be a completely organic process of growth that threw
up the Harappan culture as we know it
Yet the evidence of that process continues to be scanty In Kunal in Haryana archaeologists recently
found what are known as proto Indus seals On pottery on many of the smaller sites in both India and
Pakistan graffiti similar to some figures on the script begin to appear And at Dholavira and at Banawali
in Haryana the distinction between the citadel and the lower city is beginning to evolve There is
however a huge jump in scale in such activity in those critical 100 years For in Harappa as in most
Indus sites the distinct gridiron pattern for streets appear a scientific system of drainage that linked up to
even the smallest house in the lower city is established precise weights and measures begin to circulate
and the writing system evolves So were the Harappans copycats Archaeologists say the Indus people
couldnrsquot have copied their town-planning from Egypt and Mesopotamia because in those civilizations the
roads meandered like village streets Nor was the writing similar to Sumer`s cuneiform or the Egyptian
hieroglyphics The Harappans had their own distinctive style Lal explains the dramatic change as a result
of centuries of growth reaching a critical mass that caused an unparalleled urban explosion Trade he
believes was the driving force of the revolution Even a skeptic like Possehl maintains that these are
indeed an expression of the Indian genius
Did Aryans kill them or a Depression Archaeologists are known to stumble but the kind of knocking Wheeler has taken over his Aryan
invasion theory has few parallels When the British archaeologist discovered a dozen skeletons in
Mohenjodaro he propounded a theory about the final massacre by marauding invaders that put an end to
the Indus civilization When an Indian scholar told him of Hariyuppa being mentioned in the Rigveda he
took it to mean Harappa And since a fort was known as pur and Indira the Aryan god was known as
Purandhara or destroyer of forts it all fitted neatly
After all werenrsquot the Indus cities among the most fortified Yet the past 50 years and more so the last
decade has shown just how wrong Wheeler was The last massacre theory was his imagination running
riot Far from being snuffed out there was a brilliant resurgence of Indus culture further south for a while
Possehl who made a recent study found that in 2000 BC in Pakistanrsquos Sindh district the sites were down
from 86 to 6 and in Cholistan 174 to 41 But in India the sites in Haryana Punjab and Rajasthan exploded
from 218 to 853 Possehl asks How can this be construed as an eclipse We are looking at a highly
mobile people
Allchin argues that there is clear indication that the rainfall pattern which had initially brought fertility
had become adverse in the Sindh region And theories that given the instability of the Himalayan region
there may have been a massive earthquake that possibly changed the course of rivers such as the Sarasvati
and affected many Indus cities The Indus people then migrated eastward Lal talks of steep decline in
trade because of problems in Sumer that resulted in a Great Depression and turned many urban centers
into ghost cities
Bisht concurs with Lal but goes a step further He says that after the quake hit the heart of the civilization
the Indus people migrated east which acted like a sort of bypass to their woes And like a dying candle it
shone brilliantly again but briefly before being snuffed out Dholavira Banawali Mehrgarh Harappa -- in
fact all the major cities show that as the cities declined encroachments on streets that were unseen at its
peak began to occur with alarming regularity There was a breakdown in sanitation and cities like their
modern-day counterparts in India simply ran themselves aground They were replaced by massive squatter
colonies and an explosion of rural sites as people disillusioned with cities went back to farming
communities A giant step backward
Yet it wasnrsquot as if all came to naught as was earlier believed Some of the writings survived in the pottery
of the following ages The weight and decimal system too lived on And so did the bullock-cart
technology that the Indus had perfected Rather than a violent transition there may have been an orderly
interaction with oncoming Aryans Lal in his most recent book even puts across the most audacious
theory Could the Bronze Age Harappans be Aryans themselves He says this because of the presence of
fire worship and the discovery of horse remains and idols in Indus sites Meadows dismisses it as
premature and points out that it was more likely that ass remains were mistaken for that of a horsersquos And
that the Vedas showed a great antipathy for urban centers
Whatever the cause it would take another 1000 years for a semblance of civilization to return to the
subcontinent -- a dire warning to modern India of the catastrophe that can befall an errant populace
Environmental Stress in the Indus Valley Source Quotation from D P Agarwal and R K Sood in Gregory L Possehl ed Harappan Civilization A Contemporary Perspective (Warminster
England Aris and Phillips 1982)229
The three river-valley civilizations discussed in this chapter were located in arid or semiarid regions Such
regions are particularly vulnerable to changes in the environment Scholars debates about the existence
and impact of changes in the climate and landscape of the Indus Valley illuminate some of the potential
factors at work as well as the difficulties of verifying and interpreting such long-ago changes
One of the points at issue is climatic change An earlier generation of scholars believed that the climate
of the Indus Valley was considerably wetter during the height of that civilization than it is now As
evidence they cited the enormous quantities of timber cut from extensive forests that would have been
needed to bake the millions of mud bricks used to construct the cities (see photo) the distribution of
human settlements on land that is now unfavorable for agriculture and the representation of jungle and
marsh animals on decorated seals This approach assumes that the growth of population prosperity and
complexity in the Indus Valley in the third millennium BCE required wet conditions and it concludes
that the change to a drier climate in the early second millennium BCE pushed this civilization into
decline
Other experts skeptical about a radical climatic change countered with alternative calculations of the
amount of timber needed and evidence of plant remains-particularly barley a grain that is tolerant of dry
conditions However recent studies of the stabilization of sand dunes which occurs in periods of heavy
rainfall and analysis of the sediment deposited by rivers and winds have been used to strengthen the
claim that the Indus Valley used to be wetter and in the early-to-mid second millennium BCE entered a
period of relatively dry conditions that have persisted to the present
A much clearer case can be made for changes in the landscape caused by shifts in the courses of rivers
These shifts are due in many cases to tectonic forces such as earthquakes Dry channels whether
detected in satellite photographs or by on-the-ground inspection reveal the location of old riverbeds and
it appears that a second major river system the Hakra once ran parallel to the Indus some distance to the
east The Hakra with teeming towns and fertile fields along its banks appears to have been a second axis
of this civilization Either the Sutlej which now feeds into the Indus or the Yamuna which now pours
into the Ganges may have been the main source of water for this long-gone system before undergoing a
change of course The consequences of the drying-up of this major waterway must have been immense-
the loss of huge amounts of arable land and the food that it produced the abandonment of cities and
villages and consequent migration of their populations shifts in the trade routes and desperate
competition for shrinking resources
As for the Indus itself the present-day course of the lower reaches of the river has shifted 100 miles
(161 kilometers) to the west since the arrival of the Greek conqueror Alexander the Great in the late
fourth century BCE and the deposit of massive volumes of silt has pushed the mouth of the river 50
miles (80 kilometers) farther south Such a shift of the river bed and buildup of alluvial deposits also may
have occurred in the third and second millennia BCE
A recent study concludes It is obvious that ecological stresses caused both climatically and
technically played an important role in the life and decay of the Indus civilization
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity four Read the article below about the early Chinese dynasties Using information from
the article write an 800 word essay that describes the influence of the environment religion and
gender on the formation of the government of ancient China Again do NOT look up additional
information use only what is provided Also do NOT quote from the articles paraphrase and
summarize only Turn in your essay to wwwturnitincom before the first day of school
The Shang and Zhou Dynasties By 5000 BCE agricultural communities had spread through much of what is now called China and there
were agricultural villages from the Wei River Valley eastward parallel with the great Yellow River
(Huang He) which flowed out of the Kunlun Mountains to the deciduous forest and loess soil region of
the North China Plain Where people were free of forest and had access to water they grew millet -- as
early as 5500 BCE -- while they continued to hunt deer and other game to fish and gather food And they
raised dogs pigs and chickens They built one-room homes dug into the earth with roofs of clay or
thatch pit homes grouped in villages They had spinning wheels and knitted and wove fibers And they
made pottery decorated with art
Flooding along the Yellow River was worse than it was along the Yangzi River to the south Along the
Yangzi River through the Hubei Basin and on the coastal plain to Hangzhou Bay farming had also
developed but people along the Yellow River had to work harder at flood control and irrigation and
perhaps this stimulated a greater effort at organization At any rate the North China Plain became the
largest area with a relatively dense population
Where people were producing more food than they needed to survive warriors had the incentive not only
to plunder but also to conquer And conquering kings arose on the North China Plain as they did in West
Asia The first dynasty of kings in the North China Plain has been described as belonging to the Xia
family - whose rule is thought to have begun around 2200 BCE But the first dynasty of which there is
historical evidence is that of the Shang family The Shang clan came out of the Wei River Valley just west
of the North China Plain By around 1500 BCE give or take a century or so the Shang unified people
along the North China Plain The military had chariots each with an aristocrat archer a driver and
sometimes also a man with a spear The Shang built an empire in much the same way as other conquerors
by leaving behind a garrison force to police local people by turning a local king into a subservient ally
free to manage local matters and by taxing the conquered
Around 1384 BCE the Shang moved their capital to Yin As a regular pastime the Shang emperors and
nobles hunted in organized game drives Emperors and aristocrats had splendid homes with walls of
pounded earth or earthen bricks while common people continued to live in their pit homes of earlier times
A Shang emperor was chief priest and he had an administrative bureaucracy with councilors lesser
priests and diviners As with other warring civilizations slaves were taken the slaves laboring at growing
crops And women in Shang civilization were subservient to men with aristocratic women enjoying a
greater freedom and equality than common women The role of the woman was to be gentle calm
respectful and to obey her husband Women were lower than men and were subjected to womenrsquos work
(tending to the children and needs of the husband) Men also married multiple times and women were
used as concubines
During the Shang dynasty the civilization along the Yellow River had canals for irrigating crops
Communities had drains that ran water out of town They made beer from millet The stable government
allowed for extended trading and use of money in the form of cowry shells Shang merchants traded in
salt iron copper tin lead and antimony some of which had to be imported from far away As early as
the 1300 BCE a bronze casting industry had developed This was later than the rise of bronze casting in
Europe and West Asia but it was the most advanced in the world
It was around 1300 BCE that the first known writing appeared in Shang civilization because the
government officials needed to have questions answered that would allow them to better govern This
writing was for divination done on plate-like portions of the bones of cattle or deer on seashells and
turtle shells and perhaps on wood By applying a pointed heated rod to a bone or shell the item cracked
and to which written symbol the crack traveled gave answers for various questions what the weather was
going to be like would there be flood would a harvest succeed or fail when might be the best time for
hunting or fishing there were also personal questions about illness or whether one should make a journey
Shang Violence and Splendor
To the east north and south of Shang civilization were those the Shang saw as barbarians including the
farming people along the Yangzi River Shang emperors sent out armies to repulse invaders and the
Shang emperors went beyond their domains to plunder and to capture foreign peoples needed for sacrifice
to their gods Uncovered tombs of emperors from the Shang period indicate that they could put into the
field as many as three to five thousand soldiers Found buried with the emperors were their personal
ornaments and spears with bronze blades and the remains of what had been bows and arrows Buried with
the emperors were also horses and chariots for transporting soldiers to battle And with the emperors in
death were their charioteers dogs servants and people in groups of ten -- people who had been
ceremonially beheaded with bronze axes
Zhou Empire Religion and Human Sacrifice
Shang rule was threatened by forces from outside and from within its empire To the west of Shang
civilization in the Wei River Valley lived a pastoral people called Zhou who led an alliance that included
other tribal peoples neighboring Shang civilization While the Shang emperor Zhouxin was occupied by
a war against tribal people to his southeast rebellions broke out among people that Shang monarchs
before him had conquered The Zhou and their allies saw the Shang emperors troubles as an opportunity
to move against him and in 1045 BCE they overpowered him at the battle of Mu-ye and had him
beheaded
A dynasty of Zhou emperors began ruling what had been Shang civilization They claimed that all lands
belonged to heaven that they were the sons of heaven and therefore that all lands and all people were
their subjects Seeing the lands they had conquered as too vast for one man to dominate the Zhou
emperors divided these lands into regions and assigned someone to rule each region in their name
choosing for this position a close family member a trusted member of their clan or the chief of a tribe
that had been allied with them against the Shang
Each local ruler had at his disposal all the lands around him He had his own militia And from the Zhou
emperors the local rulers received gifts such as chariots bronze weapons servants and animals The local
rulers received the title of lord (gong) Local rulers passed their positions to their sons their titles of lord
becoming hereditary And to control their areas better the lords made sub-lords of those who had
dominated the common people before they arrived A hierarchy of status and obligations emerged among
families and within families with older brothers ranking higher than younger brothers with rules of
succession as to which of the males would head his family If a married aristocrat became infatuated with
another woman rather than drive his wife from his home he could bring the other woman into the family
as a concubine where she would rank beneath his wife
Zhou emperors told those they had conquered that they the Zhou had ousted the ancestors of Shang
emperors from heaven and that heaven was occupied by their supreme god a god they called The Lord
on High who they said had commanded the downfall of the Shang emperors Like emperors in West
Asia Zhou emperors claimed that they ruled by divine right They claimed that they represented on earth
the Lord on High and that it was their duty to mediate with the Lord on High to perform appropriate
sacrifices and to maintain a proper relationship between heaven and their subjects They claimed that any
opposition to their rule was opposition to the will of heaven
It was from the Zhou emperors that local lords received the right to act as a priest to perform sacrifices
to have certain hymns sung and certain dances performed the right to propitiate the gods of local
mountains streams and of the soil and crops Meanwhile local aristocrats continued to keep track of their
ancestral heritage They married with religious rites and sanctions while common folk continued to have
no such marriages no surnames or recorded ancestors They merely lived together and were recognized as
a couple by their neighbors
Ancestor worship was also very important to the Shang It was thought that the success of crops and the
health and well being of people were based on the happiness of dead ancestors
The worship of various gods from the Shang period included gods of grain rain and agriculture -- one of
whom was believed to have had a virgin birth Among these gods was a god of the Yellow River who had
the body of a fish but the face of a man
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity five Research the social hierarchy religion political organization writing systems and
technological aspects of the societies listed on the SNAPSHOT Early Agricultural Societies Describe each aspect
of the society using specific evidence - in one or two clear sentences (SEE EXAMPLE of Olmec Society) Write
VERY neatly in ink Bring this chart with you on the FIRST DAY of school
Activity two Read ldquoConsequences and future of plant and animal domesticationrdquo by Jared
Diamond (below) and write an 800-1200 word summary (1-1 frac12 pages typed Times New Roman
font single spaced size 12 standard margins)
o Explain why humans began to domesticate plants and animals and how the species subsequently
changed
o Describe the reasons why so few species were suitable and why certain areas became
agricultural hearths
o Finally explain the consequences of domestication
Do NOT quote the article summarize only Turn in your summary to wwwturnitincom before the
first day of school
Consequences and future of plant and animal domestication Jared Diamond
Domestication interests us as the most momentous change in Holocene human history Why did it
operate on so few wild species in so few geographic areas Why did people adopt it at all why did they
adopt it when they did and how did it spread The answers to these questions determined the remaking of
the modern world as farmers spread at the expense of hunterndashgatherers and of other farmers
Plant and animal domestication is the most important development in the past 13000 years of
human history It interests all of us scientists and non-scientists alike because it provides most of our
food today it was prerequisite to the rise of civilization and it transformed global demography Because
domestication ultimately yielded agents of conquest (for example guns germs and steel) but arose in only
a few areas of the world and in certain of those areas earlier than in others the peoples who through
biogeographic luck first acquired domesticates acquired enormous advantages over other peoples and
expanded As a result of those replacements about 88 of all humans alive today speak some language
belonging to one or another of a mere seven language families confined in the early Holocene to two
small areas of Eurasia that happened to become the earliest centers of domestication mdash the Fertile
Crescent and parts of China Through that head start the inhabitants of those two areas spread their
languages and genes over much of the rest of the world Those localized origins of domestication
ultimately explain why this international journal of science is published in an Indo-European language
rather than in Basque Swahili Quechua or Pitjantjatjara
The past of domestication Our decision to domesticate
The question why farm strikes most of us modern humans as silly Of course it is better to grow
wheat and cows than to forage for roots and snails But in reality that perspective is flawed by hindsight
Food production could not possibly have arisen through a conscious decision because the worlds first
farmers had around them no model of farming to observe hence they could not have known that there
was a goal of domestication to strive for and could not have guessed the consequences that domestication
would bring for them If they had actually foreseen the consequences they would surely have outlawed
the first steps towards domestication because the archaeological and ethnographic record throughout the
world shows that the transition from hunting and gathering to farming eventually resulted in more work
lower adult stature worse nutritional condition and heavier disease burdens The only peoples who could
make a conscious choice about becoming farmers were hunterndashgatherers living adjacent to the first
farming communities and they generally disliked what they saw and rejected farming for the good
reasons just mentioned and others
Instead the origins of domestication involved unforeseen consequences of two sets of changes mdash
changes in plants and animals and changes in human behavior As initially recognized by Darwin many
of the differences between domestic plants and their wild ancestors evolved as consequences of wild
plants being selected gathered and brought back to camp by hunterndashgatherers while the roots of animal
domestication included the ubiquitous tendency of all peoples to try to tame or manage wild animals
(including such unlikely candidates as ospreys hyenas and grizzly bears) Although humans had been
manipulating wild plants and animals for a long time hunterndashgatherer behavior began to change at the
end of the Pleistocene because of increasingly unpredictable climate decreases in big-game species that
were hunters first-choice prey and increasing human occupation of available habitats To decrease the
risk of unpredictable variation in food supply people broadened their diets to second- and third-choice
foods which included more small game plus plant foods requiring much preparation such as grinding
leaching and soaking Eventually people transported some wild plants (such as wild cereals) from their
natural habitats to more productive habitats and began intentional cultivation
The emerging agricultural lifestyle had to compete with the established hunterndashgatherer lifestyle
Once domestication began to arise the changes of plants and animals that followed automatically under
domestication and the competitive advantages that domestication conveyed upon the first farmers
(despite their small stature and poor health) made the transition from the hunterndashgatherer lifestyle to food
production autocatalytic mdash but the speed of that transition varied considerably among regions Thus the
real question about the origins of agriculture which I consider below is why did food production
eventually out-compete the hunterndashgatherer lifestyle over almost the whole world at the particular times
and places that it did but not at earlier times and other places
Changes of wild species under domestication
These changes are particularly well understood for southwest Asias Fertile Crescent the site of
domestication that was earliest in the world and that yielded what are still the worlds most valuable
domestic plant and animal species For most species domesticated there the wild ancestor and its wild
geographic range have been identified its relation to the domesticate proven by genetic and chromosomal
studies its changes under domestication delineated (often at the gene level) those changes traced in
successive layers of the archaeological record and the approximate time and place of its domestication
identified
For example wild wheat and barley bear their seeds on top of a stalk that spontaneously shatters
dropping the seeds to the ground where they can germinate (but where they also become difficult for
humans to gather) An occasional single-gene mutation that prevents shattering is lethal in the wild
(because the seeds fail to drop) but conveniently concentrates the seeds for human gatherers Once people
started harvesting those wild cereal seeds bringing them back to camp accidentally spilling some and
eventually planting others seeds with a non-shattering mutation became unconsciously selected for rather
than against
Individual wild animals also vary in traits affecting their desirability to humans Chickens were
selected to be larger wild cattle (aurochs) to be smaller and sheep to lose their bristly outer hairs and not
to shed their soft inner hairs (the wool) Most domestic animals including even recently domesticated
trout have smaller brains and less acute sense organs than do their wild ancestors Good brains and keen
eyes are essential to survival in the wild but represent a quantitatively important waste of energy in the
barnyard as far as humans are concerned
Especially instructive are cases in which the same ancestral species became selected under
domestication for alternative purposes resulting in very different-appearing breeds or crops For instance
dogs were variously selected to kill wolves dig out rats race be eaten or be cuddled in our laps What
naive zoologist glancing at wolfhounds terriers greyhounds Mexican hairless dogs and chihuahuas
would even guess them to belong to the same species Similarly cabbage was variously selected for its
leaves (cabbage and kale) stems (kohlrabi) flower shoots (broccoli and cauliflower) and buds (brussels
sprouts)
Why so few wild species were domesticated
The wild animal species that most plausibly could have yielded valuable domesticates were large
terrestrial mammalian herbivores and omnivores of which the world holds 148 species weighing 45 kg or
more Yet only 14 of those 148 species were actually domesticated prompting us to ask what prevented
domestication of the other 134 species Similarly worldwide there are about 200000 wild species of
higher plants of which only about 100 yielded valuable domesticates Especially surprising are the many
cases in which only one of a closely related group of species became domesticated For example horses
and donkeys were domesticated but none of the four zebra species were
The key question concerning this selectivity of domestication is as follows in the cases of all
those species never domesticated did the difficulty lie with the species itself or with the people
indigenous to the area to which the species was native For instance is the abundance of large wild
mammals the reason why no mammal species was ever domesticated in subequatorial Africa making
domestication superfluous for Africans If that explanation were correct then African people should also
have ignored Eurasian domestic mammals when those were finally introduced to Africa and European
animal breeders on arriving in Africa should have succeeded in domesticating some African wild
mammals but both of those predictions are refuted by the actual course of history
Six independent lines of evidence converge to prove that in most cases the obstacle lay with the
species itself not with the local people the rapid acceptance of introduced Eurasian domesticates by non-
Eurasian peoples the rapid ancient domestication of the most valuable wild species the repeated
independent domestications of many of them the failure of even modern European plant and animal
breeders to add significantly to our short list of valuable domesticates ancient discoveries of the value of
thousands of species that were regularly harvested in the wild but that never became domesticated and
the identification of the particular reasons preventing the domestication of many of those species
Comparisons of domesticated wild species with never-domesticated close relatives illustrate the subtle
factors that can derail domestication For example it is initially surprising that oak trees the most
important wild food plant in many parts of Eurasia and North America were never domesticated Like
wild almonds acorns of most individual wild oaks contain bitter poisons with occasional non-poisonous
mutant trees preferred by human foragers However the non-poisonous condition is controlled by a single
dominant gene in almonds but polygenically in oaks so that offspring of the occasional non-poisonous
individuals are often non-poisonous in almonds but rarely so in oaks preventing selection of edible oak
varieties to this day A second example is provided by the European horse breeders who settled in South
Africa in the 1600s and mdash like African herders for previous millennia mdash tried to domesticate zebras
They gave up after several centuries for two reasons First zebras are incurably vicious have the bad
habit of biting a handler and not letting go until the handler is dead and thereby injure more zoo-keepers
each year than do tigers Second zebras have better peripheral vision than horses making them
impossible even for professional rodeo cowboys to lasso (they see the rope coming and flick away their
head)
Figure 1 Comparisons of domesticated wild species (left of each pair) and their never-
domesticated close relatives (right) reveal the subtle factors that can derail domestication
Among wild mammal species
that were never domesticated the six
main obstacles proved to be a diet not
easily supplied by humans (hence no
domestic anteaters) slow growth rate
and long birth spacing (for example
elephants and gorillas) nasty
disposition (grizzly bears and
rhinoceroses) reluctance to breed in
captivity (pandas and cheetahs) lack
of follow-the-leader dominance
hierarchies (bighorn sheep and
antelope) and tendency to panic in
enclosures or when faced with
predators (gazelles and deer except
reindeer) Many species passed five of
these six tests but were still not
domesticated because they failed a
sixth test Conclusions about non-domesticability from the fact of non-domestication are not circular
because these six obstacles can be assessed independently
Why there were so few homelands of agriculture
Food production bestowed on farmers enormous demographic technological political and
military advantages over neighboring hunterndashgatherers The history of the past 13000 years consists of
tales of hunterndashgatherer societies becoming driven out infected conquered or exterminated by farming
societies in every area of the world suitable for farming One might therefore have naively anticipated
that in any part of the world one or more of the local hunterndashgatherer societies would have stumbled
upon domestication become farmers and thereby outcompeted the other local hunterndashgatherer societies
In fact food production arose independently in at most nine areas of the world (Fertile Crescent China
Mesoamerica AndesAmazonia eastern United States Sahel tropical West Africa Ethiopia and New
Guinea)
The puzzle increases when one scrutinizes that list of homelands One might again naively have
expected the areas most productive for farming today to correspond at least roughly to the areas most
productive in the past In reality the list of homelands and the list of breadbaskets of the modern world
are almost mutually exclusive (Fig 2) The latter list includes California North Americas Great Plains
Europe the pampas of Argentina the cape of southern Africa the Indian subcontinent Java and
Australias wheat belt Because these areas are evidently so well suited to farming or herding today why
were they not so in the past
Figure 2 Ancient and modern centers of agriculture
Ancient centers of origin of plant and animal domestication mdash the nine homelands of food
production mdash are indicated by the orange-shaded areas on the map The most agriculturally productive
areas of the modern world as judged by cereals and major staples are indicated by the yellow-shaded
areas Note that there is almost no overlap between the areas highlighted except that China appears on
both distributions and that the most productive areas of the central United States today approach areas of
the eastern United States where domestication originated The reason why the two distributions are so
different is that agriculture arose in areas to which the wild ancestors of the most valuable domesticable
crops and animals were native but other areas proved much more productive when those valuable
domesticates reached them
The explanation is that the homelands of agriculture were instead merely those regions to which
the most numerous and most valuable domesticable wild plant and animal species were native Only in
those areas were incipient early farmers able to out-compete local hunterndashgatherers Once those locally
available wild species had been domesticated and had spread outside the homelands societies of
homelands had no further advantage other than that of a head start and they were eventually overtaken by
societies of more fertile or climatically more favored areas outside the homelands
For instance the Fertile Crescent of southwest Asia was home to wild wheats barley peas sheep
goats cows and pigs mdash a list that includes what are still the most valuable crops and livestock of the
modern world Hence hunterndashgatherers of the Fertile Crescent domesticated those species and became the
worlds first farmers and herders beginning around 8500 BCE That head start in food production led to
them and their close neighbors also developing the worlds first metal tools writing empires and
professional armies Those tools of conquest and Fertile Crescent human genes gradually spread west
into Europe and North Africa and east into the western Indian subcontinent and central Asia However
once those crops livestock and human inventions had spread Fertile Crescent societies possessed no
other advantages As all of those elements slowly spread northwest across Europe farming and power
also shifted northwest from the Fertile Crescent to areas where farming had never arisen independently mdash
first to Greece then to Italy and finally to northwest Europe Human societies of the Fertile Crescent
inadvertently committed slow ecological suicide in a zone of low rainfall prone to deforestation soil
erosion and salinization
The spread of food production
From the homelands of domestication food production spread around the world in either of two
ways The much less common way was for hunterndashgatherers outside the homelands to acquire crops or
livestock from the homelands enabling them to settle down as farmers or herders as attested by
archaeological evidence for substantial continuity of material culture and by genetic linguistic and
skeletal evidence of continuity of human populations The clearest such example of local adoption of food
production is in southern Africa where around 2000 years ago some Khoisan hunterndashgatherers acquired
Eurasian livestock (cattle sheep and goats) arriving from the north and became herders (so-called
Hottentots) Much more often however local hunterndashgatherers had no opportunity to acquire crops and
livestock before they were overrun or replaced by farmers expanding out of the homelands exploiting
their demographic technological political and military advantages over the hunterndashgatherers
Expansions of crops livestock and even people and technologies tended to occur more rapidly along
eastndashwest axes than along northndashsouth axes1 (Fig 3) The reason is obvious locations at the same latitude
share identical day-lengths and seasonalities often share similar climates habitats and diseases and hence
require less evolutionary change or adaptation of domesticates technologies and cultures than do
locations at different latitudes Examples include the rapid westwards and eastwards dispersal of wheat
horses wheels and writing of western Asian origin and the westwards dispersal of chickens citrus and
peaches of Chinese origin along the eastndashwest axis of Eurasia This can be contrasted with the slow
spread of Eurasian livestock and non-spread of Eurasian crops southwards along Africas northndashsouth
axis the slow spread of Mexican corn and the non-spread of Mexican writing and wheels and Andean
llamas and potatoes along the Americas northndashsouth axis and the slow spread of food production
southwards along the northndashsouth axis of the Indian subcontinent
Figure 3 The continental major axis is oriented eastndashwest
for Eurasia but northndashsouth for the Americas and Africa
The spread of food production tended to occur more
rapidly along eastndashwest axes than along northndashsouth axes mainly
because locations at the same latitudes required less evolutionary
change or adaptation of domesticates than did locations at
different latitudes
This is not to deny the existence of ecological barriers at
the same latitude within Asia and North America but the general
pattern remains Eurasias eastndashwest axis and the resulting rapid enrichment of societies in each part of
Eurasia by crops and technologies from other parts of Eurasia became one of the main ultimate reasons
why Eurasian peoples conquered Native American peoples rather than vice versa Eurasias eastndashwest
axis also explains why there is much less evidence for multiple independent domestications of the same
plant species (see below) and much more evidence for agriculturally driven language expansions in
Eurasia than in the Americas
Consequences of domestication Consequences for human societies
Beginning around 8500 BCE the transition from the hunterndashgatherer lifestyle to food production
enabled people to settle down next to their permanent gardens orchards and pastures instead of migrating
to follow seasonal shifts in wild food supplies (Some hunterndashgatherer societies in especially productive
environments were also sedentary but most were not) Food production was accompanied by a human
population explosion that has continued unabated to this day resulting from two separate factors First
the sedentary lifestyle permitted shorter birth intervals Nomadic hunterndashgatherers had previously spaced
out birth intervals at four years or more because a mother shifting camp can carry only one infant or slow
toddler Second plant and animal species that are edible to humans can be cultivated in much higher
density in our gardens orchards and pastures than in wild habitats
Food production also led to an explosion of technology because sedentary living permitted the
accumulation of heavy technology (such as forges and printing presses) that nomadic hunterndashgatherers
could not carry and because the storable food surpluses resulting from agriculture could be used to feed
full-time craftspeople and inventors By also feeding full-time kings bureaucrats nobles and soldiers
those food surpluses led to social stratification political centralization and standing armies All of these
overwhelming advantages are what enabled farmers eventually to displace hunterndashgatherers
Evolution of epidemic infectious diseases
The main killers of humans since the advent of agriculture have been acute highly infectious
epidemic diseases that are confined to humans and that either kill the victim quickly or if the victim
recovers immunize himher for life Such diseases could not have existed before the origins of
agriculture because they can sustain themselves only in large dense populations that did not exist before
agriculture hence they are often termed crowd diseases The mystery of the origins of many of these
diseases has been solved by molecular biological studies of recent decades demonstrating that they
evolved from similar epidemic diseases of our herd domestic animals with which we began to come into
close contact 10000 years ago Thus the evolution of these diseases depended on two separate roles of
domestication in creating much denser human populations and in permitting much more frequent
transmission of animal diseases from our domesticates than from hunted wild animals For instance
measles and tuberculosis arose from diseases of cattle influenza from a disease of pigs and ducks1 An
outstanding mystery remains the origins of smallpox did it reach us from camels or from cattle
Crowd diseases paradoxically became agents of conquest because exposed individuals acquired
immune resistance from childhood exposure and exposed populations gradually evolved genetic
resistance but unexposed populations had neither type of resistance In practice because 13 of our 14
large domestic mammals were Eurasian species evolution of crowd diseases was concentrated in Eurasia
and the diseases became the most important agents by which Eurasian colonists expanding overseas killed
indigenous peoples of the Americas Australia Pacific islands and southern Africa
The agricultural expansions
Because some peoples acquired domesticates before other peoples could and because
domesticates conferred eventual advantages such as guns germs and steel on the possessors the history
of the past 10000 years has consisted of farmers replacing hunterndashgatherers or less advanced farmers
These agricultural expansions originating mainly from the nine homelands of agriculture remade genetic
and linguistic maps of the world Among the most discussed (and often highly controversial) possible
examples are the expansions of Bantu-speaking farmers out of tropical West Africa over subequatorial
Africa Austronesian-speaking farmers out of Taiwan over Island Southeast Asia Fertile Crescent farmers
over Europe and Korean farmers over Japan
Activity three Without the ability to translate their writing script archaeologists today do not
understand nearly as much about the Indus River Valley civilization that flourished from 2600 to
1900 BCE although the artifacts found there have enhanced our knowledge of these ancient
peoples One mystery is what exactly happened to the civilizations of the Indus River Valley
Mesopotamia and Egypt were later absorbed into a broader Hellenistic and later Roman cultural
zone but civilization in the Indus River Valley instead disappeared Study the map and read the
articles ldquoThe Myth of the Aryan Invasion of Indiardquo ldquoWere they Copycats or Geniusesrdquo
ldquoEnvironment and Technology Environmental Stress in the Indus River Valleyrdquo and ldquoDid Aryans
kill them or a depressionrdquo Write an 800 word essay that addresses the following question
What are the debates that center around the disappearance of this ancient civilization (Include
examples from the articles) Do NOT go on-line and attempt to find any more information Do
NOT quote from the articles Turn in your essay to wwwturnitincom before the first day of
school
River Valley Civilizations
The Indus Valley Civilization was the first major urban culture of South Asia It reached its peak
from 2600 BC to 1900 BC roughly a period called by some archaeologists Mature Harappan as
distinguished from the earlier Neolithic Early Harappan regional cultures Spatially it is huge
comprising of about 1000 settlements of varying sizes and geographically includes almost all of modern
Pakistan parts of India as far east as Delhi and as far south as Bombay and parts of Afghanistan
The main corpus of writing dated from the Indus Civilization is in the form of some two thousand
inscribed seals in good legible conditions (In case you dont know what seals are they are used to make
impressions on malleable material like clay)
Although these seals and samples of Indus writing have been floating around the scholastic world
for close to 70 years little progress has been made on deciphering this elegant script However we should
not blame scholars for their lack of progress for there are some major impediments to decipherment
1 Very short and brief texts The average number of symbols on the seals is 5 and the longest is
only 26
2 The language underneath is unknown
3 Lack of bilingual texts
For instance consider Champollion who deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs with all of these 3
important clues there were very long Egyptian texts he knew Coptic a descendant of Egyptian and the
Rosetta Stone a bilingual text between Greek and two written forms of Egyptian
But the script isnt as bad as undecipherable For one even though scholars dont have long texts
and bilingual texts they can still theorize about the language underneath the writing system There are
several competing theories about the language that the Indus script represent
A The language is completely unrelated to anything else meaning an isolate Well this doesnt get
us anywhere
B The language is Aryan (some form of Indian-Iranian Indo-European) The historical languages
spoken in Northern India and Pakistan all belong to the Indic branch of Indo-European including
Sanskrit Hindi Punjabi etc so maybe the people of the Indus valley spoke a very old Indo-
European language
The major problem with this model is the fact that horses played a very important role in all Indo-
European cultures being a people constantly on the move There is no escape from the fact that
the horse played a central role in the Vedic and Iranian cultures (Parpola 1986) Sidenote
Vedic means from the time of the Vedas the earliest text in India and the Vedic culture is from
around 1500 to 500 BC However no depiction of horses on seals nor any remains of horses have
been found so far before 2000 BC They only appear after 2000 BC Very likely there were no
Aryan speakers present before 2000 BC in the Indus Valley
C The language belongs to the Munda family of languages The Munda family is spoken largely in
eastern India and related to some Southeast Asian languages Like Aryan the reconstructed
vocabulary of early Munda does not reflect the Harappan culture So its candidacy for being the
language of the Indus Civilization is dim
D The language is Dravidian The Dravidian family of languages is spoken in Southern Indian but
Brahui is spoken in modern Pakistan So far this is the most promising model as in the following
points
o There are many Dravidian influences visible in the Vedic texts If the Aryan language
gradually replaced the Dravidian features from Dravidian would form a substratum in
Aryan One of these features is the appearance of retroflex consonants in Indian languages
both Indo-European and Dravidian In contrast retroflex consonants do not appear in any
other Indo-European language not even Iranian ones which are closest to Indic (For more
information on retroflex consonants please visit my Phonetics page)
o Another possible indication of Dravidian in the Indus texts is from structural analysis of
the texts which suggests that the language underneath is possibly agglutinative from the
fact that sign groups often have the same initial signs but different final signs The number
of these final signs range between 1 to 3 The final signs possibly represent grammatical
suffixes that modify the word (represented by the initial signs) Each suffix would
represent one specific modification and the entire cluster of suffixes would therefore put
the word through a series of modifications This suffix system can be found in Dravidian
but not Indo-European Indo-European tongues tend to change the final sounds to modify
the meaning of a word (a process called inflection) but repeated addition of sounds to the
end of word is extremely rare Often many suffixes in an agglutinative language
correspond to a single inflectional ending in an inflectional language
The Dravidian model isnt just an unapplicable theoryBut first we have to know what kind of
writing system is the Indus script
A count of the number of signs reveal a lot about the type of system being used Alphabetic
systems rarely have more than 40 symbols Syllabic systems like Linear B or Cherokee typically have 40
to 100 or so symbols The third ranges from logophonetic to logographic running upwards of hundreds of
signs (like 500 signs in Hieroglyphic Luwian and 5000 symbols in modern Chinese)
It appears that the maximum number of Indus script symbols is 400 although there are 200 basic
signs (ie signs that are not combined from others) This means that the Indus script is probably
logophonetic in that it has both signs used for their meanings and signs used for their phonetic values
Many signs start off as pictorial representation of a physical object often misleadingly called
pictograms They really are should be called logograms because they represent words in the language
However its next to impossible to write out a word with abstract meaning pictorially What all early
writers figured out was to use a logogram not for the object or idea it was originally supposed to stand for
but for all words sounding similar to the original word for that object or idea For example in English to
write leave we can use a picture of a leaf This is called rebus writing and is a tremendously common
pattern in all early writing systems We could also then use the same leaf symbol to stand for the sound
in relief adding another symbol in front of the leaf symbol in order to indicate the re sound So the
logogram gained a phonetic value as well
Testing the theory How can we take the theoretical framework so far and apply it to archaeological data
Numerals seem to represented by vertical lines (represented by number of lines in the glyph) but
they only go up to 7 Analysis reveal 4 more signs that appear in the same context as these numerals and
so they likely represent numbers higher than 7
The fact that no vertical-line numeral sign denotes 8 very likely means the Harappan language is
based 8 (For example the Arabic numerals that we use has symbols from 0 to 9 and to write ten we
have to combined the symbols 1 and 0 which identify our number system as based ten)
Base 8 languages are rare in the world but it does appear that early Dravidian is base 8 but later
changed to base 10 (possibly under Indo-European influence) When translated the count from 1 to 7 is
familiar to us one two three four five six seven However above seven the numbers
etymologies become non-numerical 8 is number 9 is many minus one and 10 is many (Fairservis
1983)
But can we actually read (not interpret) any symbol on the seals We should start with pictograms as
this one
Many scholars (Knorozov Parpola Mahadevan etc) see this sign as a fish
Fish in reconstructed Proto-Dravidian is micircn Coincidentally micircn is also the word for star
On many pots from Mohenjo Daro an Indus site there are drawings of fish and stars together and so
affirming this linguistic association
Going further often the numeral six appears before the fish Either it means 6 fish or
6 stars Old Tamil (a Dravidian language still spoken today) texts from just around the 1st
century AD recorded the name of the Pleiades a star cluster visible during autumn and
winter just above Orion as Six-Stars or aru-micircn Throughout the world titles with celestial
connotations are very common and the clause Six Stars forming part or whole of a Harappan title is not
unreasonable (Parpola 1986)
Sometimes symbols are added to the basic sign to make new signs Of these the one that
looks like a circumflex accent placed on top of the fish is quite interesting It is theorized to mean
roof and in Proto-Dravidian it is vecircymecircy This is phonetically similar to Proto-Dravidian word
for black may Together with fish it spells out mai-m-micircn or black star which in Old Tamil
means the planet Saturn In Sanskrit texts Saturn is associate the color black The god of death Yama is
the presiding of this planet and is usually depicted as riding on a dark buffalo
But the fish reading isnt accepted by all scholars William Fairservis saw it as a combination of
a loom twist and a human sign and form a honorific title pertaining to rulership (Fairservis 1983) I
however am more inclined to accept the fish identification
This is a quick overview of the current process in the decipherment of the Indus script For more
information you can either go to the following links or go to a good library for books and articles (check
out my references)
The Myth of the Aryan Invasion of India Richard Hooker 1996
They called themselves the noble ones or the superior ones Their names are lost their tribal names
are lost But when they found themselves conquerors they gave themselves the name superior or
noble
They were a tribal and nomadic peoples living in the far reaches of Euro-Asia in hostile steppe lands
barely scratching out a living They were unquestionably a tough people and they were fierce and war-
like Their religion reflects it dominated as it is by a storm-god or sky-god that enjoins warfare and
conquest This god was called something like Dyaus a word related to Zeus deus (the Latin word
for god) deva (the Sanskrit word for god) and of course the English word divine Their culture
was oriented around warfare and they were very good at it They were superior on horseback and rushed
into battle in chariots They were a tribal people ruled over by a war-chief or raja (the Latin word rex
(king) comes from the same root word along with the English regal) Somewhere in the early centuries
of the second millennium BC they began to migrate southwards in waves of steady conquest across the
face of Persia and the lands of India
There they would take on the name superior or noble to distinguish themselves from the people
they conquered Their name is derived from the Indo-European root word ar meaning noble In
Sanskrit they were the Aryas (Aryans) but that root ar would also serve as the foundation of the
name of the conquered Persian territories Iran This concept of nobility in fact seems to lie at the heart
of Indo-European consciousness for it appears in another countrys name Ireland or Eire You can
bet however that when a people go around calling themselves superior that it spells bad news for other
people
And there is no question that they were bad news for the southern Asians They swept over Persia with
lightening speed and spread across the northern river plains of India Their natures as a warlike
conquering people are still preserved in Vedic religion the foundation of Hinduism In the Rig Veda the
collection of praises to the gods the god Indra towers over the poetry as a conquering god one that
smashes cities and slays enemies The invading Aryans were originally nomadic peoples not agricultural
They penetrated India from the north-west settling first in the Indus valley Unlike the Harappans
however they eventually concentrated their populations along the Ganges floodplain The Ganges unlike
the Indus is far milder and more predictable in its flooding It must have been a paradise to a people from
the dry steppes of central Asia and Iran a paradise full of water and forest When they arrived the vast
northern plains were almost certainly densely forested Where now bare fields stretch to the horizon
when the Aryans arrived lush forests stretched to those very same horizons Clearing the forests over the
centuries was an epic project and one that is still preserved in Indian literature
The Aryans or Vedic civilization were a new start in Indian culture Harappa was more or less a dead
end (at least as far as we know) the Aryans adopted almost nothing of Harappan culture They built no
cities no states no granaries and used no writing Instead they were a warlike people that organized
themselves in individual tribal kinship units the jana The jana was ruled over by a war-chief These
tribes spread quickly over northern India and the Deccan In a process that we do not understand the basic
social unit of Aryan culture the jana slowly developed from an organization based on kinship to one
based on geography The jana became a janapada or nation and the jana-rajya or tribal kingdom
became the jana-rajyapada or national kingdom So powerfully ingrained into Indian culture is the
jana-pada that Indians still define themselves mainly by their territorial origins All the major territories
of modern India with their separate cultures and separate languages can be dated back to the early jana-
padas of Vedic India
The earliest history of the Aryans in India is called the Rigvedic Period (1700-1000 BC) after the
religious praise poems that are the oldest pieces of literature in India These poems the Rig Veda are
believed to represent the most primitive layer of
Indo-European religion and have many characteristics in common with Persian religion since the two
peoples are closely related in time In this early period their population was restricted to the Punjab in the
northern reaches of the Indus River and the Yamuna River near the Ganges They maintained the Aryan
tribal structure with a raja ruling over the tribal group in tandem with a council Each jana seems to have
had a chief priest the religion was focused almost entirely on a series of sacrifices to the gods The
Rigvedic peoples originally had only two social classes nobles and commoners Eventually they added a
third Dasas or darks These were we presume the darker-skinned people they had conquered By the
end of the Rigvedic period social class had settled into four rigid castes the caturvarnas or four
colors At the top of the caturvarnas were the priests or Brahmans Below the priests were the warriors
or nobles (Kshatriya) the craftspeople and merchants (Vaishya) and the servants (Shudra) who made
up the bulk of society These economic classes were legitimated by an elaborate religious system and
would be eventually subdivided into a huge number of economic sub-classes which we call castes
Social class by the end of the Rigvedic period became completely inflexible there was no such thing as
social mobility
In the early centuries of Later Vedic Period or Brahmanic Period (1000-500 BC) the Aryans
migrated across the Doab which is a large plain which separates the Yamuna River from the Ganges It
was a difficult project for the Doab was thickly forested the Aryans slowly burned and settled the Doab
until they reached the Ganges While the Rig Veda represents the most primitive religion of the Aryans
during the Rigvedic Period the religion of the Later Vedic period is dominated by the Brahmanas or
priestly book which was composed sometime between 1000 and 850 BC Later Vedic society is
dominated by the Brahmans and every aspect of Aryan life comes under the control of priestly rituals and
spells In history as the Indians understand it the Later Vedic Period is the Epic Age the great literary
heroic epics of Indian culture the Mahabharata and the Ramayana though they were composed
between 500 and 200 BC were probably originally formulated and told in the Later Vedic Period Both of
these epics deal with heroes from this period and demonstrate how Aryan cultural values as we can
understand them from the Rig Veda are being transformed by mixing with Indus cultures
What did the Aryans do with their time They seem to have had a well-developed musical culture and
song and dance dominated their society They were not greatly invested in the visual arts but their interest
in lyric poetry was unmatched They loved gambling They did not however have much interest in
writing even though they could have inherited a civilization and a writing system when they originally
settled India We do not know exactly when they became interested in writing but it may have been at the
end of the Brahmanic period somewhere between 650 and 500 BC Still there are no Aryan writings until
the Mauryan periodmdashfrom Harappa (2500-1750 BC) to Maurya (300 BC) is quite a long time The script
that the Mauryans used is called Brahmi script and was used to write not only the religious and literary
language of the time Sanskrit but also the vernacular languages This script Brahmi is the national
alphabet of India
The Vedic period then is a period of cultural mixing not of conquest Although the Aryans were a
conquering people when they first spread into India the culture of the Aryans would gradually mix with
indigenous cultures and the war-religion of the Aryans still preserved in parts of the Rig Veda slowly
became more ritualized and more meditative By 200 BC this process of mixing and transforming was
more or less complete and the culture we call Indian was fully formed
Were they Copycats or Geniuses How did the Harappans take the great leap from self-contained agricultural societies to a trade-oriented
luxury-conscious sophisticated urban civilization that gave the world the concept of town planning
Analyzing the evidence from various sites Possehl found that between 2600 BC and 2500 BC the
Harappans experienced a century of cathartic changes Before this he finds no breadboard models of the
expansion to come be it the invention of writing or the awesome town-planning techniques A
tremendous jump in human ability is evident So what or who caused it
In the past the reputed British archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler argued that ideas have wings and that
the Harappans were influenced by their trade contacts with the Sumerians But the diffusion theory of
civilization as it is called is slowly being given the heave-ho Cambridge historian Raymond Allchin an
authority on the subject says We are now beginning to see the foundation being laid in the preceding
100 to 200 years in smaller sites There appears to be a completely organic process of growth that threw
up the Harappan culture as we know it
Yet the evidence of that process continues to be scanty In Kunal in Haryana archaeologists recently
found what are known as proto Indus seals On pottery on many of the smaller sites in both India and
Pakistan graffiti similar to some figures on the script begin to appear And at Dholavira and at Banawali
in Haryana the distinction between the citadel and the lower city is beginning to evolve There is
however a huge jump in scale in such activity in those critical 100 years For in Harappa as in most
Indus sites the distinct gridiron pattern for streets appear a scientific system of drainage that linked up to
even the smallest house in the lower city is established precise weights and measures begin to circulate
and the writing system evolves So were the Harappans copycats Archaeologists say the Indus people
couldnrsquot have copied their town-planning from Egypt and Mesopotamia because in those civilizations the
roads meandered like village streets Nor was the writing similar to Sumer`s cuneiform or the Egyptian
hieroglyphics The Harappans had their own distinctive style Lal explains the dramatic change as a result
of centuries of growth reaching a critical mass that caused an unparalleled urban explosion Trade he
believes was the driving force of the revolution Even a skeptic like Possehl maintains that these are
indeed an expression of the Indian genius
Did Aryans kill them or a Depression Archaeologists are known to stumble but the kind of knocking Wheeler has taken over his Aryan
invasion theory has few parallels When the British archaeologist discovered a dozen skeletons in
Mohenjodaro he propounded a theory about the final massacre by marauding invaders that put an end to
the Indus civilization When an Indian scholar told him of Hariyuppa being mentioned in the Rigveda he
took it to mean Harappa And since a fort was known as pur and Indira the Aryan god was known as
Purandhara or destroyer of forts it all fitted neatly
After all werenrsquot the Indus cities among the most fortified Yet the past 50 years and more so the last
decade has shown just how wrong Wheeler was The last massacre theory was his imagination running
riot Far from being snuffed out there was a brilliant resurgence of Indus culture further south for a while
Possehl who made a recent study found that in 2000 BC in Pakistanrsquos Sindh district the sites were down
from 86 to 6 and in Cholistan 174 to 41 But in India the sites in Haryana Punjab and Rajasthan exploded
from 218 to 853 Possehl asks How can this be construed as an eclipse We are looking at a highly
mobile people
Allchin argues that there is clear indication that the rainfall pattern which had initially brought fertility
had become adverse in the Sindh region And theories that given the instability of the Himalayan region
there may have been a massive earthquake that possibly changed the course of rivers such as the Sarasvati
and affected many Indus cities The Indus people then migrated eastward Lal talks of steep decline in
trade because of problems in Sumer that resulted in a Great Depression and turned many urban centers
into ghost cities
Bisht concurs with Lal but goes a step further He says that after the quake hit the heart of the civilization
the Indus people migrated east which acted like a sort of bypass to their woes And like a dying candle it
shone brilliantly again but briefly before being snuffed out Dholavira Banawali Mehrgarh Harappa -- in
fact all the major cities show that as the cities declined encroachments on streets that were unseen at its
peak began to occur with alarming regularity There was a breakdown in sanitation and cities like their
modern-day counterparts in India simply ran themselves aground They were replaced by massive squatter
colonies and an explosion of rural sites as people disillusioned with cities went back to farming
communities A giant step backward
Yet it wasnrsquot as if all came to naught as was earlier believed Some of the writings survived in the pottery
of the following ages The weight and decimal system too lived on And so did the bullock-cart
technology that the Indus had perfected Rather than a violent transition there may have been an orderly
interaction with oncoming Aryans Lal in his most recent book even puts across the most audacious
theory Could the Bronze Age Harappans be Aryans themselves He says this because of the presence of
fire worship and the discovery of horse remains and idols in Indus sites Meadows dismisses it as
premature and points out that it was more likely that ass remains were mistaken for that of a horsersquos And
that the Vedas showed a great antipathy for urban centers
Whatever the cause it would take another 1000 years for a semblance of civilization to return to the
subcontinent -- a dire warning to modern India of the catastrophe that can befall an errant populace
Environmental Stress in the Indus Valley Source Quotation from D P Agarwal and R K Sood in Gregory L Possehl ed Harappan Civilization A Contemporary Perspective (Warminster
England Aris and Phillips 1982)229
The three river-valley civilizations discussed in this chapter were located in arid or semiarid regions Such
regions are particularly vulnerable to changes in the environment Scholars debates about the existence
and impact of changes in the climate and landscape of the Indus Valley illuminate some of the potential
factors at work as well as the difficulties of verifying and interpreting such long-ago changes
One of the points at issue is climatic change An earlier generation of scholars believed that the climate
of the Indus Valley was considerably wetter during the height of that civilization than it is now As
evidence they cited the enormous quantities of timber cut from extensive forests that would have been
needed to bake the millions of mud bricks used to construct the cities (see photo) the distribution of
human settlements on land that is now unfavorable for agriculture and the representation of jungle and
marsh animals on decorated seals This approach assumes that the growth of population prosperity and
complexity in the Indus Valley in the third millennium BCE required wet conditions and it concludes
that the change to a drier climate in the early second millennium BCE pushed this civilization into
decline
Other experts skeptical about a radical climatic change countered with alternative calculations of the
amount of timber needed and evidence of plant remains-particularly barley a grain that is tolerant of dry
conditions However recent studies of the stabilization of sand dunes which occurs in periods of heavy
rainfall and analysis of the sediment deposited by rivers and winds have been used to strengthen the
claim that the Indus Valley used to be wetter and in the early-to-mid second millennium BCE entered a
period of relatively dry conditions that have persisted to the present
A much clearer case can be made for changes in the landscape caused by shifts in the courses of rivers
These shifts are due in many cases to tectonic forces such as earthquakes Dry channels whether
detected in satellite photographs or by on-the-ground inspection reveal the location of old riverbeds and
it appears that a second major river system the Hakra once ran parallel to the Indus some distance to the
east The Hakra with teeming towns and fertile fields along its banks appears to have been a second axis
of this civilization Either the Sutlej which now feeds into the Indus or the Yamuna which now pours
into the Ganges may have been the main source of water for this long-gone system before undergoing a
change of course The consequences of the drying-up of this major waterway must have been immense-
the loss of huge amounts of arable land and the food that it produced the abandonment of cities and
villages and consequent migration of their populations shifts in the trade routes and desperate
competition for shrinking resources
As for the Indus itself the present-day course of the lower reaches of the river has shifted 100 miles
(161 kilometers) to the west since the arrival of the Greek conqueror Alexander the Great in the late
fourth century BCE and the deposit of massive volumes of silt has pushed the mouth of the river 50
miles (80 kilometers) farther south Such a shift of the river bed and buildup of alluvial deposits also may
have occurred in the third and second millennia BCE
A recent study concludes It is obvious that ecological stresses caused both climatically and
technically played an important role in the life and decay of the Indus civilization
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity four Read the article below about the early Chinese dynasties Using information from
the article write an 800 word essay that describes the influence of the environment religion and
gender on the formation of the government of ancient China Again do NOT look up additional
information use only what is provided Also do NOT quote from the articles paraphrase and
summarize only Turn in your essay to wwwturnitincom before the first day of school
The Shang and Zhou Dynasties By 5000 BCE agricultural communities had spread through much of what is now called China and there
were agricultural villages from the Wei River Valley eastward parallel with the great Yellow River
(Huang He) which flowed out of the Kunlun Mountains to the deciduous forest and loess soil region of
the North China Plain Where people were free of forest and had access to water they grew millet -- as
early as 5500 BCE -- while they continued to hunt deer and other game to fish and gather food And they
raised dogs pigs and chickens They built one-room homes dug into the earth with roofs of clay or
thatch pit homes grouped in villages They had spinning wheels and knitted and wove fibers And they
made pottery decorated with art
Flooding along the Yellow River was worse than it was along the Yangzi River to the south Along the
Yangzi River through the Hubei Basin and on the coastal plain to Hangzhou Bay farming had also
developed but people along the Yellow River had to work harder at flood control and irrigation and
perhaps this stimulated a greater effort at organization At any rate the North China Plain became the
largest area with a relatively dense population
Where people were producing more food than they needed to survive warriors had the incentive not only
to plunder but also to conquer And conquering kings arose on the North China Plain as they did in West
Asia The first dynasty of kings in the North China Plain has been described as belonging to the Xia
family - whose rule is thought to have begun around 2200 BCE But the first dynasty of which there is
historical evidence is that of the Shang family The Shang clan came out of the Wei River Valley just west
of the North China Plain By around 1500 BCE give or take a century or so the Shang unified people
along the North China Plain The military had chariots each with an aristocrat archer a driver and
sometimes also a man with a spear The Shang built an empire in much the same way as other conquerors
by leaving behind a garrison force to police local people by turning a local king into a subservient ally
free to manage local matters and by taxing the conquered
Around 1384 BCE the Shang moved their capital to Yin As a regular pastime the Shang emperors and
nobles hunted in organized game drives Emperors and aristocrats had splendid homes with walls of
pounded earth or earthen bricks while common people continued to live in their pit homes of earlier times
A Shang emperor was chief priest and he had an administrative bureaucracy with councilors lesser
priests and diviners As with other warring civilizations slaves were taken the slaves laboring at growing
crops And women in Shang civilization were subservient to men with aristocratic women enjoying a
greater freedom and equality than common women The role of the woman was to be gentle calm
respectful and to obey her husband Women were lower than men and were subjected to womenrsquos work
(tending to the children and needs of the husband) Men also married multiple times and women were
used as concubines
During the Shang dynasty the civilization along the Yellow River had canals for irrigating crops
Communities had drains that ran water out of town They made beer from millet The stable government
allowed for extended trading and use of money in the form of cowry shells Shang merchants traded in
salt iron copper tin lead and antimony some of which had to be imported from far away As early as
the 1300 BCE a bronze casting industry had developed This was later than the rise of bronze casting in
Europe and West Asia but it was the most advanced in the world
It was around 1300 BCE that the first known writing appeared in Shang civilization because the
government officials needed to have questions answered that would allow them to better govern This
writing was for divination done on plate-like portions of the bones of cattle or deer on seashells and
turtle shells and perhaps on wood By applying a pointed heated rod to a bone or shell the item cracked
and to which written symbol the crack traveled gave answers for various questions what the weather was
going to be like would there be flood would a harvest succeed or fail when might be the best time for
hunting or fishing there were also personal questions about illness or whether one should make a journey
Shang Violence and Splendor
To the east north and south of Shang civilization were those the Shang saw as barbarians including the
farming people along the Yangzi River Shang emperors sent out armies to repulse invaders and the
Shang emperors went beyond their domains to plunder and to capture foreign peoples needed for sacrifice
to their gods Uncovered tombs of emperors from the Shang period indicate that they could put into the
field as many as three to five thousand soldiers Found buried with the emperors were their personal
ornaments and spears with bronze blades and the remains of what had been bows and arrows Buried with
the emperors were also horses and chariots for transporting soldiers to battle And with the emperors in
death were their charioteers dogs servants and people in groups of ten -- people who had been
ceremonially beheaded with bronze axes
Zhou Empire Religion and Human Sacrifice
Shang rule was threatened by forces from outside and from within its empire To the west of Shang
civilization in the Wei River Valley lived a pastoral people called Zhou who led an alliance that included
other tribal peoples neighboring Shang civilization While the Shang emperor Zhouxin was occupied by
a war against tribal people to his southeast rebellions broke out among people that Shang monarchs
before him had conquered The Zhou and their allies saw the Shang emperors troubles as an opportunity
to move against him and in 1045 BCE they overpowered him at the battle of Mu-ye and had him
beheaded
A dynasty of Zhou emperors began ruling what had been Shang civilization They claimed that all lands
belonged to heaven that they were the sons of heaven and therefore that all lands and all people were
their subjects Seeing the lands they had conquered as too vast for one man to dominate the Zhou
emperors divided these lands into regions and assigned someone to rule each region in their name
choosing for this position a close family member a trusted member of their clan or the chief of a tribe
that had been allied with them against the Shang
Each local ruler had at his disposal all the lands around him He had his own militia And from the Zhou
emperors the local rulers received gifts such as chariots bronze weapons servants and animals The local
rulers received the title of lord (gong) Local rulers passed their positions to their sons their titles of lord
becoming hereditary And to control their areas better the lords made sub-lords of those who had
dominated the common people before they arrived A hierarchy of status and obligations emerged among
families and within families with older brothers ranking higher than younger brothers with rules of
succession as to which of the males would head his family If a married aristocrat became infatuated with
another woman rather than drive his wife from his home he could bring the other woman into the family
as a concubine where she would rank beneath his wife
Zhou emperors told those they had conquered that they the Zhou had ousted the ancestors of Shang
emperors from heaven and that heaven was occupied by their supreme god a god they called The Lord
on High who they said had commanded the downfall of the Shang emperors Like emperors in West
Asia Zhou emperors claimed that they ruled by divine right They claimed that they represented on earth
the Lord on High and that it was their duty to mediate with the Lord on High to perform appropriate
sacrifices and to maintain a proper relationship between heaven and their subjects They claimed that any
opposition to their rule was opposition to the will of heaven
It was from the Zhou emperors that local lords received the right to act as a priest to perform sacrifices
to have certain hymns sung and certain dances performed the right to propitiate the gods of local
mountains streams and of the soil and crops Meanwhile local aristocrats continued to keep track of their
ancestral heritage They married with religious rites and sanctions while common folk continued to have
no such marriages no surnames or recorded ancestors They merely lived together and were recognized as
a couple by their neighbors
Ancestor worship was also very important to the Shang It was thought that the success of crops and the
health and well being of people were based on the happiness of dead ancestors
The worship of various gods from the Shang period included gods of grain rain and agriculture -- one of
whom was believed to have had a virgin birth Among these gods was a god of the Yellow River who had
the body of a fish but the face of a man
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity five Research the social hierarchy religion political organization writing systems and
technological aspects of the societies listed on the SNAPSHOT Early Agricultural Societies Describe each aspect
of the society using specific evidence - in one or two clear sentences (SEE EXAMPLE of Olmec Society) Write
VERY neatly in ink Bring this chart with you on the FIRST DAY of school
end of the Pleistocene because of increasingly unpredictable climate decreases in big-game species that
were hunters first-choice prey and increasing human occupation of available habitats To decrease the
risk of unpredictable variation in food supply people broadened their diets to second- and third-choice
foods which included more small game plus plant foods requiring much preparation such as grinding
leaching and soaking Eventually people transported some wild plants (such as wild cereals) from their
natural habitats to more productive habitats and began intentional cultivation
The emerging agricultural lifestyle had to compete with the established hunterndashgatherer lifestyle
Once domestication began to arise the changes of plants and animals that followed automatically under
domestication and the competitive advantages that domestication conveyed upon the first farmers
(despite their small stature and poor health) made the transition from the hunterndashgatherer lifestyle to food
production autocatalytic mdash but the speed of that transition varied considerably among regions Thus the
real question about the origins of agriculture which I consider below is why did food production
eventually out-compete the hunterndashgatherer lifestyle over almost the whole world at the particular times
and places that it did but not at earlier times and other places
Changes of wild species under domestication
These changes are particularly well understood for southwest Asias Fertile Crescent the site of
domestication that was earliest in the world and that yielded what are still the worlds most valuable
domestic plant and animal species For most species domesticated there the wild ancestor and its wild
geographic range have been identified its relation to the domesticate proven by genetic and chromosomal
studies its changes under domestication delineated (often at the gene level) those changes traced in
successive layers of the archaeological record and the approximate time and place of its domestication
identified
For example wild wheat and barley bear their seeds on top of a stalk that spontaneously shatters
dropping the seeds to the ground where they can germinate (but where they also become difficult for
humans to gather) An occasional single-gene mutation that prevents shattering is lethal in the wild
(because the seeds fail to drop) but conveniently concentrates the seeds for human gatherers Once people
started harvesting those wild cereal seeds bringing them back to camp accidentally spilling some and
eventually planting others seeds with a non-shattering mutation became unconsciously selected for rather
than against
Individual wild animals also vary in traits affecting their desirability to humans Chickens were
selected to be larger wild cattle (aurochs) to be smaller and sheep to lose their bristly outer hairs and not
to shed their soft inner hairs (the wool) Most domestic animals including even recently domesticated
trout have smaller brains and less acute sense organs than do their wild ancestors Good brains and keen
eyes are essential to survival in the wild but represent a quantitatively important waste of energy in the
barnyard as far as humans are concerned
Especially instructive are cases in which the same ancestral species became selected under
domestication for alternative purposes resulting in very different-appearing breeds or crops For instance
dogs were variously selected to kill wolves dig out rats race be eaten or be cuddled in our laps What
naive zoologist glancing at wolfhounds terriers greyhounds Mexican hairless dogs and chihuahuas
would even guess them to belong to the same species Similarly cabbage was variously selected for its
leaves (cabbage and kale) stems (kohlrabi) flower shoots (broccoli and cauliflower) and buds (brussels
sprouts)
Why so few wild species were domesticated
The wild animal species that most plausibly could have yielded valuable domesticates were large
terrestrial mammalian herbivores and omnivores of which the world holds 148 species weighing 45 kg or
more Yet only 14 of those 148 species were actually domesticated prompting us to ask what prevented
domestication of the other 134 species Similarly worldwide there are about 200000 wild species of
higher plants of which only about 100 yielded valuable domesticates Especially surprising are the many
cases in which only one of a closely related group of species became domesticated For example horses
and donkeys were domesticated but none of the four zebra species were
The key question concerning this selectivity of domestication is as follows in the cases of all
those species never domesticated did the difficulty lie with the species itself or with the people
indigenous to the area to which the species was native For instance is the abundance of large wild
mammals the reason why no mammal species was ever domesticated in subequatorial Africa making
domestication superfluous for Africans If that explanation were correct then African people should also
have ignored Eurasian domestic mammals when those were finally introduced to Africa and European
animal breeders on arriving in Africa should have succeeded in domesticating some African wild
mammals but both of those predictions are refuted by the actual course of history
Six independent lines of evidence converge to prove that in most cases the obstacle lay with the
species itself not with the local people the rapid acceptance of introduced Eurasian domesticates by non-
Eurasian peoples the rapid ancient domestication of the most valuable wild species the repeated
independent domestications of many of them the failure of even modern European plant and animal
breeders to add significantly to our short list of valuable domesticates ancient discoveries of the value of
thousands of species that were regularly harvested in the wild but that never became domesticated and
the identification of the particular reasons preventing the domestication of many of those species
Comparisons of domesticated wild species with never-domesticated close relatives illustrate the subtle
factors that can derail domestication For example it is initially surprising that oak trees the most
important wild food plant in many parts of Eurasia and North America were never domesticated Like
wild almonds acorns of most individual wild oaks contain bitter poisons with occasional non-poisonous
mutant trees preferred by human foragers However the non-poisonous condition is controlled by a single
dominant gene in almonds but polygenically in oaks so that offspring of the occasional non-poisonous
individuals are often non-poisonous in almonds but rarely so in oaks preventing selection of edible oak
varieties to this day A second example is provided by the European horse breeders who settled in South
Africa in the 1600s and mdash like African herders for previous millennia mdash tried to domesticate zebras
They gave up after several centuries for two reasons First zebras are incurably vicious have the bad
habit of biting a handler and not letting go until the handler is dead and thereby injure more zoo-keepers
each year than do tigers Second zebras have better peripheral vision than horses making them
impossible even for professional rodeo cowboys to lasso (they see the rope coming and flick away their
head)
Figure 1 Comparisons of domesticated wild species (left of each pair) and their never-
domesticated close relatives (right) reveal the subtle factors that can derail domestication
Among wild mammal species
that were never domesticated the six
main obstacles proved to be a diet not
easily supplied by humans (hence no
domestic anteaters) slow growth rate
and long birth spacing (for example
elephants and gorillas) nasty
disposition (grizzly bears and
rhinoceroses) reluctance to breed in
captivity (pandas and cheetahs) lack
of follow-the-leader dominance
hierarchies (bighorn sheep and
antelope) and tendency to panic in
enclosures or when faced with
predators (gazelles and deer except
reindeer) Many species passed five of
these six tests but were still not
domesticated because they failed a
sixth test Conclusions about non-domesticability from the fact of non-domestication are not circular
because these six obstacles can be assessed independently
Why there were so few homelands of agriculture
Food production bestowed on farmers enormous demographic technological political and
military advantages over neighboring hunterndashgatherers The history of the past 13000 years consists of
tales of hunterndashgatherer societies becoming driven out infected conquered or exterminated by farming
societies in every area of the world suitable for farming One might therefore have naively anticipated
that in any part of the world one or more of the local hunterndashgatherer societies would have stumbled
upon domestication become farmers and thereby outcompeted the other local hunterndashgatherer societies
In fact food production arose independently in at most nine areas of the world (Fertile Crescent China
Mesoamerica AndesAmazonia eastern United States Sahel tropical West Africa Ethiopia and New
Guinea)
The puzzle increases when one scrutinizes that list of homelands One might again naively have
expected the areas most productive for farming today to correspond at least roughly to the areas most
productive in the past In reality the list of homelands and the list of breadbaskets of the modern world
are almost mutually exclusive (Fig 2) The latter list includes California North Americas Great Plains
Europe the pampas of Argentina the cape of southern Africa the Indian subcontinent Java and
Australias wheat belt Because these areas are evidently so well suited to farming or herding today why
were they not so in the past
Figure 2 Ancient and modern centers of agriculture
Ancient centers of origin of plant and animal domestication mdash the nine homelands of food
production mdash are indicated by the orange-shaded areas on the map The most agriculturally productive
areas of the modern world as judged by cereals and major staples are indicated by the yellow-shaded
areas Note that there is almost no overlap between the areas highlighted except that China appears on
both distributions and that the most productive areas of the central United States today approach areas of
the eastern United States where domestication originated The reason why the two distributions are so
different is that agriculture arose in areas to which the wild ancestors of the most valuable domesticable
crops and animals were native but other areas proved much more productive when those valuable
domesticates reached them
The explanation is that the homelands of agriculture were instead merely those regions to which
the most numerous and most valuable domesticable wild plant and animal species were native Only in
those areas were incipient early farmers able to out-compete local hunterndashgatherers Once those locally
available wild species had been domesticated and had spread outside the homelands societies of
homelands had no further advantage other than that of a head start and they were eventually overtaken by
societies of more fertile or climatically more favored areas outside the homelands
For instance the Fertile Crescent of southwest Asia was home to wild wheats barley peas sheep
goats cows and pigs mdash a list that includes what are still the most valuable crops and livestock of the
modern world Hence hunterndashgatherers of the Fertile Crescent domesticated those species and became the
worlds first farmers and herders beginning around 8500 BCE That head start in food production led to
them and their close neighbors also developing the worlds first metal tools writing empires and
professional armies Those tools of conquest and Fertile Crescent human genes gradually spread west
into Europe and North Africa and east into the western Indian subcontinent and central Asia However
once those crops livestock and human inventions had spread Fertile Crescent societies possessed no
other advantages As all of those elements slowly spread northwest across Europe farming and power
also shifted northwest from the Fertile Crescent to areas where farming had never arisen independently mdash
first to Greece then to Italy and finally to northwest Europe Human societies of the Fertile Crescent
inadvertently committed slow ecological suicide in a zone of low rainfall prone to deforestation soil
erosion and salinization
The spread of food production
From the homelands of domestication food production spread around the world in either of two
ways The much less common way was for hunterndashgatherers outside the homelands to acquire crops or
livestock from the homelands enabling them to settle down as farmers or herders as attested by
archaeological evidence for substantial continuity of material culture and by genetic linguistic and
skeletal evidence of continuity of human populations The clearest such example of local adoption of food
production is in southern Africa where around 2000 years ago some Khoisan hunterndashgatherers acquired
Eurasian livestock (cattle sheep and goats) arriving from the north and became herders (so-called
Hottentots) Much more often however local hunterndashgatherers had no opportunity to acquire crops and
livestock before they were overrun or replaced by farmers expanding out of the homelands exploiting
their demographic technological political and military advantages over the hunterndashgatherers
Expansions of crops livestock and even people and technologies tended to occur more rapidly along
eastndashwest axes than along northndashsouth axes1 (Fig 3) The reason is obvious locations at the same latitude
share identical day-lengths and seasonalities often share similar climates habitats and diseases and hence
require less evolutionary change or adaptation of domesticates technologies and cultures than do
locations at different latitudes Examples include the rapid westwards and eastwards dispersal of wheat
horses wheels and writing of western Asian origin and the westwards dispersal of chickens citrus and
peaches of Chinese origin along the eastndashwest axis of Eurasia This can be contrasted with the slow
spread of Eurasian livestock and non-spread of Eurasian crops southwards along Africas northndashsouth
axis the slow spread of Mexican corn and the non-spread of Mexican writing and wheels and Andean
llamas and potatoes along the Americas northndashsouth axis and the slow spread of food production
southwards along the northndashsouth axis of the Indian subcontinent
Figure 3 The continental major axis is oriented eastndashwest
for Eurasia but northndashsouth for the Americas and Africa
The spread of food production tended to occur more
rapidly along eastndashwest axes than along northndashsouth axes mainly
because locations at the same latitudes required less evolutionary
change or adaptation of domesticates than did locations at
different latitudes
This is not to deny the existence of ecological barriers at
the same latitude within Asia and North America but the general
pattern remains Eurasias eastndashwest axis and the resulting rapid enrichment of societies in each part of
Eurasia by crops and technologies from other parts of Eurasia became one of the main ultimate reasons
why Eurasian peoples conquered Native American peoples rather than vice versa Eurasias eastndashwest
axis also explains why there is much less evidence for multiple independent domestications of the same
plant species (see below) and much more evidence for agriculturally driven language expansions in
Eurasia than in the Americas
Consequences of domestication Consequences for human societies
Beginning around 8500 BCE the transition from the hunterndashgatherer lifestyle to food production
enabled people to settle down next to their permanent gardens orchards and pastures instead of migrating
to follow seasonal shifts in wild food supplies (Some hunterndashgatherer societies in especially productive
environments were also sedentary but most were not) Food production was accompanied by a human
population explosion that has continued unabated to this day resulting from two separate factors First
the sedentary lifestyle permitted shorter birth intervals Nomadic hunterndashgatherers had previously spaced
out birth intervals at four years or more because a mother shifting camp can carry only one infant or slow
toddler Second plant and animal species that are edible to humans can be cultivated in much higher
density in our gardens orchards and pastures than in wild habitats
Food production also led to an explosion of technology because sedentary living permitted the
accumulation of heavy technology (such as forges and printing presses) that nomadic hunterndashgatherers
could not carry and because the storable food surpluses resulting from agriculture could be used to feed
full-time craftspeople and inventors By also feeding full-time kings bureaucrats nobles and soldiers
those food surpluses led to social stratification political centralization and standing armies All of these
overwhelming advantages are what enabled farmers eventually to displace hunterndashgatherers
Evolution of epidemic infectious diseases
The main killers of humans since the advent of agriculture have been acute highly infectious
epidemic diseases that are confined to humans and that either kill the victim quickly or if the victim
recovers immunize himher for life Such diseases could not have existed before the origins of
agriculture because they can sustain themselves only in large dense populations that did not exist before
agriculture hence they are often termed crowd diseases The mystery of the origins of many of these
diseases has been solved by molecular biological studies of recent decades demonstrating that they
evolved from similar epidemic diseases of our herd domestic animals with which we began to come into
close contact 10000 years ago Thus the evolution of these diseases depended on two separate roles of
domestication in creating much denser human populations and in permitting much more frequent
transmission of animal diseases from our domesticates than from hunted wild animals For instance
measles and tuberculosis arose from diseases of cattle influenza from a disease of pigs and ducks1 An
outstanding mystery remains the origins of smallpox did it reach us from camels or from cattle
Crowd diseases paradoxically became agents of conquest because exposed individuals acquired
immune resistance from childhood exposure and exposed populations gradually evolved genetic
resistance but unexposed populations had neither type of resistance In practice because 13 of our 14
large domestic mammals were Eurasian species evolution of crowd diseases was concentrated in Eurasia
and the diseases became the most important agents by which Eurasian colonists expanding overseas killed
indigenous peoples of the Americas Australia Pacific islands and southern Africa
The agricultural expansions
Because some peoples acquired domesticates before other peoples could and because
domesticates conferred eventual advantages such as guns germs and steel on the possessors the history
of the past 10000 years has consisted of farmers replacing hunterndashgatherers or less advanced farmers
These agricultural expansions originating mainly from the nine homelands of agriculture remade genetic
and linguistic maps of the world Among the most discussed (and often highly controversial) possible
examples are the expansions of Bantu-speaking farmers out of tropical West Africa over subequatorial
Africa Austronesian-speaking farmers out of Taiwan over Island Southeast Asia Fertile Crescent farmers
over Europe and Korean farmers over Japan
Activity three Without the ability to translate their writing script archaeologists today do not
understand nearly as much about the Indus River Valley civilization that flourished from 2600 to
1900 BCE although the artifacts found there have enhanced our knowledge of these ancient
peoples One mystery is what exactly happened to the civilizations of the Indus River Valley
Mesopotamia and Egypt were later absorbed into a broader Hellenistic and later Roman cultural
zone but civilization in the Indus River Valley instead disappeared Study the map and read the
articles ldquoThe Myth of the Aryan Invasion of Indiardquo ldquoWere they Copycats or Geniusesrdquo
ldquoEnvironment and Technology Environmental Stress in the Indus River Valleyrdquo and ldquoDid Aryans
kill them or a depressionrdquo Write an 800 word essay that addresses the following question
What are the debates that center around the disappearance of this ancient civilization (Include
examples from the articles) Do NOT go on-line and attempt to find any more information Do
NOT quote from the articles Turn in your essay to wwwturnitincom before the first day of
school
River Valley Civilizations
The Indus Valley Civilization was the first major urban culture of South Asia It reached its peak
from 2600 BC to 1900 BC roughly a period called by some archaeologists Mature Harappan as
distinguished from the earlier Neolithic Early Harappan regional cultures Spatially it is huge
comprising of about 1000 settlements of varying sizes and geographically includes almost all of modern
Pakistan parts of India as far east as Delhi and as far south as Bombay and parts of Afghanistan
The main corpus of writing dated from the Indus Civilization is in the form of some two thousand
inscribed seals in good legible conditions (In case you dont know what seals are they are used to make
impressions on malleable material like clay)
Although these seals and samples of Indus writing have been floating around the scholastic world
for close to 70 years little progress has been made on deciphering this elegant script However we should
not blame scholars for their lack of progress for there are some major impediments to decipherment
1 Very short and brief texts The average number of symbols on the seals is 5 and the longest is
only 26
2 The language underneath is unknown
3 Lack of bilingual texts
For instance consider Champollion who deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs with all of these 3
important clues there were very long Egyptian texts he knew Coptic a descendant of Egyptian and the
Rosetta Stone a bilingual text between Greek and two written forms of Egyptian
But the script isnt as bad as undecipherable For one even though scholars dont have long texts
and bilingual texts they can still theorize about the language underneath the writing system There are
several competing theories about the language that the Indus script represent
A The language is completely unrelated to anything else meaning an isolate Well this doesnt get
us anywhere
B The language is Aryan (some form of Indian-Iranian Indo-European) The historical languages
spoken in Northern India and Pakistan all belong to the Indic branch of Indo-European including
Sanskrit Hindi Punjabi etc so maybe the people of the Indus valley spoke a very old Indo-
European language
The major problem with this model is the fact that horses played a very important role in all Indo-
European cultures being a people constantly on the move There is no escape from the fact that
the horse played a central role in the Vedic and Iranian cultures (Parpola 1986) Sidenote
Vedic means from the time of the Vedas the earliest text in India and the Vedic culture is from
around 1500 to 500 BC However no depiction of horses on seals nor any remains of horses have
been found so far before 2000 BC They only appear after 2000 BC Very likely there were no
Aryan speakers present before 2000 BC in the Indus Valley
C The language belongs to the Munda family of languages The Munda family is spoken largely in
eastern India and related to some Southeast Asian languages Like Aryan the reconstructed
vocabulary of early Munda does not reflect the Harappan culture So its candidacy for being the
language of the Indus Civilization is dim
D The language is Dravidian The Dravidian family of languages is spoken in Southern Indian but
Brahui is spoken in modern Pakistan So far this is the most promising model as in the following
points
o There are many Dravidian influences visible in the Vedic texts If the Aryan language
gradually replaced the Dravidian features from Dravidian would form a substratum in
Aryan One of these features is the appearance of retroflex consonants in Indian languages
both Indo-European and Dravidian In contrast retroflex consonants do not appear in any
other Indo-European language not even Iranian ones which are closest to Indic (For more
information on retroflex consonants please visit my Phonetics page)
o Another possible indication of Dravidian in the Indus texts is from structural analysis of
the texts which suggests that the language underneath is possibly agglutinative from the
fact that sign groups often have the same initial signs but different final signs The number
of these final signs range between 1 to 3 The final signs possibly represent grammatical
suffixes that modify the word (represented by the initial signs) Each suffix would
represent one specific modification and the entire cluster of suffixes would therefore put
the word through a series of modifications This suffix system can be found in Dravidian
but not Indo-European Indo-European tongues tend to change the final sounds to modify
the meaning of a word (a process called inflection) but repeated addition of sounds to the
end of word is extremely rare Often many suffixes in an agglutinative language
correspond to a single inflectional ending in an inflectional language
The Dravidian model isnt just an unapplicable theoryBut first we have to know what kind of
writing system is the Indus script
A count of the number of signs reveal a lot about the type of system being used Alphabetic
systems rarely have more than 40 symbols Syllabic systems like Linear B or Cherokee typically have 40
to 100 or so symbols The third ranges from logophonetic to logographic running upwards of hundreds of
signs (like 500 signs in Hieroglyphic Luwian and 5000 symbols in modern Chinese)
It appears that the maximum number of Indus script symbols is 400 although there are 200 basic
signs (ie signs that are not combined from others) This means that the Indus script is probably
logophonetic in that it has both signs used for their meanings and signs used for their phonetic values
Many signs start off as pictorial representation of a physical object often misleadingly called
pictograms They really are should be called logograms because they represent words in the language
However its next to impossible to write out a word with abstract meaning pictorially What all early
writers figured out was to use a logogram not for the object or idea it was originally supposed to stand for
but for all words sounding similar to the original word for that object or idea For example in English to
write leave we can use a picture of a leaf This is called rebus writing and is a tremendously common
pattern in all early writing systems We could also then use the same leaf symbol to stand for the sound
in relief adding another symbol in front of the leaf symbol in order to indicate the re sound So the
logogram gained a phonetic value as well
Testing the theory How can we take the theoretical framework so far and apply it to archaeological data
Numerals seem to represented by vertical lines (represented by number of lines in the glyph) but
they only go up to 7 Analysis reveal 4 more signs that appear in the same context as these numerals and
so they likely represent numbers higher than 7
The fact that no vertical-line numeral sign denotes 8 very likely means the Harappan language is
based 8 (For example the Arabic numerals that we use has symbols from 0 to 9 and to write ten we
have to combined the symbols 1 and 0 which identify our number system as based ten)
Base 8 languages are rare in the world but it does appear that early Dravidian is base 8 but later
changed to base 10 (possibly under Indo-European influence) When translated the count from 1 to 7 is
familiar to us one two three four five six seven However above seven the numbers
etymologies become non-numerical 8 is number 9 is many minus one and 10 is many (Fairservis
1983)
But can we actually read (not interpret) any symbol on the seals We should start with pictograms as
this one
Many scholars (Knorozov Parpola Mahadevan etc) see this sign as a fish
Fish in reconstructed Proto-Dravidian is micircn Coincidentally micircn is also the word for star
On many pots from Mohenjo Daro an Indus site there are drawings of fish and stars together and so
affirming this linguistic association
Going further often the numeral six appears before the fish Either it means 6 fish or
6 stars Old Tamil (a Dravidian language still spoken today) texts from just around the 1st
century AD recorded the name of the Pleiades a star cluster visible during autumn and
winter just above Orion as Six-Stars or aru-micircn Throughout the world titles with celestial
connotations are very common and the clause Six Stars forming part or whole of a Harappan title is not
unreasonable (Parpola 1986)
Sometimes symbols are added to the basic sign to make new signs Of these the one that
looks like a circumflex accent placed on top of the fish is quite interesting It is theorized to mean
roof and in Proto-Dravidian it is vecircymecircy This is phonetically similar to Proto-Dravidian word
for black may Together with fish it spells out mai-m-micircn or black star which in Old Tamil
means the planet Saturn In Sanskrit texts Saturn is associate the color black The god of death Yama is
the presiding of this planet and is usually depicted as riding on a dark buffalo
But the fish reading isnt accepted by all scholars William Fairservis saw it as a combination of
a loom twist and a human sign and form a honorific title pertaining to rulership (Fairservis 1983) I
however am more inclined to accept the fish identification
This is a quick overview of the current process in the decipherment of the Indus script For more
information you can either go to the following links or go to a good library for books and articles (check
out my references)
The Myth of the Aryan Invasion of India Richard Hooker 1996
They called themselves the noble ones or the superior ones Their names are lost their tribal names
are lost But when they found themselves conquerors they gave themselves the name superior or
noble
They were a tribal and nomadic peoples living in the far reaches of Euro-Asia in hostile steppe lands
barely scratching out a living They were unquestionably a tough people and they were fierce and war-
like Their religion reflects it dominated as it is by a storm-god or sky-god that enjoins warfare and
conquest This god was called something like Dyaus a word related to Zeus deus (the Latin word
for god) deva (the Sanskrit word for god) and of course the English word divine Their culture
was oriented around warfare and they were very good at it They were superior on horseback and rushed
into battle in chariots They were a tribal people ruled over by a war-chief or raja (the Latin word rex
(king) comes from the same root word along with the English regal) Somewhere in the early centuries
of the second millennium BC they began to migrate southwards in waves of steady conquest across the
face of Persia and the lands of India
There they would take on the name superior or noble to distinguish themselves from the people
they conquered Their name is derived from the Indo-European root word ar meaning noble In
Sanskrit they were the Aryas (Aryans) but that root ar would also serve as the foundation of the
name of the conquered Persian territories Iran This concept of nobility in fact seems to lie at the heart
of Indo-European consciousness for it appears in another countrys name Ireland or Eire You can
bet however that when a people go around calling themselves superior that it spells bad news for other
people
And there is no question that they were bad news for the southern Asians They swept over Persia with
lightening speed and spread across the northern river plains of India Their natures as a warlike
conquering people are still preserved in Vedic religion the foundation of Hinduism In the Rig Veda the
collection of praises to the gods the god Indra towers over the poetry as a conquering god one that
smashes cities and slays enemies The invading Aryans were originally nomadic peoples not agricultural
They penetrated India from the north-west settling first in the Indus valley Unlike the Harappans
however they eventually concentrated their populations along the Ganges floodplain The Ganges unlike
the Indus is far milder and more predictable in its flooding It must have been a paradise to a people from
the dry steppes of central Asia and Iran a paradise full of water and forest When they arrived the vast
northern plains were almost certainly densely forested Where now bare fields stretch to the horizon
when the Aryans arrived lush forests stretched to those very same horizons Clearing the forests over the
centuries was an epic project and one that is still preserved in Indian literature
The Aryans or Vedic civilization were a new start in Indian culture Harappa was more or less a dead
end (at least as far as we know) the Aryans adopted almost nothing of Harappan culture They built no
cities no states no granaries and used no writing Instead they were a warlike people that organized
themselves in individual tribal kinship units the jana The jana was ruled over by a war-chief These
tribes spread quickly over northern India and the Deccan In a process that we do not understand the basic
social unit of Aryan culture the jana slowly developed from an organization based on kinship to one
based on geography The jana became a janapada or nation and the jana-rajya or tribal kingdom
became the jana-rajyapada or national kingdom So powerfully ingrained into Indian culture is the
jana-pada that Indians still define themselves mainly by their territorial origins All the major territories
of modern India with their separate cultures and separate languages can be dated back to the early jana-
padas of Vedic India
The earliest history of the Aryans in India is called the Rigvedic Period (1700-1000 BC) after the
religious praise poems that are the oldest pieces of literature in India These poems the Rig Veda are
believed to represent the most primitive layer of
Indo-European religion and have many characteristics in common with Persian religion since the two
peoples are closely related in time In this early period their population was restricted to the Punjab in the
northern reaches of the Indus River and the Yamuna River near the Ganges They maintained the Aryan
tribal structure with a raja ruling over the tribal group in tandem with a council Each jana seems to have
had a chief priest the religion was focused almost entirely on a series of sacrifices to the gods The
Rigvedic peoples originally had only two social classes nobles and commoners Eventually they added a
third Dasas or darks These were we presume the darker-skinned people they had conquered By the
end of the Rigvedic period social class had settled into four rigid castes the caturvarnas or four
colors At the top of the caturvarnas were the priests or Brahmans Below the priests were the warriors
or nobles (Kshatriya) the craftspeople and merchants (Vaishya) and the servants (Shudra) who made
up the bulk of society These economic classes were legitimated by an elaborate religious system and
would be eventually subdivided into a huge number of economic sub-classes which we call castes
Social class by the end of the Rigvedic period became completely inflexible there was no such thing as
social mobility
In the early centuries of Later Vedic Period or Brahmanic Period (1000-500 BC) the Aryans
migrated across the Doab which is a large plain which separates the Yamuna River from the Ganges It
was a difficult project for the Doab was thickly forested the Aryans slowly burned and settled the Doab
until they reached the Ganges While the Rig Veda represents the most primitive religion of the Aryans
during the Rigvedic Period the religion of the Later Vedic period is dominated by the Brahmanas or
priestly book which was composed sometime between 1000 and 850 BC Later Vedic society is
dominated by the Brahmans and every aspect of Aryan life comes under the control of priestly rituals and
spells In history as the Indians understand it the Later Vedic Period is the Epic Age the great literary
heroic epics of Indian culture the Mahabharata and the Ramayana though they were composed
between 500 and 200 BC were probably originally formulated and told in the Later Vedic Period Both of
these epics deal with heroes from this period and demonstrate how Aryan cultural values as we can
understand them from the Rig Veda are being transformed by mixing with Indus cultures
What did the Aryans do with their time They seem to have had a well-developed musical culture and
song and dance dominated their society They were not greatly invested in the visual arts but their interest
in lyric poetry was unmatched They loved gambling They did not however have much interest in
writing even though they could have inherited a civilization and a writing system when they originally
settled India We do not know exactly when they became interested in writing but it may have been at the
end of the Brahmanic period somewhere between 650 and 500 BC Still there are no Aryan writings until
the Mauryan periodmdashfrom Harappa (2500-1750 BC) to Maurya (300 BC) is quite a long time The script
that the Mauryans used is called Brahmi script and was used to write not only the religious and literary
language of the time Sanskrit but also the vernacular languages This script Brahmi is the national
alphabet of India
The Vedic period then is a period of cultural mixing not of conquest Although the Aryans were a
conquering people when they first spread into India the culture of the Aryans would gradually mix with
indigenous cultures and the war-religion of the Aryans still preserved in parts of the Rig Veda slowly
became more ritualized and more meditative By 200 BC this process of mixing and transforming was
more or less complete and the culture we call Indian was fully formed
Were they Copycats or Geniuses How did the Harappans take the great leap from self-contained agricultural societies to a trade-oriented
luxury-conscious sophisticated urban civilization that gave the world the concept of town planning
Analyzing the evidence from various sites Possehl found that between 2600 BC and 2500 BC the
Harappans experienced a century of cathartic changes Before this he finds no breadboard models of the
expansion to come be it the invention of writing or the awesome town-planning techniques A
tremendous jump in human ability is evident So what or who caused it
In the past the reputed British archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler argued that ideas have wings and that
the Harappans were influenced by their trade contacts with the Sumerians But the diffusion theory of
civilization as it is called is slowly being given the heave-ho Cambridge historian Raymond Allchin an
authority on the subject says We are now beginning to see the foundation being laid in the preceding
100 to 200 years in smaller sites There appears to be a completely organic process of growth that threw
up the Harappan culture as we know it
Yet the evidence of that process continues to be scanty In Kunal in Haryana archaeologists recently
found what are known as proto Indus seals On pottery on many of the smaller sites in both India and
Pakistan graffiti similar to some figures on the script begin to appear And at Dholavira and at Banawali
in Haryana the distinction between the citadel and the lower city is beginning to evolve There is
however a huge jump in scale in such activity in those critical 100 years For in Harappa as in most
Indus sites the distinct gridiron pattern for streets appear a scientific system of drainage that linked up to
even the smallest house in the lower city is established precise weights and measures begin to circulate
and the writing system evolves So were the Harappans copycats Archaeologists say the Indus people
couldnrsquot have copied their town-planning from Egypt and Mesopotamia because in those civilizations the
roads meandered like village streets Nor was the writing similar to Sumer`s cuneiform or the Egyptian
hieroglyphics The Harappans had their own distinctive style Lal explains the dramatic change as a result
of centuries of growth reaching a critical mass that caused an unparalleled urban explosion Trade he
believes was the driving force of the revolution Even a skeptic like Possehl maintains that these are
indeed an expression of the Indian genius
Did Aryans kill them or a Depression Archaeologists are known to stumble but the kind of knocking Wheeler has taken over his Aryan
invasion theory has few parallels When the British archaeologist discovered a dozen skeletons in
Mohenjodaro he propounded a theory about the final massacre by marauding invaders that put an end to
the Indus civilization When an Indian scholar told him of Hariyuppa being mentioned in the Rigveda he
took it to mean Harappa And since a fort was known as pur and Indira the Aryan god was known as
Purandhara or destroyer of forts it all fitted neatly
After all werenrsquot the Indus cities among the most fortified Yet the past 50 years and more so the last
decade has shown just how wrong Wheeler was The last massacre theory was his imagination running
riot Far from being snuffed out there was a brilliant resurgence of Indus culture further south for a while
Possehl who made a recent study found that in 2000 BC in Pakistanrsquos Sindh district the sites were down
from 86 to 6 and in Cholistan 174 to 41 But in India the sites in Haryana Punjab and Rajasthan exploded
from 218 to 853 Possehl asks How can this be construed as an eclipse We are looking at a highly
mobile people
Allchin argues that there is clear indication that the rainfall pattern which had initially brought fertility
had become adverse in the Sindh region And theories that given the instability of the Himalayan region
there may have been a massive earthquake that possibly changed the course of rivers such as the Sarasvati
and affected many Indus cities The Indus people then migrated eastward Lal talks of steep decline in
trade because of problems in Sumer that resulted in a Great Depression and turned many urban centers
into ghost cities
Bisht concurs with Lal but goes a step further He says that after the quake hit the heart of the civilization
the Indus people migrated east which acted like a sort of bypass to their woes And like a dying candle it
shone brilliantly again but briefly before being snuffed out Dholavira Banawali Mehrgarh Harappa -- in
fact all the major cities show that as the cities declined encroachments on streets that were unseen at its
peak began to occur with alarming regularity There was a breakdown in sanitation and cities like their
modern-day counterparts in India simply ran themselves aground They were replaced by massive squatter
colonies and an explosion of rural sites as people disillusioned with cities went back to farming
communities A giant step backward
Yet it wasnrsquot as if all came to naught as was earlier believed Some of the writings survived in the pottery
of the following ages The weight and decimal system too lived on And so did the bullock-cart
technology that the Indus had perfected Rather than a violent transition there may have been an orderly
interaction with oncoming Aryans Lal in his most recent book even puts across the most audacious
theory Could the Bronze Age Harappans be Aryans themselves He says this because of the presence of
fire worship and the discovery of horse remains and idols in Indus sites Meadows dismisses it as
premature and points out that it was more likely that ass remains were mistaken for that of a horsersquos And
that the Vedas showed a great antipathy for urban centers
Whatever the cause it would take another 1000 years for a semblance of civilization to return to the
subcontinent -- a dire warning to modern India of the catastrophe that can befall an errant populace
Environmental Stress in the Indus Valley Source Quotation from D P Agarwal and R K Sood in Gregory L Possehl ed Harappan Civilization A Contemporary Perspective (Warminster
England Aris and Phillips 1982)229
The three river-valley civilizations discussed in this chapter were located in arid or semiarid regions Such
regions are particularly vulnerable to changes in the environment Scholars debates about the existence
and impact of changes in the climate and landscape of the Indus Valley illuminate some of the potential
factors at work as well as the difficulties of verifying and interpreting such long-ago changes
One of the points at issue is climatic change An earlier generation of scholars believed that the climate
of the Indus Valley was considerably wetter during the height of that civilization than it is now As
evidence they cited the enormous quantities of timber cut from extensive forests that would have been
needed to bake the millions of mud bricks used to construct the cities (see photo) the distribution of
human settlements on land that is now unfavorable for agriculture and the representation of jungle and
marsh animals on decorated seals This approach assumes that the growth of population prosperity and
complexity in the Indus Valley in the third millennium BCE required wet conditions and it concludes
that the change to a drier climate in the early second millennium BCE pushed this civilization into
decline
Other experts skeptical about a radical climatic change countered with alternative calculations of the
amount of timber needed and evidence of plant remains-particularly barley a grain that is tolerant of dry
conditions However recent studies of the stabilization of sand dunes which occurs in periods of heavy
rainfall and analysis of the sediment deposited by rivers and winds have been used to strengthen the
claim that the Indus Valley used to be wetter and in the early-to-mid second millennium BCE entered a
period of relatively dry conditions that have persisted to the present
A much clearer case can be made for changes in the landscape caused by shifts in the courses of rivers
These shifts are due in many cases to tectonic forces such as earthquakes Dry channels whether
detected in satellite photographs or by on-the-ground inspection reveal the location of old riverbeds and
it appears that a second major river system the Hakra once ran parallel to the Indus some distance to the
east The Hakra with teeming towns and fertile fields along its banks appears to have been a second axis
of this civilization Either the Sutlej which now feeds into the Indus or the Yamuna which now pours
into the Ganges may have been the main source of water for this long-gone system before undergoing a
change of course The consequences of the drying-up of this major waterway must have been immense-
the loss of huge amounts of arable land and the food that it produced the abandonment of cities and
villages and consequent migration of their populations shifts in the trade routes and desperate
competition for shrinking resources
As for the Indus itself the present-day course of the lower reaches of the river has shifted 100 miles
(161 kilometers) to the west since the arrival of the Greek conqueror Alexander the Great in the late
fourth century BCE and the deposit of massive volumes of silt has pushed the mouth of the river 50
miles (80 kilometers) farther south Such a shift of the river bed and buildup of alluvial deposits also may
have occurred in the third and second millennia BCE
A recent study concludes It is obvious that ecological stresses caused both climatically and
technically played an important role in the life and decay of the Indus civilization
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity four Read the article below about the early Chinese dynasties Using information from
the article write an 800 word essay that describes the influence of the environment religion and
gender on the formation of the government of ancient China Again do NOT look up additional
information use only what is provided Also do NOT quote from the articles paraphrase and
summarize only Turn in your essay to wwwturnitincom before the first day of school
The Shang and Zhou Dynasties By 5000 BCE agricultural communities had spread through much of what is now called China and there
were agricultural villages from the Wei River Valley eastward parallel with the great Yellow River
(Huang He) which flowed out of the Kunlun Mountains to the deciduous forest and loess soil region of
the North China Plain Where people were free of forest and had access to water they grew millet -- as
early as 5500 BCE -- while they continued to hunt deer and other game to fish and gather food And they
raised dogs pigs and chickens They built one-room homes dug into the earth with roofs of clay or
thatch pit homes grouped in villages They had spinning wheels and knitted and wove fibers And they
made pottery decorated with art
Flooding along the Yellow River was worse than it was along the Yangzi River to the south Along the
Yangzi River through the Hubei Basin and on the coastal plain to Hangzhou Bay farming had also
developed but people along the Yellow River had to work harder at flood control and irrigation and
perhaps this stimulated a greater effort at organization At any rate the North China Plain became the
largest area with a relatively dense population
Where people were producing more food than they needed to survive warriors had the incentive not only
to plunder but also to conquer And conquering kings arose on the North China Plain as they did in West
Asia The first dynasty of kings in the North China Plain has been described as belonging to the Xia
family - whose rule is thought to have begun around 2200 BCE But the first dynasty of which there is
historical evidence is that of the Shang family The Shang clan came out of the Wei River Valley just west
of the North China Plain By around 1500 BCE give or take a century or so the Shang unified people
along the North China Plain The military had chariots each with an aristocrat archer a driver and
sometimes also a man with a spear The Shang built an empire in much the same way as other conquerors
by leaving behind a garrison force to police local people by turning a local king into a subservient ally
free to manage local matters and by taxing the conquered
Around 1384 BCE the Shang moved their capital to Yin As a regular pastime the Shang emperors and
nobles hunted in organized game drives Emperors and aristocrats had splendid homes with walls of
pounded earth or earthen bricks while common people continued to live in their pit homes of earlier times
A Shang emperor was chief priest and he had an administrative bureaucracy with councilors lesser
priests and diviners As with other warring civilizations slaves were taken the slaves laboring at growing
crops And women in Shang civilization were subservient to men with aristocratic women enjoying a
greater freedom and equality than common women The role of the woman was to be gentle calm
respectful and to obey her husband Women were lower than men and were subjected to womenrsquos work
(tending to the children and needs of the husband) Men also married multiple times and women were
used as concubines
During the Shang dynasty the civilization along the Yellow River had canals for irrigating crops
Communities had drains that ran water out of town They made beer from millet The stable government
allowed for extended trading and use of money in the form of cowry shells Shang merchants traded in
salt iron copper tin lead and antimony some of which had to be imported from far away As early as
the 1300 BCE a bronze casting industry had developed This was later than the rise of bronze casting in
Europe and West Asia but it was the most advanced in the world
It was around 1300 BCE that the first known writing appeared in Shang civilization because the
government officials needed to have questions answered that would allow them to better govern This
writing was for divination done on plate-like portions of the bones of cattle or deer on seashells and
turtle shells and perhaps on wood By applying a pointed heated rod to a bone or shell the item cracked
and to which written symbol the crack traveled gave answers for various questions what the weather was
going to be like would there be flood would a harvest succeed or fail when might be the best time for
hunting or fishing there were also personal questions about illness or whether one should make a journey
Shang Violence and Splendor
To the east north and south of Shang civilization were those the Shang saw as barbarians including the
farming people along the Yangzi River Shang emperors sent out armies to repulse invaders and the
Shang emperors went beyond their domains to plunder and to capture foreign peoples needed for sacrifice
to their gods Uncovered tombs of emperors from the Shang period indicate that they could put into the
field as many as three to five thousand soldiers Found buried with the emperors were their personal
ornaments and spears with bronze blades and the remains of what had been bows and arrows Buried with
the emperors were also horses and chariots for transporting soldiers to battle And with the emperors in
death were their charioteers dogs servants and people in groups of ten -- people who had been
ceremonially beheaded with bronze axes
Zhou Empire Religion and Human Sacrifice
Shang rule was threatened by forces from outside and from within its empire To the west of Shang
civilization in the Wei River Valley lived a pastoral people called Zhou who led an alliance that included
other tribal peoples neighboring Shang civilization While the Shang emperor Zhouxin was occupied by
a war against tribal people to his southeast rebellions broke out among people that Shang monarchs
before him had conquered The Zhou and their allies saw the Shang emperors troubles as an opportunity
to move against him and in 1045 BCE they overpowered him at the battle of Mu-ye and had him
beheaded
A dynasty of Zhou emperors began ruling what had been Shang civilization They claimed that all lands
belonged to heaven that they were the sons of heaven and therefore that all lands and all people were
their subjects Seeing the lands they had conquered as too vast for one man to dominate the Zhou
emperors divided these lands into regions and assigned someone to rule each region in their name
choosing for this position a close family member a trusted member of their clan or the chief of a tribe
that had been allied with them against the Shang
Each local ruler had at his disposal all the lands around him He had his own militia And from the Zhou
emperors the local rulers received gifts such as chariots bronze weapons servants and animals The local
rulers received the title of lord (gong) Local rulers passed their positions to their sons their titles of lord
becoming hereditary And to control their areas better the lords made sub-lords of those who had
dominated the common people before they arrived A hierarchy of status and obligations emerged among
families and within families with older brothers ranking higher than younger brothers with rules of
succession as to which of the males would head his family If a married aristocrat became infatuated with
another woman rather than drive his wife from his home he could bring the other woman into the family
as a concubine where she would rank beneath his wife
Zhou emperors told those they had conquered that they the Zhou had ousted the ancestors of Shang
emperors from heaven and that heaven was occupied by their supreme god a god they called The Lord
on High who they said had commanded the downfall of the Shang emperors Like emperors in West
Asia Zhou emperors claimed that they ruled by divine right They claimed that they represented on earth
the Lord on High and that it was their duty to mediate with the Lord on High to perform appropriate
sacrifices and to maintain a proper relationship between heaven and their subjects They claimed that any
opposition to their rule was opposition to the will of heaven
It was from the Zhou emperors that local lords received the right to act as a priest to perform sacrifices
to have certain hymns sung and certain dances performed the right to propitiate the gods of local
mountains streams and of the soil and crops Meanwhile local aristocrats continued to keep track of their
ancestral heritage They married with religious rites and sanctions while common folk continued to have
no such marriages no surnames or recorded ancestors They merely lived together and were recognized as
a couple by their neighbors
Ancestor worship was also very important to the Shang It was thought that the success of crops and the
health and well being of people were based on the happiness of dead ancestors
The worship of various gods from the Shang period included gods of grain rain and agriculture -- one of
whom was believed to have had a virgin birth Among these gods was a god of the Yellow River who had
the body of a fish but the face of a man
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity five Research the social hierarchy religion political organization writing systems and
technological aspects of the societies listed on the SNAPSHOT Early Agricultural Societies Describe each aspect
of the society using specific evidence - in one or two clear sentences (SEE EXAMPLE of Olmec Society) Write
VERY neatly in ink Bring this chart with you on the FIRST DAY of school
The key question concerning this selectivity of domestication is as follows in the cases of all
those species never domesticated did the difficulty lie with the species itself or with the people
indigenous to the area to which the species was native For instance is the abundance of large wild
mammals the reason why no mammal species was ever domesticated in subequatorial Africa making
domestication superfluous for Africans If that explanation were correct then African people should also
have ignored Eurasian domestic mammals when those were finally introduced to Africa and European
animal breeders on arriving in Africa should have succeeded in domesticating some African wild
mammals but both of those predictions are refuted by the actual course of history
Six independent lines of evidence converge to prove that in most cases the obstacle lay with the
species itself not with the local people the rapid acceptance of introduced Eurasian domesticates by non-
Eurasian peoples the rapid ancient domestication of the most valuable wild species the repeated
independent domestications of many of them the failure of even modern European plant and animal
breeders to add significantly to our short list of valuable domesticates ancient discoveries of the value of
thousands of species that were regularly harvested in the wild but that never became domesticated and
the identification of the particular reasons preventing the domestication of many of those species
Comparisons of domesticated wild species with never-domesticated close relatives illustrate the subtle
factors that can derail domestication For example it is initially surprising that oak trees the most
important wild food plant in many parts of Eurasia and North America were never domesticated Like
wild almonds acorns of most individual wild oaks contain bitter poisons with occasional non-poisonous
mutant trees preferred by human foragers However the non-poisonous condition is controlled by a single
dominant gene in almonds but polygenically in oaks so that offspring of the occasional non-poisonous
individuals are often non-poisonous in almonds but rarely so in oaks preventing selection of edible oak
varieties to this day A second example is provided by the European horse breeders who settled in South
Africa in the 1600s and mdash like African herders for previous millennia mdash tried to domesticate zebras
They gave up after several centuries for two reasons First zebras are incurably vicious have the bad
habit of biting a handler and not letting go until the handler is dead and thereby injure more zoo-keepers
each year than do tigers Second zebras have better peripheral vision than horses making them
impossible even for professional rodeo cowboys to lasso (they see the rope coming and flick away their
head)
Figure 1 Comparisons of domesticated wild species (left of each pair) and their never-
domesticated close relatives (right) reveal the subtle factors that can derail domestication
Among wild mammal species
that were never domesticated the six
main obstacles proved to be a diet not
easily supplied by humans (hence no
domestic anteaters) slow growth rate
and long birth spacing (for example
elephants and gorillas) nasty
disposition (grizzly bears and
rhinoceroses) reluctance to breed in
captivity (pandas and cheetahs) lack
of follow-the-leader dominance
hierarchies (bighorn sheep and
antelope) and tendency to panic in
enclosures or when faced with
predators (gazelles and deer except
reindeer) Many species passed five of
these six tests but were still not
domesticated because they failed a
sixth test Conclusions about non-domesticability from the fact of non-domestication are not circular
because these six obstacles can be assessed independently
Why there were so few homelands of agriculture
Food production bestowed on farmers enormous demographic technological political and
military advantages over neighboring hunterndashgatherers The history of the past 13000 years consists of
tales of hunterndashgatherer societies becoming driven out infected conquered or exterminated by farming
societies in every area of the world suitable for farming One might therefore have naively anticipated
that in any part of the world one or more of the local hunterndashgatherer societies would have stumbled
upon domestication become farmers and thereby outcompeted the other local hunterndashgatherer societies
In fact food production arose independently in at most nine areas of the world (Fertile Crescent China
Mesoamerica AndesAmazonia eastern United States Sahel tropical West Africa Ethiopia and New
Guinea)
The puzzle increases when one scrutinizes that list of homelands One might again naively have
expected the areas most productive for farming today to correspond at least roughly to the areas most
productive in the past In reality the list of homelands and the list of breadbaskets of the modern world
are almost mutually exclusive (Fig 2) The latter list includes California North Americas Great Plains
Europe the pampas of Argentina the cape of southern Africa the Indian subcontinent Java and
Australias wheat belt Because these areas are evidently so well suited to farming or herding today why
were they not so in the past
Figure 2 Ancient and modern centers of agriculture
Ancient centers of origin of plant and animal domestication mdash the nine homelands of food
production mdash are indicated by the orange-shaded areas on the map The most agriculturally productive
areas of the modern world as judged by cereals and major staples are indicated by the yellow-shaded
areas Note that there is almost no overlap between the areas highlighted except that China appears on
both distributions and that the most productive areas of the central United States today approach areas of
the eastern United States where domestication originated The reason why the two distributions are so
different is that agriculture arose in areas to which the wild ancestors of the most valuable domesticable
crops and animals were native but other areas proved much more productive when those valuable
domesticates reached them
The explanation is that the homelands of agriculture were instead merely those regions to which
the most numerous and most valuable domesticable wild plant and animal species were native Only in
those areas were incipient early farmers able to out-compete local hunterndashgatherers Once those locally
available wild species had been domesticated and had spread outside the homelands societies of
homelands had no further advantage other than that of a head start and they were eventually overtaken by
societies of more fertile or climatically more favored areas outside the homelands
For instance the Fertile Crescent of southwest Asia was home to wild wheats barley peas sheep
goats cows and pigs mdash a list that includes what are still the most valuable crops and livestock of the
modern world Hence hunterndashgatherers of the Fertile Crescent domesticated those species and became the
worlds first farmers and herders beginning around 8500 BCE That head start in food production led to
them and their close neighbors also developing the worlds first metal tools writing empires and
professional armies Those tools of conquest and Fertile Crescent human genes gradually spread west
into Europe and North Africa and east into the western Indian subcontinent and central Asia However
once those crops livestock and human inventions had spread Fertile Crescent societies possessed no
other advantages As all of those elements slowly spread northwest across Europe farming and power
also shifted northwest from the Fertile Crescent to areas where farming had never arisen independently mdash
first to Greece then to Italy and finally to northwest Europe Human societies of the Fertile Crescent
inadvertently committed slow ecological suicide in a zone of low rainfall prone to deforestation soil
erosion and salinization
The spread of food production
From the homelands of domestication food production spread around the world in either of two
ways The much less common way was for hunterndashgatherers outside the homelands to acquire crops or
livestock from the homelands enabling them to settle down as farmers or herders as attested by
archaeological evidence for substantial continuity of material culture and by genetic linguistic and
skeletal evidence of continuity of human populations The clearest such example of local adoption of food
production is in southern Africa where around 2000 years ago some Khoisan hunterndashgatherers acquired
Eurasian livestock (cattle sheep and goats) arriving from the north and became herders (so-called
Hottentots) Much more often however local hunterndashgatherers had no opportunity to acquire crops and
livestock before they were overrun or replaced by farmers expanding out of the homelands exploiting
their demographic technological political and military advantages over the hunterndashgatherers
Expansions of crops livestock and even people and technologies tended to occur more rapidly along
eastndashwest axes than along northndashsouth axes1 (Fig 3) The reason is obvious locations at the same latitude
share identical day-lengths and seasonalities often share similar climates habitats and diseases and hence
require less evolutionary change or adaptation of domesticates technologies and cultures than do
locations at different latitudes Examples include the rapid westwards and eastwards dispersal of wheat
horses wheels and writing of western Asian origin and the westwards dispersal of chickens citrus and
peaches of Chinese origin along the eastndashwest axis of Eurasia This can be contrasted with the slow
spread of Eurasian livestock and non-spread of Eurasian crops southwards along Africas northndashsouth
axis the slow spread of Mexican corn and the non-spread of Mexican writing and wheels and Andean
llamas and potatoes along the Americas northndashsouth axis and the slow spread of food production
southwards along the northndashsouth axis of the Indian subcontinent
Figure 3 The continental major axis is oriented eastndashwest
for Eurasia but northndashsouth for the Americas and Africa
The spread of food production tended to occur more
rapidly along eastndashwest axes than along northndashsouth axes mainly
because locations at the same latitudes required less evolutionary
change or adaptation of domesticates than did locations at
different latitudes
This is not to deny the existence of ecological barriers at
the same latitude within Asia and North America but the general
pattern remains Eurasias eastndashwest axis and the resulting rapid enrichment of societies in each part of
Eurasia by crops and technologies from other parts of Eurasia became one of the main ultimate reasons
why Eurasian peoples conquered Native American peoples rather than vice versa Eurasias eastndashwest
axis also explains why there is much less evidence for multiple independent domestications of the same
plant species (see below) and much more evidence for agriculturally driven language expansions in
Eurasia than in the Americas
Consequences of domestication Consequences for human societies
Beginning around 8500 BCE the transition from the hunterndashgatherer lifestyle to food production
enabled people to settle down next to their permanent gardens orchards and pastures instead of migrating
to follow seasonal shifts in wild food supplies (Some hunterndashgatherer societies in especially productive
environments were also sedentary but most were not) Food production was accompanied by a human
population explosion that has continued unabated to this day resulting from two separate factors First
the sedentary lifestyle permitted shorter birth intervals Nomadic hunterndashgatherers had previously spaced
out birth intervals at four years or more because a mother shifting camp can carry only one infant or slow
toddler Second plant and animal species that are edible to humans can be cultivated in much higher
density in our gardens orchards and pastures than in wild habitats
Food production also led to an explosion of technology because sedentary living permitted the
accumulation of heavy technology (such as forges and printing presses) that nomadic hunterndashgatherers
could not carry and because the storable food surpluses resulting from agriculture could be used to feed
full-time craftspeople and inventors By also feeding full-time kings bureaucrats nobles and soldiers
those food surpluses led to social stratification political centralization and standing armies All of these
overwhelming advantages are what enabled farmers eventually to displace hunterndashgatherers
Evolution of epidemic infectious diseases
The main killers of humans since the advent of agriculture have been acute highly infectious
epidemic diseases that are confined to humans and that either kill the victim quickly or if the victim
recovers immunize himher for life Such diseases could not have existed before the origins of
agriculture because they can sustain themselves only in large dense populations that did not exist before
agriculture hence they are often termed crowd diseases The mystery of the origins of many of these
diseases has been solved by molecular biological studies of recent decades demonstrating that they
evolved from similar epidemic diseases of our herd domestic animals with which we began to come into
close contact 10000 years ago Thus the evolution of these diseases depended on two separate roles of
domestication in creating much denser human populations and in permitting much more frequent
transmission of animal diseases from our domesticates than from hunted wild animals For instance
measles and tuberculosis arose from diseases of cattle influenza from a disease of pigs and ducks1 An
outstanding mystery remains the origins of smallpox did it reach us from camels or from cattle
Crowd diseases paradoxically became agents of conquest because exposed individuals acquired
immune resistance from childhood exposure and exposed populations gradually evolved genetic
resistance but unexposed populations had neither type of resistance In practice because 13 of our 14
large domestic mammals were Eurasian species evolution of crowd diseases was concentrated in Eurasia
and the diseases became the most important agents by which Eurasian colonists expanding overseas killed
indigenous peoples of the Americas Australia Pacific islands and southern Africa
The agricultural expansions
Because some peoples acquired domesticates before other peoples could and because
domesticates conferred eventual advantages such as guns germs and steel on the possessors the history
of the past 10000 years has consisted of farmers replacing hunterndashgatherers or less advanced farmers
These agricultural expansions originating mainly from the nine homelands of agriculture remade genetic
and linguistic maps of the world Among the most discussed (and often highly controversial) possible
examples are the expansions of Bantu-speaking farmers out of tropical West Africa over subequatorial
Africa Austronesian-speaking farmers out of Taiwan over Island Southeast Asia Fertile Crescent farmers
over Europe and Korean farmers over Japan
Activity three Without the ability to translate their writing script archaeologists today do not
understand nearly as much about the Indus River Valley civilization that flourished from 2600 to
1900 BCE although the artifacts found there have enhanced our knowledge of these ancient
peoples One mystery is what exactly happened to the civilizations of the Indus River Valley
Mesopotamia and Egypt were later absorbed into a broader Hellenistic and later Roman cultural
zone but civilization in the Indus River Valley instead disappeared Study the map and read the
articles ldquoThe Myth of the Aryan Invasion of Indiardquo ldquoWere they Copycats or Geniusesrdquo
ldquoEnvironment and Technology Environmental Stress in the Indus River Valleyrdquo and ldquoDid Aryans
kill them or a depressionrdquo Write an 800 word essay that addresses the following question
What are the debates that center around the disappearance of this ancient civilization (Include
examples from the articles) Do NOT go on-line and attempt to find any more information Do
NOT quote from the articles Turn in your essay to wwwturnitincom before the first day of
school
River Valley Civilizations
The Indus Valley Civilization was the first major urban culture of South Asia It reached its peak
from 2600 BC to 1900 BC roughly a period called by some archaeologists Mature Harappan as
distinguished from the earlier Neolithic Early Harappan regional cultures Spatially it is huge
comprising of about 1000 settlements of varying sizes and geographically includes almost all of modern
Pakistan parts of India as far east as Delhi and as far south as Bombay and parts of Afghanistan
The main corpus of writing dated from the Indus Civilization is in the form of some two thousand
inscribed seals in good legible conditions (In case you dont know what seals are they are used to make
impressions on malleable material like clay)
Although these seals and samples of Indus writing have been floating around the scholastic world
for close to 70 years little progress has been made on deciphering this elegant script However we should
not blame scholars for their lack of progress for there are some major impediments to decipherment
1 Very short and brief texts The average number of symbols on the seals is 5 and the longest is
only 26
2 The language underneath is unknown
3 Lack of bilingual texts
For instance consider Champollion who deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs with all of these 3
important clues there were very long Egyptian texts he knew Coptic a descendant of Egyptian and the
Rosetta Stone a bilingual text between Greek and two written forms of Egyptian
But the script isnt as bad as undecipherable For one even though scholars dont have long texts
and bilingual texts they can still theorize about the language underneath the writing system There are
several competing theories about the language that the Indus script represent
A The language is completely unrelated to anything else meaning an isolate Well this doesnt get
us anywhere
B The language is Aryan (some form of Indian-Iranian Indo-European) The historical languages
spoken in Northern India and Pakistan all belong to the Indic branch of Indo-European including
Sanskrit Hindi Punjabi etc so maybe the people of the Indus valley spoke a very old Indo-
European language
The major problem with this model is the fact that horses played a very important role in all Indo-
European cultures being a people constantly on the move There is no escape from the fact that
the horse played a central role in the Vedic and Iranian cultures (Parpola 1986) Sidenote
Vedic means from the time of the Vedas the earliest text in India and the Vedic culture is from
around 1500 to 500 BC However no depiction of horses on seals nor any remains of horses have
been found so far before 2000 BC They only appear after 2000 BC Very likely there were no
Aryan speakers present before 2000 BC in the Indus Valley
C The language belongs to the Munda family of languages The Munda family is spoken largely in
eastern India and related to some Southeast Asian languages Like Aryan the reconstructed
vocabulary of early Munda does not reflect the Harappan culture So its candidacy for being the
language of the Indus Civilization is dim
D The language is Dravidian The Dravidian family of languages is spoken in Southern Indian but
Brahui is spoken in modern Pakistan So far this is the most promising model as in the following
points
o There are many Dravidian influences visible in the Vedic texts If the Aryan language
gradually replaced the Dravidian features from Dravidian would form a substratum in
Aryan One of these features is the appearance of retroflex consonants in Indian languages
both Indo-European and Dravidian In contrast retroflex consonants do not appear in any
other Indo-European language not even Iranian ones which are closest to Indic (For more
information on retroflex consonants please visit my Phonetics page)
o Another possible indication of Dravidian in the Indus texts is from structural analysis of
the texts which suggests that the language underneath is possibly agglutinative from the
fact that sign groups often have the same initial signs but different final signs The number
of these final signs range between 1 to 3 The final signs possibly represent grammatical
suffixes that modify the word (represented by the initial signs) Each suffix would
represent one specific modification and the entire cluster of suffixes would therefore put
the word through a series of modifications This suffix system can be found in Dravidian
but not Indo-European Indo-European tongues tend to change the final sounds to modify
the meaning of a word (a process called inflection) but repeated addition of sounds to the
end of word is extremely rare Often many suffixes in an agglutinative language
correspond to a single inflectional ending in an inflectional language
The Dravidian model isnt just an unapplicable theoryBut first we have to know what kind of
writing system is the Indus script
A count of the number of signs reveal a lot about the type of system being used Alphabetic
systems rarely have more than 40 symbols Syllabic systems like Linear B or Cherokee typically have 40
to 100 or so symbols The third ranges from logophonetic to logographic running upwards of hundreds of
signs (like 500 signs in Hieroglyphic Luwian and 5000 symbols in modern Chinese)
It appears that the maximum number of Indus script symbols is 400 although there are 200 basic
signs (ie signs that are not combined from others) This means that the Indus script is probably
logophonetic in that it has both signs used for their meanings and signs used for their phonetic values
Many signs start off as pictorial representation of a physical object often misleadingly called
pictograms They really are should be called logograms because they represent words in the language
However its next to impossible to write out a word with abstract meaning pictorially What all early
writers figured out was to use a logogram not for the object or idea it was originally supposed to stand for
but for all words sounding similar to the original word for that object or idea For example in English to
write leave we can use a picture of a leaf This is called rebus writing and is a tremendously common
pattern in all early writing systems We could also then use the same leaf symbol to stand for the sound
in relief adding another symbol in front of the leaf symbol in order to indicate the re sound So the
logogram gained a phonetic value as well
Testing the theory How can we take the theoretical framework so far and apply it to archaeological data
Numerals seem to represented by vertical lines (represented by number of lines in the glyph) but
they only go up to 7 Analysis reveal 4 more signs that appear in the same context as these numerals and
so they likely represent numbers higher than 7
The fact that no vertical-line numeral sign denotes 8 very likely means the Harappan language is
based 8 (For example the Arabic numerals that we use has symbols from 0 to 9 and to write ten we
have to combined the symbols 1 and 0 which identify our number system as based ten)
Base 8 languages are rare in the world but it does appear that early Dravidian is base 8 but later
changed to base 10 (possibly under Indo-European influence) When translated the count from 1 to 7 is
familiar to us one two three four five six seven However above seven the numbers
etymologies become non-numerical 8 is number 9 is many minus one and 10 is many (Fairservis
1983)
But can we actually read (not interpret) any symbol on the seals We should start with pictograms as
this one
Many scholars (Knorozov Parpola Mahadevan etc) see this sign as a fish
Fish in reconstructed Proto-Dravidian is micircn Coincidentally micircn is also the word for star
On many pots from Mohenjo Daro an Indus site there are drawings of fish and stars together and so
affirming this linguistic association
Going further often the numeral six appears before the fish Either it means 6 fish or
6 stars Old Tamil (a Dravidian language still spoken today) texts from just around the 1st
century AD recorded the name of the Pleiades a star cluster visible during autumn and
winter just above Orion as Six-Stars or aru-micircn Throughout the world titles with celestial
connotations are very common and the clause Six Stars forming part or whole of a Harappan title is not
unreasonable (Parpola 1986)
Sometimes symbols are added to the basic sign to make new signs Of these the one that
looks like a circumflex accent placed on top of the fish is quite interesting It is theorized to mean
roof and in Proto-Dravidian it is vecircymecircy This is phonetically similar to Proto-Dravidian word
for black may Together with fish it spells out mai-m-micircn or black star which in Old Tamil
means the planet Saturn In Sanskrit texts Saturn is associate the color black The god of death Yama is
the presiding of this planet and is usually depicted as riding on a dark buffalo
But the fish reading isnt accepted by all scholars William Fairservis saw it as a combination of
a loom twist and a human sign and form a honorific title pertaining to rulership (Fairservis 1983) I
however am more inclined to accept the fish identification
This is a quick overview of the current process in the decipherment of the Indus script For more
information you can either go to the following links or go to a good library for books and articles (check
out my references)
The Myth of the Aryan Invasion of India Richard Hooker 1996
They called themselves the noble ones or the superior ones Their names are lost their tribal names
are lost But when they found themselves conquerors they gave themselves the name superior or
noble
They were a tribal and nomadic peoples living in the far reaches of Euro-Asia in hostile steppe lands
barely scratching out a living They were unquestionably a tough people and they were fierce and war-
like Their religion reflects it dominated as it is by a storm-god or sky-god that enjoins warfare and
conquest This god was called something like Dyaus a word related to Zeus deus (the Latin word
for god) deva (the Sanskrit word for god) and of course the English word divine Their culture
was oriented around warfare and they were very good at it They were superior on horseback and rushed
into battle in chariots They were a tribal people ruled over by a war-chief or raja (the Latin word rex
(king) comes from the same root word along with the English regal) Somewhere in the early centuries
of the second millennium BC they began to migrate southwards in waves of steady conquest across the
face of Persia and the lands of India
There they would take on the name superior or noble to distinguish themselves from the people
they conquered Their name is derived from the Indo-European root word ar meaning noble In
Sanskrit they were the Aryas (Aryans) but that root ar would also serve as the foundation of the
name of the conquered Persian territories Iran This concept of nobility in fact seems to lie at the heart
of Indo-European consciousness for it appears in another countrys name Ireland or Eire You can
bet however that when a people go around calling themselves superior that it spells bad news for other
people
And there is no question that they were bad news for the southern Asians They swept over Persia with
lightening speed and spread across the northern river plains of India Their natures as a warlike
conquering people are still preserved in Vedic religion the foundation of Hinduism In the Rig Veda the
collection of praises to the gods the god Indra towers over the poetry as a conquering god one that
smashes cities and slays enemies The invading Aryans were originally nomadic peoples not agricultural
They penetrated India from the north-west settling first in the Indus valley Unlike the Harappans
however they eventually concentrated their populations along the Ganges floodplain The Ganges unlike
the Indus is far milder and more predictable in its flooding It must have been a paradise to a people from
the dry steppes of central Asia and Iran a paradise full of water and forest When they arrived the vast
northern plains were almost certainly densely forested Where now bare fields stretch to the horizon
when the Aryans arrived lush forests stretched to those very same horizons Clearing the forests over the
centuries was an epic project and one that is still preserved in Indian literature
The Aryans or Vedic civilization were a new start in Indian culture Harappa was more or less a dead
end (at least as far as we know) the Aryans adopted almost nothing of Harappan culture They built no
cities no states no granaries and used no writing Instead they were a warlike people that organized
themselves in individual tribal kinship units the jana The jana was ruled over by a war-chief These
tribes spread quickly over northern India and the Deccan In a process that we do not understand the basic
social unit of Aryan culture the jana slowly developed from an organization based on kinship to one
based on geography The jana became a janapada or nation and the jana-rajya or tribal kingdom
became the jana-rajyapada or national kingdom So powerfully ingrained into Indian culture is the
jana-pada that Indians still define themselves mainly by their territorial origins All the major territories
of modern India with their separate cultures and separate languages can be dated back to the early jana-
padas of Vedic India
The earliest history of the Aryans in India is called the Rigvedic Period (1700-1000 BC) after the
religious praise poems that are the oldest pieces of literature in India These poems the Rig Veda are
believed to represent the most primitive layer of
Indo-European religion and have many characteristics in common with Persian religion since the two
peoples are closely related in time In this early period their population was restricted to the Punjab in the
northern reaches of the Indus River and the Yamuna River near the Ganges They maintained the Aryan
tribal structure with a raja ruling over the tribal group in tandem with a council Each jana seems to have
had a chief priest the religion was focused almost entirely on a series of sacrifices to the gods The
Rigvedic peoples originally had only two social classes nobles and commoners Eventually they added a
third Dasas or darks These were we presume the darker-skinned people they had conquered By the
end of the Rigvedic period social class had settled into four rigid castes the caturvarnas or four
colors At the top of the caturvarnas were the priests or Brahmans Below the priests were the warriors
or nobles (Kshatriya) the craftspeople and merchants (Vaishya) and the servants (Shudra) who made
up the bulk of society These economic classes were legitimated by an elaborate religious system and
would be eventually subdivided into a huge number of economic sub-classes which we call castes
Social class by the end of the Rigvedic period became completely inflexible there was no such thing as
social mobility
In the early centuries of Later Vedic Period or Brahmanic Period (1000-500 BC) the Aryans
migrated across the Doab which is a large plain which separates the Yamuna River from the Ganges It
was a difficult project for the Doab was thickly forested the Aryans slowly burned and settled the Doab
until they reached the Ganges While the Rig Veda represents the most primitive religion of the Aryans
during the Rigvedic Period the religion of the Later Vedic period is dominated by the Brahmanas or
priestly book which was composed sometime between 1000 and 850 BC Later Vedic society is
dominated by the Brahmans and every aspect of Aryan life comes under the control of priestly rituals and
spells In history as the Indians understand it the Later Vedic Period is the Epic Age the great literary
heroic epics of Indian culture the Mahabharata and the Ramayana though they were composed
between 500 and 200 BC were probably originally formulated and told in the Later Vedic Period Both of
these epics deal with heroes from this period and demonstrate how Aryan cultural values as we can
understand them from the Rig Veda are being transformed by mixing with Indus cultures
What did the Aryans do with their time They seem to have had a well-developed musical culture and
song and dance dominated their society They were not greatly invested in the visual arts but their interest
in lyric poetry was unmatched They loved gambling They did not however have much interest in
writing even though they could have inherited a civilization and a writing system when they originally
settled India We do not know exactly when they became interested in writing but it may have been at the
end of the Brahmanic period somewhere between 650 and 500 BC Still there are no Aryan writings until
the Mauryan periodmdashfrom Harappa (2500-1750 BC) to Maurya (300 BC) is quite a long time The script
that the Mauryans used is called Brahmi script and was used to write not only the religious and literary
language of the time Sanskrit but also the vernacular languages This script Brahmi is the national
alphabet of India
The Vedic period then is a period of cultural mixing not of conquest Although the Aryans were a
conquering people when they first spread into India the culture of the Aryans would gradually mix with
indigenous cultures and the war-religion of the Aryans still preserved in parts of the Rig Veda slowly
became more ritualized and more meditative By 200 BC this process of mixing and transforming was
more or less complete and the culture we call Indian was fully formed
Were they Copycats or Geniuses How did the Harappans take the great leap from self-contained agricultural societies to a trade-oriented
luxury-conscious sophisticated urban civilization that gave the world the concept of town planning
Analyzing the evidence from various sites Possehl found that between 2600 BC and 2500 BC the
Harappans experienced a century of cathartic changes Before this he finds no breadboard models of the
expansion to come be it the invention of writing or the awesome town-planning techniques A
tremendous jump in human ability is evident So what or who caused it
In the past the reputed British archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler argued that ideas have wings and that
the Harappans were influenced by their trade contacts with the Sumerians But the diffusion theory of
civilization as it is called is slowly being given the heave-ho Cambridge historian Raymond Allchin an
authority on the subject says We are now beginning to see the foundation being laid in the preceding
100 to 200 years in smaller sites There appears to be a completely organic process of growth that threw
up the Harappan culture as we know it
Yet the evidence of that process continues to be scanty In Kunal in Haryana archaeologists recently
found what are known as proto Indus seals On pottery on many of the smaller sites in both India and
Pakistan graffiti similar to some figures on the script begin to appear And at Dholavira and at Banawali
in Haryana the distinction between the citadel and the lower city is beginning to evolve There is
however a huge jump in scale in such activity in those critical 100 years For in Harappa as in most
Indus sites the distinct gridiron pattern for streets appear a scientific system of drainage that linked up to
even the smallest house in the lower city is established precise weights and measures begin to circulate
and the writing system evolves So were the Harappans copycats Archaeologists say the Indus people
couldnrsquot have copied their town-planning from Egypt and Mesopotamia because in those civilizations the
roads meandered like village streets Nor was the writing similar to Sumer`s cuneiform or the Egyptian
hieroglyphics The Harappans had their own distinctive style Lal explains the dramatic change as a result
of centuries of growth reaching a critical mass that caused an unparalleled urban explosion Trade he
believes was the driving force of the revolution Even a skeptic like Possehl maintains that these are
indeed an expression of the Indian genius
Did Aryans kill them or a Depression Archaeologists are known to stumble but the kind of knocking Wheeler has taken over his Aryan
invasion theory has few parallels When the British archaeologist discovered a dozen skeletons in
Mohenjodaro he propounded a theory about the final massacre by marauding invaders that put an end to
the Indus civilization When an Indian scholar told him of Hariyuppa being mentioned in the Rigveda he
took it to mean Harappa And since a fort was known as pur and Indira the Aryan god was known as
Purandhara or destroyer of forts it all fitted neatly
After all werenrsquot the Indus cities among the most fortified Yet the past 50 years and more so the last
decade has shown just how wrong Wheeler was The last massacre theory was his imagination running
riot Far from being snuffed out there was a brilliant resurgence of Indus culture further south for a while
Possehl who made a recent study found that in 2000 BC in Pakistanrsquos Sindh district the sites were down
from 86 to 6 and in Cholistan 174 to 41 But in India the sites in Haryana Punjab and Rajasthan exploded
from 218 to 853 Possehl asks How can this be construed as an eclipse We are looking at a highly
mobile people
Allchin argues that there is clear indication that the rainfall pattern which had initially brought fertility
had become adverse in the Sindh region And theories that given the instability of the Himalayan region
there may have been a massive earthquake that possibly changed the course of rivers such as the Sarasvati
and affected many Indus cities The Indus people then migrated eastward Lal talks of steep decline in
trade because of problems in Sumer that resulted in a Great Depression and turned many urban centers
into ghost cities
Bisht concurs with Lal but goes a step further He says that after the quake hit the heart of the civilization
the Indus people migrated east which acted like a sort of bypass to their woes And like a dying candle it
shone brilliantly again but briefly before being snuffed out Dholavira Banawali Mehrgarh Harappa -- in
fact all the major cities show that as the cities declined encroachments on streets that were unseen at its
peak began to occur with alarming regularity There was a breakdown in sanitation and cities like their
modern-day counterparts in India simply ran themselves aground They were replaced by massive squatter
colonies and an explosion of rural sites as people disillusioned with cities went back to farming
communities A giant step backward
Yet it wasnrsquot as if all came to naught as was earlier believed Some of the writings survived in the pottery
of the following ages The weight and decimal system too lived on And so did the bullock-cart
technology that the Indus had perfected Rather than a violent transition there may have been an orderly
interaction with oncoming Aryans Lal in his most recent book even puts across the most audacious
theory Could the Bronze Age Harappans be Aryans themselves He says this because of the presence of
fire worship and the discovery of horse remains and idols in Indus sites Meadows dismisses it as
premature and points out that it was more likely that ass remains were mistaken for that of a horsersquos And
that the Vedas showed a great antipathy for urban centers
Whatever the cause it would take another 1000 years for a semblance of civilization to return to the
subcontinent -- a dire warning to modern India of the catastrophe that can befall an errant populace
Environmental Stress in the Indus Valley Source Quotation from D P Agarwal and R K Sood in Gregory L Possehl ed Harappan Civilization A Contemporary Perspective (Warminster
England Aris and Phillips 1982)229
The three river-valley civilizations discussed in this chapter were located in arid or semiarid regions Such
regions are particularly vulnerable to changes in the environment Scholars debates about the existence
and impact of changes in the climate and landscape of the Indus Valley illuminate some of the potential
factors at work as well as the difficulties of verifying and interpreting such long-ago changes
One of the points at issue is climatic change An earlier generation of scholars believed that the climate
of the Indus Valley was considerably wetter during the height of that civilization than it is now As
evidence they cited the enormous quantities of timber cut from extensive forests that would have been
needed to bake the millions of mud bricks used to construct the cities (see photo) the distribution of
human settlements on land that is now unfavorable for agriculture and the representation of jungle and
marsh animals on decorated seals This approach assumes that the growth of population prosperity and
complexity in the Indus Valley in the third millennium BCE required wet conditions and it concludes
that the change to a drier climate in the early second millennium BCE pushed this civilization into
decline
Other experts skeptical about a radical climatic change countered with alternative calculations of the
amount of timber needed and evidence of plant remains-particularly barley a grain that is tolerant of dry
conditions However recent studies of the stabilization of sand dunes which occurs in periods of heavy
rainfall and analysis of the sediment deposited by rivers and winds have been used to strengthen the
claim that the Indus Valley used to be wetter and in the early-to-mid second millennium BCE entered a
period of relatively dry conditions that have persisted to the present
A much clearer case can be made for changes in the landscape caused by shifts in the courses of rivers
These shifts are due in many cases to tectonic forces such as earthquakes Dry channels whether
detected in satellite photographs or by on-the-ground inspection reveal the location of old riverbeds and
it appears that a second major river system the Hakra once ran parallel to the Indus some distance to the
east The Hakra with teeming towns and fertile fields along its banks appears to have been a second axis
of this civilization Either the Sutlej which now feeds into the Indus or the Yamuna which now pours
into the Ganges may have been the main source of water for this long-gone system before undergoing a
change of course The consequences of the drying-up of this major waterway must have been immense-
the loss of huge amounts of arable land and the food that it produced the abandonment of cities and
villages and consequent migration of their populations shifts in the trade routes and desperate
competition for shrinking resources
As for the Indus itself the present-day course of the lower reaches of the river has shifted 100 miles
(161 kilometers) to the west since the arrival of the Greek conqueror Alexander the Great in the late
fourth century BCE and the deposit of massive volumes of silt has pushed the mouth of the river 50
miles (80 kilometers) farther south Such a shift of the river bed and buildup of alluvial deposits also may
have occurred in the third and second millennia BCE
A recent study concludes It is obvious that ecological stresses caused both climatically and
technically played an important role in the life and decay of the Indus civilization
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity four Read the article below about the early Chinese dynasties Using information from
the article write an 800 word essay that describes the influence of the environment religion and
gender on the formation of the government of ancient China Again do NOT look up additional
information use only what is provided Also do NOT quote from the articles paraphrase and
summarize only Turn in your essay to wwwturnitincom before the first day of school
The Shang and Zhou Dynasties By 5000 BCE agricultural communities had spread through much of what is now called China and there
were agricultural villages from the Wei River Valley eastward parallel with the great Yellow River
(Huang He) which flowed out of the Kunlun Mountains to the deciduous forest and loess soil region of
the North China Plain Where people were free of forest and had access to water they grew millet -- as
early as 5500 BCE -- while they continued to hunt deer and other game to fish and gather food And they
raised dogs pigs and chickens They built one-room homes dug into the earth with roofs of clay or
thatch pit homes grouped in villages They had spinning wheels and knitted and wove fibers And they
made pottery decorated with art
Flooding along the Yellow River was worse than it was along the Yangzi River to the south Along the
Yangzi River through the Hubei Basin and on the coastal plain to Hangzhou Bay farming had also
developed but people along the Yellow River had to work harder at flood control and irrigation and
perhaps this stimulated a greater effort at organization At any rate the North China Plain became the
largest area with a relatively dense population
Where people were producing more food than they needed to survive warriors had the incentive not only
to plunder but also to conquer And conquering kings arose on the North China Plain as they did in West
Asia The first dynasty of kings in the North China Plain has been described as belonging to the Xia
family - whose rule is thought to have begun around 2200 BCE But the first dynasty of which there is
historical evidence is that of the Shang family The Shang clan came out of the Wei River Valley just west
of the North China Plain By around 1500 BCE give or take a century or so the Shang unified people
along the North China Plain The military had chariots each with an aristocrat archer a driver and
sometimes also a man with a spear The Shang built an empire in much the same way as other conquerors
by leaving behind a garrison force to police local people by turning a local king into a subservient ally
free to manage local matters and by taxing the conquered
Around 1384 BCE the Shang moved their capital to Yin As a regular pastime the Shang emperors and
nobles hunted in organized game drives Emperors and aristocrats had splendid homes with walls of
pounded earth or earthen bricks while common people continued to live in their pit homes of earlier times
A Shang emperor was chief priest and he had an administrative bureaucracy with councilors lesser
priests and diviners As with other warring civilizations slaves were taken the slaves laboring at growing
crops And women in Shang civilization were subservient to men with aristocratic women enjoying a
greater freedom and equality than common women The role of the woman was to be gentle calm
respectful and to obey her husband Women were lower than men and were subjected to womenrsquos work
(tending to the children and needs of the husband) Men also married multiple times and women were
used as concubines
During the Shang dynasty the civilization along the Yellow River had canals for irrigating crops
Communities had drains that ran water out of town They made beer from millet The stable government
allowed for extended trading and use of money in the form of cowry shells Shang merchants traded in
salt iron copper tin lead and antimony some of which had to be imported from far away As early as
the 1300 BCE a bronze casting industry had developed This was later than the rise of bronze casting in
Europe and West Asia but it was the most advanced in the world
It was around 1300 BCE that the first known writing appeared in Shang civilization because the
government officials needed to have questions answered that would allow them to better govern This
writing was for divination done on plate-like portions of the bones of cattle or deer on seashells and
turtle shells and perhaps on wood By applying a pointed heated rod to a bone or shell the item cracked
and to which written symbol the crack traveled gave answers for various questions what the weather was
going to be like would there be flood would a harvest succeed or fail when might be the best time for
hunting or fishing there were also personal questions about illness or whether one should make a journey
Shang Violence and Splendor
To the east north and south of Shang civilization were those the Shang saw as barbarians including the
farming people along the Yangzi River Shang emperors sent out armies to repulse invaders and the
Shang emperors went beyond their domains to plunder and to capture foreign peoples needed for sacrifice
to their gods Uncovered tombs of emperors from the Shang period indicate that they could put into the
field as many as three to five thousand soldiers Found buried with the emperors were their personal
ornaments and spears with bronze blades and the remains of what had been bows and arrows Buried with
the emperors were also horses and chariots for transporting soldiers to battle And with the emperors in
death were their charioteers dogs servants and people in groups of ten -- people who had been
ceremonially beheaded with bronze axes
Zhou Empire Religion and Human Sacrifice
Shang rule was threatened by forces from outside and from within its empire To the west of Shang
civilization in the Wei River Valley lived a pastoral people called Zhou who led an alliance that included
other tribal peoples neighboring Shang civilization While the Shang emperor Zhouxin was occupied by
a war against tribal people to his southeast rebellions broke out among people that Shang monarchs
before him had conquered The Zhou and their allies saw the Shang emperors troubles as an opportunity
to move against him and in 1045 BCE they overpowered him at the battle of Mu-ye and had him
beheaded
A dynasty of Zhou emperors began ruling what had been Shang civilization They claimed that all lands
belonged to heaven that they were the sons of heaven and therefore that all lands and all people were
their subjects Seeing the lands they had conquered as too vast for one man to dominate the Zhou
emperors divided these lands into regions and assigned someone to rule each region in their name
choosing for this position a close family member a trusted member of their clan or the chief of a tribe
that had been allied with them against the Shang
Each local ruler had at his disposal all the lands around him He had his own militia And from the Zhou
emperors the local rulers received gifts such as chariots bronze weapons servants and animals The local
rulers received the title of lord (gong) Local rulers passed their positions to their sons their titles of lord
becoming hereditary And to control their areas better the lords made sub-lords of those who had
dominated the common people before they arrived A hierarchy of status and obligations emerged among
families and within families with older brothers ranking higher than younger brothers with rules of
succession as to which of the males would head his family If a married aristocrat became infatuated with
another woman rather than drive his wife from his home he could bring the other woman into the family
as a concubine where she would rank beneath his wife
Zhou emperors told those they had conquered that they the Zhou had ousted the ancestors of Shang
emperors from heaven and that heaven was occupied by their supreme god a god they called The Lord
on High who they said had commanded the downfall of the Shang emperors Like emperors in West
Asia Zhou emperors claimed that they ruled by divine right They claimed that they represented on earth
the Lord on High and that it was their duty to mediate with the Lord on High to perform appropriate
sacrifices and to maintain a proper relationship between heaven and their subjects They claimed that any
opposition to their rule was opposition to the will of heaven
It was from the Zhou emperors that local lords received the right to act as a priest to perform sacrifices
to have certain hymns sung and certain dances performed the right to propitiate the gods of local
mountains streams and of the soil and crops Meanwhile local aristocrats continued to keep track of their
ancestral heritage They married with religious rites and sanctions while common folk continued to have
no such marriages no surnames or recorded ancestors They merely lived together and were recognized as
a couple by their neighbors
Ancestor worship was also very important to the Shang It was thought that the success of crops and the
health and well being of people were based on the happiness of dead ancestors
The worship of various gods from the Shang period included gods of grain rain and agriculture -- one of
whom was believed to have had a virgin birth Among these gods was a god of the Yellow River who had
the body of a fish but the face of a man
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity five Research the social hierarchy religion political organization writing systems and
technological aspects of the societies listed on the SNAPSHOT Early Agricultural Societies Describe each aspect
of the society using specific evidence - in one or two clear sentences (SEE EXAMPLE of Olmec Society) Write
VERY neatly in ink Bring this chart with you on the FIRST DAY of school
sixth test Conclusions about non-domesticability from the fact of non-domestication are not circular
because these six obstacles can be assessed independently
Why there were so few homelands of agriculture
Food production bestowed on farmers enormous demographic technological political and
military advantages over neighboring hunterndashgatherers The history of the past 13000 years consists of
tales of hunterndashgatherer societies becoming driven out infected conquered or exterminated by farming
societies in every area of the world suitable for farming One might therefore have naively anticipated
that in any part of the world one or more of the local hunterndashgatherer societies would have stumbled
upon domestication become farmers and thereby outcompeted the other local hunterndashgatherer societies
In fact food production arose independently in at most nine areas of the world (Fertile Crescent China
Mesoamerica AndesAmazonia eastern United States Sahel tropical West Africa Ethiopia and New
Guinea)
The puzzle increases when one scrutinizes that list of homelands One might again naively have
expected the areas most productive for farming today to correspond at least roughly to the areas most
productive in the past In reality the list of homelands and the list of breadbaskets of the modern world
are almost mutually exclusive (Fig 2) The latter list includes California North Americas Great Plains
Europe the pampas of Argentina the cape of southern Africa the Indian subcontinent Java and
Australias wheat belt Because these areas are evidently so well suited to farming or herding today why
were they not so in the past
Figure 2 Ancient and modern centers of agriculture
Ancient centers of origin of plant and animal domestication mdash the nine homelands of food
production mdash are indicated by the orange-shaded areas on the map The most agriculturally productive
areas of the modern world as judged by cereals and major staples are indicated by the yellow-shaded
areas Note that there is almost no overlap between the areas highlighted except that China appears on
both distributions and that the most productive areas of the central United States today approach areas of
the eastern United States where domestication originated The reason why the two distributions are so
different is that agriculture arose in areas to which the wild ancestors of the most valuable domesticable
crops and animals were native but other areas proved much more productive when those valuable
domesticates reached them
The explanation is that the homelands of agriculture were instead merely those regions to which
the most numerous and most valuable domesticable wild plant and animal species were native Only in
those areas were incipient early farmers able to out-compete local hunterndashgatherers Once those locally
available wild species had been domesticated and had spread outside the homelands societies of
homelands had no further advantage other than that of a head start and they were eventually overtaken by
societies of more fertile or climatically more favored areas outside the homelands
For instance the Fertile Crescent of southwest Asia was home to wild wheats barley peas sheep
goats cows and pigs mdash a list that includes what are still the most valuable crops and livestock of the
modern world Hence hunterndashgatherers of the Fertile Crescent domesticated those species and became the
worlds first farmers and herders beginning around 8500 BCE That head start in food production led to
them and their close neighbors also developing the worlds first metal tools writing empires and
professional armies Those tools of conquest and Fertile Crescent human genes gradually spread west
into Europe and North Africa and east into the western Indian subcontinent and central Asia However
once those crops livestock and human inventions had spread Fertile Crescent societies possessed no
other advantages As all of those elements slowly spread northwest across Europe farming and power
also shifted northwest from the Fertile Crescent to areas where farming had never arisen independently mdash
first to Greece then to Italy and finally to northwest Europe Human societies of the Fertile Crescent
inadvertently committed slow ecological suicide in a zone of low rainfall prone to deforestation soil
erosion and salinization
The spread of food production
From the homelands of domestication food production spread around the world in either of two
ways The much less common way was for hunterndashgatherers outside the homelands to acquire crops or
livestock from the homelands enabling them to settle down as farmers or herders as attested by
archaeological evidence for substantial continuity of material culture and by genetic linguistic and
skeletal evidence of continuity of human populations The clearest such example of local adoption of food
production is in southern Africa where around 2000 years ago some Khoisan hunterndashgatherers acquired
Eurasian livestock (cattle sheep and goats) arriving from the north and became herders (so-called
Hottentots) Much more often however local hunterndashgatherers had no opportunity to acquire crops and
livestock before they were overrun or replaced by farmers expanding out of the homelands exploiting
their demographic technological political and military advantages over the hunterndashgatherers
Expansions of crops livestock and even people and technologies tended to occur more rapidly along
eastndashwest axes than along northndashsouth axes1 (Fig 3) The reason is obvious locations at the same latitude
share identical day-lengths and seasonalities often share similar climates habitats and diseases and hence
require less evolutionary change or adaptation of domesticates technologies and cultures than do
locations at different latitudes Examples include the rapid westwards and eastwards dispersal of wheat
horses wheels and writing of western Asian origin and the westwards dispersal of chickens citrus and
peaches of Chinese origin along the eastndashwest axis of Eurasia This can be contrasted with the slow
spread of Eurasian livestock and non-spread of Eurasian crops southwards along Africas northndashsouth
axis the slow spread of Mexican corn and the non-spread of Mexican writing and wheels and Andean
llamas and potatoes along the Americas northndashsouth axis and the slow spread of food production
southwards along the northndashsouth axis of the Indian subcontinent
Figure 3 The continental major axis is oriented eastndashwest
for Eurasia but northndashsouth for the Americas and Africa
The spread of food production tended to occur more
rapidly along eastndashwest axes than along northndashsouth axes mainly
because locations at the same latitudes required less evolutionary
change or adaptation of domesticates than did locations at
different latitudes
This is not to deny the existence of ecological barriers at
the same latitude within Asia and North America but the general
pattern remains Eurasias eastndashwest axis and the resulting rapid enrichment of societies in each part of
Eurasia by crops and technologies from other parts of Eurasia became one of the main ultimate reasons
why Eurasian peoples conquered Native American peoples rather than vice versa Eurasias eastndashwest
axis also explains why there is much less evidence for multiple independent domestications of the same
plant species (see below) and much more evidence for agriculturally driven language expansions in
Eurasia than in the Americas
Consequences of domestication Consequences for human societies
Beginning around 8500 BCE the transition from the hunterndashgatherer lifestyle to food production
enabled people to settle down next to their permanent gardens orchards and pastures instead of migrating
to follow seasonal shifts in wild food supplies (Some hunterndashgatherer societies in especially productive
environments were also sedentary but most were not) Food production was accompanied by a human
population explosion that has continued unabated to this day resulting from two separate factors First
the sedentary lifestyle permitted shorter birth intervals Nomadic hunterndashgatherers had previously spaced
out birth intervals at four years or more because a mother shifting camp can carry only one infant or slow
toddler Second plant and animal species that are edible to humans can be cultivated in much higher
density in our gardens orchards and pastures than in wild habitats
Food production also led to an explosion of technology because sedentary living permitted the
accumulation of heavy technology (such as forges and printing presses) that nomadic hunterndashgatherers
could not carry and because the storable food surpluses resulting from agriculture could be used to feed
full-time craftspeople and inventors By also feeding full-time kings bureaucrats nobles and soldiers
those food surpluses led to social stratification political centralization and standing armies All of these
overwhelming advantages are what enabled farmers eventually to displace hunterndashgatherers
Evolution of epidemic infectious diseases
The main killers of humans since the advent of agriculture have been acute highly infectious
epidemic diseases that are confined to humans and that either kill the victim quickly or if the victim
recovers immunize himher for life Such diseases could not have existed before the origins of
agriculture because they can sustain themselves only in large dense populations that did not exist before
agriculture hence they are often termed crowd diseases The mystery of the origins of many of these
diseases has been solved by molecular biological studies of recent decades demonstrating that they
evolved from similar epidemic diseases of our herd domestic animals with which we began to come into
close contact 10000 years ago Thus the evolution of these diseases depended on two separate roles of
domestication in creating much denser human populations and in permitting much more frequent
transmission of animal diseases from our domesticates than from hunted wild animals For instance
measles and tuberculosis arose from diseases of cattle influenza from a disease of pigs and ducks1 An
outstanding mystery remains the origins of smallpox did it reach us from camels or from cattle
Crowd diseases paradoxically became agents of conquest because exposed individuals acquired
immune resistance from childhood exposure and exposed populations gradually evolved genetic
resistance but unexposed populations had neither type of resistance In practice because 13 of our 14
large domestic mammals were Eurasian species evolution of crowd diseases was concentrated in Eurasia
and the diseases became the most important agents by which Eurasian colonists expanding overseas killed
indigenous peoples of the Americas Australia Pacific islands and southern Africa
The agricultural expansions
Because some peoples acquired domesticates before other peoples could and because
domesticates conferred eventual advantages such as guns germs and steel on the possessors the history
of the past 10000 years has consisted of farmers replacing hunterndashgatherers or less advanced farmers
These agricultural expansions originating mainly from the nine homelands of agriculture remade genetic
and linguistic maps of the world Among the most discussed (and often highly controversial) possible
examples are the expansions of Bantu-speaking farmers out of tropical West Africa over subequatorial
Africa Austronesian-speaking farmers out of Taiwan over Island Southeast Asia Fertile Crescent farmers
over Europe and Korean farmers over Japan
Activity three Without the ability to translate their writing script archaeologists today do not
understand nearly as much about the Indus River Valley civilization that flourished from 2600 to
1900 BCE although the artifacts found there have enhanced our knowledge of these ancient
peoples One mystery is what exactly happened to the civilizations of the Indus River Valley
Mesopotamia and Egypt were later absorbed into a broader Hellenistic and later Roman cultural
zone but civilization in the Indus River Valley instead disappeared Study the map and read the
articles ldquoThe Myth of the Aryan Invasion of Indiardquo ldquoWere they Copycats or Geniusesrdquo
ldquoEnvironment and Technology Environmental Stress in the Indus River Valleyrdquo and ldquoDid Aryans
kill them or a depressionrdquo Write an 800 word essay that addresses the following question
What are the debates that center around the disappearance of this ancient civilization (Include
examples from the articles) Do NOT go on-line and attempt to find any more information Do
NOT quote from the articles Turn in your essay to wwwturnitincom before the first day of
school
River Valley Civilizations
The Indus Valley Civilization was the first major urban culture of South Asia It reached its peak
from 2600 BC to 1900 BC roughly a period called by some archaeologists Mature Harappan as
distinguished from the earlier Neolithic Early Harappan regional cultures Spatially it is huge
comprising of about 1000 settlements of varying sizes and geographically includes almost all of modern
Pakistan parts of India as far east as Delhi and as far south as Bombay and parts of Afghanistan
The main corpus of writing dated from the Indus Civilization is in the form of some two thousand
inscribed seals in good legible conditions (In case you dont know what seals are they are used to make
impressions on malleable material like clay)
Although these seals and samples of Indus writing have been floating around the scholastic world
for close to 70 years little progress has been made on deciphering this elegant script However we should
not blame scholars for their lack of progress for there are some major impediments to decipherment
1 Very short and brief texts The average number of symbols on the seals is 5 and the longest is
only 26
2 The language underneath is unknown
3 Lack of bilingual texts
For instance consider Champollion who deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs with all of these 3
important clues there were very long Egyptian texts he knew Coptic a descendant of Egyptian and the
Rosetta Stone a bilingual text between Greek and two written forms of Egyptian
But the script isnt as bad as undecipherable For one even though scholars dont have long texts
and bilingual texts they can still theorize about the language underneath the writing system There are
several competing theories about the language that the Indus script represent
A The language is completely unrelated to anything else meaning an isolate Well this doesnt get
us anywhere
B The language is Aryan (some form of Indian-Iranian Indo-European) The historical languages
spoken in Northern India and Pakistan all belong to the Indic branch of Indo-European including
Sanskrit Hindi Punjabi etc so maybe the people of the Indus valley spoke a very old Indo-
European language
The major problem with this model is the fact that horses played a very important role in all Indo-
European cultures being a people constantly on the move There is no escape from the fact that
the horse played a central role in the Vedic and Iranian cultures (Parpola 1986) Sidenote
Vedic means from the time of the Vedas the earliest text in India and the Vedic culture is from
around 1500 to 500 BC However no depiction of horses on seals nor any remains of horses have
been found so far before 2000 BC They only appear after 2000 BC Very likely there were no
Aryan speakers present before 2000 BC in the Indus Valley
C The language belongs to the Munda family of languages The Munda family is spoken largely in
eastern India and related to some Southeast Asian languages Like Aryan the reconstructed
vocabulary of early Munda does not reflect the Harappan culture So its candidacy for being the
language of the Indus Civilization is dim
D The language is Dravidian The Dravidian family of languages is spoken in Southern Indian but
Brahui is spoken in modern Pakistan So far this is the most promising model as in the following
points
o There are many Dravidian influences visible in the Vedic texts If the Aryan language
gradually replaced the Dravidian features from Dravidian would form a substratum in
Aryan One of these features is the appearance of retroflex consonants in Indian languages
both Indo-European and Dravidian In contrast retroflex consonants do not appear in any
other Indo-European language not even Iranian ones which are closest to Indic (For more
information on retroflex consonants please visit my Phonetics page)
o Another possible indication of Dravidian in the Indus texts is from structural analysis of
the texts which suggests that the language underneath is possibly agglutinative from the
fact that sign groups often have the same initial signs but different final signs The number
of these final signs range between 1 to 3 The final signs possibly represent grammatical
suffixes that modify the word (represented by the initial signs) Each suffix would
represent one specific modification and the entire cluster of suffixes would therefore put
the word through a series of modifications This suffix system can be found in Dravidian
but not Indo-European Indo-European tongues tend to change the final sounds to modify
the meaning of a word (a process called inflection) but repeated addition of sounds to the
end of word is extremely rare Often many suffixes in an agglutinative language
correspond to a single inflectional ending in an inflectional language
The Dravidian model isnt just an unapplicable theoryBut first we have to know what kind of
writing system is the Indus script
A count of the number of signs reveal a lot about the type of system being used Alphabetic
systems rarely have more than 40 symbols Syllabic systems like Linear B or Cherokee typically have 40
to 100 or so symbols The third ranges from logophonetic to logographic running upwards of hundreds of
signs (like 500 signs in Hieroglyphic Luwian and 5000 symbols in modern Chinese)
It appears that the maximum number of Indus script symbols is 400 although there are 200 basic
signs (ie signs that are not combined from others) This means that the Indus script is probably
logophonetic in that it has both signs used for their meanings and signs used for their phonetic values
Many signs start off as pictorial representation of a physical object often misleadingly called
pictograms They really are should be called logograms because they represent words in the language
However its next to impossible to write out a word with abstract meaning pictorially What all early
writers figured out was to use a logogram not for the object or idea it was originally supposed to stand for
but for all words sounding similar to the original word for that object or idea For example in English to
write leave we can use a picture of a leaf This is called rebus writing and is a tremendously common
pattern in all early writing systems We could also then use the same leaf symbol to stand for the sound
in relief adding another symbol in front of the leaf symbol in order to indicate the re sound So the
logogram gained a phonetic value as well
Testing the theory How can we take the theoretical framework so far and apply it to archaeological data
Numerals seem to represented by vertical lines (represented by number of lines in the glyph) but
they only go up to 7 Analysis reveal 4 more signs that appear in the same context as these numerals and
so they likely represent numbers higher than 7
The fact that no vertical-line numeral sign denotes 8 very likely means the Harappan language is
based 8 (For example the Arabic numerals that we use has symbols from 0 to 9 and to write ten we
have to combined the symbols 1 and 0 which identify our number system as based ten)
Base 8 languages are rare in the world but it does appear that early Dravidian is base 8 but later
changed to base 10 (possibly under Indo-European influence) When translated the count from 1 to 7 is
familiar to us one two three four five six seven However above seven the numbers
etymologies become non-numerical 8 is number 9 is many minus one and 10 is many (Fairservis
1983)
But can we actually read (not interpret) any symbol on the seals We should start with pictograms as
this one
Many scholars (Knorozov Parpola Mahadevan etc) see this sign as a fish
Fish in reconstructed Proto-Dravidian is micircn Coincidentally micircn is also the word for star
On many pots from Mohenjo Daro an Indus site there are drawings of fish and stars together and so
affirming this linguistic association
Going further often the numeral six appears before the fish Either it means 6 fish or
6 stars Old Tamil (a Dravidian language still spoken today) texts from just around the 1st
century AD recorded the name of the Pleiades a star cluster visible during autumn and
winter just above Orion as Six-Stars or aru-micircn Throughout the world titles with celestial
connotations are very common and the clause Six Stars forming part or whole of a Harappan title is not
unreasonable (Parpola 1986)
Sometimes symbols are added to the basic sign to make new signs Of these the one that
looks like a circumflex accent placed on top of the fish is quite interesting It is theorized to mean
roof and in Proto-Dravidian it is vecircymecircy This is phonetically similar to Proto-Dravidian word
for black may Together with fish it spells out mai-m-micircn or black star which in Old Tamil
means the planet Saturn In Sanskrit texts Saturn is associate the color black The god of death Yama is
the presiding of this planet and is usually depicted as riding on a dark buffalo
But the fish reading isnt accepted by all scholars William Fairservis saw it as a combination of
a loom twist and a human sign and form a honorific title pertaining to rulership (Fairservis 1983) I
however am more inclined to accept the fish identification
This is a quick overview of the current process in the decipherment of the Indus script For more
information you can either go to the following links or go to a good library for books and articles (check
out my references)
The Myth of the Aryan Invasion of India Richard Hooker 1996
They called themselves the noble ones or the superior ones Their names are lost their tribal names
are lost But when they found themselves conquerors they gave themselves the name superior or
noble
They were a tribal and nomadic peoples living in the far reaches of Euro-Asia in hostile steppe lands
barely scratching out a living They were unquestionably a tough people and they were fierce and war-
like Their religion reflects it dominated as it is by a storm-god or sky-god that enjoins warfare and
conquest This god was called something like Dyaus a word related to Zeus deus (the Latin word
for god) deva (the Sanskrit word for god) and of course the English word divine Their culture
was oriented around warfare and they were very good at it They were superior on horseback and rushed
into battle in chariots They were a tribal people ruled over by a war-chief or raja (the Latin word rex
(king) comes from the same root word along with the English regal) Somewhere in the early centuries
of the second millennium BC they began to migrate southwards in waves of steady conquest across the
face of Persia and the lands of India
There they would take on the name superior or noble to distinguish themselves from the people
they conquered Their name is derived from the Indo-European root word ar meaning noble In
Sanskrit they were the Aryas (Aryans) but that root ar would also serve as the foundation of the
name of the conquered Persian territories Iran This concept of nobility in fact seems to lie at the heart
of Indo-European consciousness for it appears in another countrys name Ireland or Eire You can
bet however that when a people go around calling themselves superior that it spells bad news for other
people
And there is no question that they were bad news for the southern Asians They swept over Persia with
lightening speed and spread across the northern river plains of India Their natures as a warlike
conquering people are still preserved in Vedic religion the foundation of Hinduism In the Rig Veda the
collection of praises to the gods the god Indra towers over the poetry as a conquering god one that
smashes cities and slays enemies The invading Aryans were originally nomadic peoples not agricultural
They penetrated India from the north-west settling first in the Indus valley Unlike the Harappans
however they eventually concentrated their populations along the Ganges floodplain The Ganges unlike
the Indus is far milder and more predictable in its flooding It must have been a paradise to a people from
the dry steppes of central Asia and Iran a paradise full of water and forest When they arrived the vast
northern plains were almost certainly densely forested Where now bare fields stretch to the horizon
when the Aryans arrived lush forests stretched to those very same horizons Clearing the forests over the
centuries was an epic project and one that is still preserved in Indian literature
The Aryans or Vedic civilization were a new start in Indian culture Harappa was more or less a dead
end (at least as far as we know) the Aryans adopted almost nothing of Harappan culture They built no
cities no states no granaries and used no writing Instead they were a warlike people that organized
themselves in individual tribal kinship units the jana The jana was ruled over by a war-chief These
tribes spread quickly over northern India and the Deccan In a process that we do not understand the basic
social unit of Aryan culture the jana slowly developed from an organization based on kinship to one
based on geography The jana became a janapada or nation and the jana-rajya or tribal kingdom
became the jana-rajyapada or national kingdom So powerfully ingrained into Indian culture is the
jana-pada that Indians still define themselves mainly by their territorial origins All the major territories
of modern India with their separate cultures and separate languages can be dated back to the early jana-
padas of Vedic India
The earliest history of the Aryans in India is called the Rigvedic Period (1700-1000 BC) after the
religious praise poems that are the oldest pieces of literature in India These poems the Rig Veda are
believed to represent the most primitive layer of
Indo-European religion and have many characteristics in common with Persian religion since the two
peoples are closely related in time In this early period their population was restricted to the Punjab in the
northern reaches of the Indus River and the Yamuna River near the Ganges They maintained the Aryan
tribal structure with a raja ruling over the tribal group in tandem with a council Each jana seems to have
had a chief priest the religion was focused almost entirely on a series of sacrifices to the gods The
Rigvedic peoples originally had only two social classes nobles and commoners Eventually they added a
third Dasas or darks These were we presume the darker-skinned people they had conquered By the
end of the Rigvedic period social class had settled into four rigid castes the caturvarnas or four
colors At the top of the caturvarnas were the priests or Brahmans Below the priests were the warriors
or nobles (Kshatriya) the craftspeople and merchants (Vaishya) and the servants (Shudra) who made
up the bulk of society These economic classes were legitimated by an elaborate religious system and
would be eventually subdivided into a huge number of economic sub-classes which we call castes
Social class by the end of the Rigvedic period became completely inflexible there was no such thing as
social mobility
In the early centuries of Later Vedic Period or Brahmanic Period (1000-500 BC) the Aryans
migrated across the Doab which is a large plain which separates the Yamuna River from the Ganges It
was a difficult project for the Doab was thickly forested the Aryans slowly burned and settled the Doab
until they reached the Ganges While the Rig Veda represents the most primitive religion of the Aryans
during the Rigvedic Period the religion of the Later Vedic period is dominated by the Brahmanas or
priestly book which was composed sometime between 1000 and 850 BC Later Vedic society is
dominated by the Brahmans and every aspect of Aryan life comes under the control of priestly rituals and
spells In history as the Indians understand it the Later Vedic Period is the Epic Age the great literary
heroic epics of Indian culture the Mahabharata and the Ramayana though they were composed
between 500 and 200 BC were probably originally formulated and told in the Later Vedic Period Both of
these epics deal with heroes from this period and demonstrate how Aryan cultural values as we can
understand them from the Rig Veda are being transformed by mixing with Indus cultures
What did the Aryans do with their time They seem to have had a well-developed musical culture and
song and dance dominated their society They were not greatly invested in the visual arts but their interest
in lyric poetry was unmatched They loved gambling They did not however have much interest in
writing even though they could have inherited a civilization and a writing system when they originally
settled India We do not know exactly when they became interested in writing but it may have been at the
end of the Brahmanic period somewhere between 650 and 500 BC Still there are no Aryan writings until
the Mauryan periodmdashfrom Harappa (2500-1750 BC) to Maurya (300 BC) is quite a long time The script
that the Mauryans used is called Brahmi script and was used to write not only the religious and literary
language of the time Sanskrit but also the vernacular languages This script Brahmi is the national
alphabet of India
The Vedic period then is a period of cultural mixing not of conquest Although the Aryans were a
conquering people when they first spread into India the culture of the Aryans would gradually mix with
indigenous cultures and the war-religion of the Aryans still preserved in parts of the Rig Veda slowly
became more ritualized and more meditative By 200 BC this process of mixing and transforming was
more or less complete and the culture we call Indian was fully formed
Were they Copycats or Geniuses How did the Harappans take the great leap from self-contained agricultural societies to a trade-oriented
luxury-conscious sophisticated urban civilization that gave the world the concept of town planning
Analyzing the evidence from various sites Possehl found that between 2600 BC and 2500 BC the
Harappans experienced a century of cathartic changes Before this he finds no breadboard models of the
expansion to come be it the invention of writing or the awesome town-planning techniques A
tremendous jump in human ability is evident So what or who caused it
In the past the reputed British archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler argued that ideas have wings and that
the Harappans were influenced by their trade contacts with the Sumerians But the diffusion theory of
civilization as it is called is slowly being given the heave-ho Cambridge historian Raymond Allchin an
authority on the subject says We are now beginning to see the foundation being laid in the preceding
100 to 200 years in smaller sites There appears to be a completely organic process of growth that threw
up the Harappan culture as we know it
Yet the evidence of that process continues to be scanty In Kunal in Haryana archaeologists recently
found what are known as proto Indus seals On pottery on many of the smaller sites in both India and
Pakistan graffiti similar to some figures on the script begin to appear And at Dholavira and at Banawali
in Haryana the distinction between the citadel and the lower city is beginning to evolve There is
however a huge jump in scale in such activity in those critical 100 years For in Harappa as in most
Indus sites the distinct gridiron pattern for streets appear a scientific system of drainage that linked up to
even the smallest house in the lower city is established precise weights and measures begin to circulate
and the writing system evolves So were the Harappans copycats Archaeologists say the Indus people
couldnrsquot have copied their town-planning from Egypt and Mesopotamia because in those civilizations the
roads meandered like village streets Nor was the writing similar to Sumer`s cuneiform or the Egyptian
hieroglyphics The Harappans had their own distinctive style Lal explains the dramatic change as a result
of centuries of growth reaching a critical mass that caused an unparalleled urban explosion Trade he
believes was the driving force of the revolution Even a skeptic like Possehl maintains that these are
indeed an expression of the Indian genius
Did Aryans kill them or a Depression Archaeologists are known to stumble but the kind of knocking Wheeler has taken over his Aryan
invasion theory has few parallels When the British archaeologist discovered a dozen skeletons in
Mohenjodaro he propounded a theory about the final massacre by marauding invaders that put an end to
the Indus civilization When an Indian scholar told him of Hariyuppa being mentioned in the Rigveda he
took it to mean Harappa And since a fort was known as pur and Indira the Aryan god was known as
Purandhara or destroyer of forts it all fitted neatly
After all werenrsquot the Indus cities among the most fortified Yet the past 50 years and more so the last
decade has shown just how wrong Wheeler was The last massacre theory was his imagination running
riot Far from being snuffed out there was a brilliant resurgence of Indus culture further south for a while
Possehl who made a recent study found that in 2000 BC in Pakistanrsquos Sindh district the sites were down
from 86 to 6 and in Cholistan 174 to 41 But in India the sites in Haryana Punjab and Rajasthan exploded
from 218 to 853 Possehl asks How can this be construed as an eclipse We are looking at a highly
mobile people
Allchin argues that there is clear indication that the rainfall pattern which had initially brought fertility
had become adverse in the Sindh region And theories that given the instability of the Himalayan region
there may have been a massive earthquake that possibly changed the course of rivers such as the Sarasvati
and affected many Indus cities The Indus people then migrated eastward Lal talks of steep decline in
trade because of problems in Sumer that resulted in a Great Depression and turned many urban centers
into ghost cities
Bisht concurs with Lal but goes a step further He says that after the quake hit the heart of the civilization
the Indus people migrated east which acted like a sort of bypass to their woes And like a dying candle it
shone brilliantly again but briefly before being snuffed out Dholavira Banawali Mehrgarh Harappa -- in
fact all the major cities show that as the cities declined encroachments on streets that were unseen at its
peak began to occur with alarming regularity There was a breakdown in sanitation and cities like their
modern-day counterparts in India simply ran themselves aground They were replaced by massive squatter
colonies and an explosion of rural sites as people disillusioned with cities went back to farming
communities A giant step backward
Yet it wasnrsquot as if all came to naught as was earlier believed Some of the writings survived in the pottery
of the following ages The weight and decimal system too lived on And so did the bullock-cart
technology that the Indus had perfected Rather than a violent transition there may have been an orderly
interaction with oncoming Aryans Lal in his most recent book even puts across the most audacious
theory Could the Bronze Age Harappans be Aryans themselves He says this because of the presence of
fire worship and the discovery of horse remains and idols in Indus sites Meadows dismisses it as
premature and points out that it was more likely that ass remains were mistaken for that of a horsersquos And
that the Vedas showed a great antipathy for urban centers
Whatever the cause it would take another 1000 years for a semblance of civilization to return to the
subcontinent -- a dire warning to modern India of the catastrophe that can befall an errant populace
Environmental Stress in the Indus Valley Source Quotation from D P Agarwal and R K Sood in Gregory L Possehl ed Harappan Civilization A Contemporary Perspective (Warminster
England Aris and Phillips 1982)229
The three river-valley civilizations discussed in this chapter were located in arid or semiarid regions Such
regions are particularly vulnerable to changes in the environment Scholars debates about the existence
and impact of changes in the climate and landscape of the Indus Valley illuminate some of the potential
factors at work as well as the difficulties of verifying and interpreting such long-ago changes
One of the points at issue is climatic change An earlier generation of scholars believed that the climate
of the Indus Valley was considerably wetter during the height of that civilization than it is now As
evidence they cited the enormous quantities of timber cut from extensive forests that would have been
needed to bake the millions of mud bricks used to construct the cities (see photo) the distribution of
human settlements on land that is now unfavorable for agriculture and the representation of jungle and
marsh animals on decorated seals This approach assumes that the growth of population prosperity and
complexity in the Indus Valley in the third millennium BCE required wet conditions and it concludes
that the change to a drier climate in the early second millennium BCE pushed this civilization into
decline
Other experts skeptical about a radical climatic change countered with alternative calculations of the
amount of timber needed and evidence of plant remains-particularly barley a grain that is tolerant of dry
conditions However recent studies of the stabilization of sand dunes which occurs in periods of heavy
rainfall and analysis of the sediment deposited by rivers and winds have been used to strengthen the
claim that the Indus Valley used to be wetter and in the early-to-mid second millennium BCE entered a
period of relatively dry conditions that have persisted to the present
A much clearer case can be made for changes in the landscape caused by shifts in the courses of rivers
These shifts are due in many cases to tectonic forces such as earthquakes Dry channels whether
detected in satellite photographs or by on-the-ground inspection reveal the location of old riverbeds and
it appears that a second major river system the Hakra once ran parallel to the Indus some distance to the
east The Hakra with teeming towns and fertile fields along its banks appears to have been a second axis
of this civilization Either the Sutlej which now feeds into the Indus or the Yamuna which now pours
into the Ganges may have been the main source of water for this long-gone system before undergoing a
change of course The consequences of the drying-up of this major waterway must have been immense-
the loss of huge amounts of arable land and the food that it produced the abandonment of cities and
villages and consequent migration of their populations shifts in the trade routes and desperate
competition for shrinking resources
As for the Indus itself the present-day course of the lower reaches of the river has shifted 100 miles
(161 kilometers) to the west since the arrival of the Greek conqueror Alexander the Great in the late
fourth century BCE and the deposit of massive volumes of silt has pushed the mouth of the river 50
miles (80 kilometers) farther south Such a shift of the river bed and buildup of alluvial deposits also may
have occurred in the third and second millennia BCE
A recent study concludes It is obvious that ecological stresses caused both climatically and
technically played an important role in the life and decay of the Indus civilization
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity four Read the article below about the early Chinese dynasties Using information from
the article write an 800 word essay that describes the influence of the environment religion and
gender on the formation of the government of ancient China Again do NOT look up additional
information use only what is provided Also do NOT quote from the articles paraphrase and
summarize only Turn in your essay to wwwturnitincom before the first day of school
The Shang and Zhou Dynasties By 5000 BCE agricultural communities had spread through much of what is now called China and there
were agricultural villages from the Wei River Valley eastward parallel with the great Yellow River
(Huang He) which flowed out of the Kunlun Mountains to the deciduous forest and loess soil region of
the North China Plain Where people were free of forest and had access to water they grew millet -- as
early as 5500 BCE -- while they continued to hunt deer and other game to fish and gather food And they
raised dogs pigs and chickens They built one-room homes dug into the earth with roofs of clay or
thatch pit homes grouped in villages They had spinning wheels and knitted and wove fibers And they
made pottery decorated with art
Flooding along the Yellow River was worse than it was along the Yangzi River to the south Along the
Yangzi River through the Hubei Basin and on the coastal plain to Hangzhou Bay farming had also
developed but people along the Yellow River had to work harder at flood control and irrigation and
perhaps this stimulated a greater effort at organization At any rate the North China Plain became the
largest area with a relatively dense population
Where people were producing more food than they needed to survive warriors had the incentive not only
to plunder but also to conquer And conquering kings arose on the North China Plain as they did in West
Asia The first dynasty of kings in the North China Plain has been described as belonging to the Xia
family - whose rule is thought to have begun around 2200 BCE But the first dynasty of which there is
historical evidence is that of the Shang family The Shang clan came out of the Wei River Valley just west
of the North China Plain By around 1500 BCE give or take a century or so the Shang unified people
along the North China Plain The military had chariots each with an aristocrat archer a driver and
sometimes also a man with a spear The Shang built an empire in much the same way as other conquerors
by leaving behind a garrison force to police local people by turning a local king into a subservient ally
free to manage local matters and by taxing the conquered
Around 1384 BCE the Shang moved their capital to Yin As a regular pastime the Shang emperors and
nobles hunted in organized game drives Emperors and aristocrats had splendid homes with walls of
pounded earth or earthen bricks while common people continued to live in their pit homes of earlier times
A Shang emperor was chief priest and he had an administrative bureaucracy with councilors lesser
priests and diviners As with other warring civilizations slaves were taken the slaves laboring at growing
crops And women in Shang civilization were subservient to men with aristocratic women enjoying a
greater freedom and equality than common women The role of the woman was to be gentle calm
respectful and to obey her husband Women were lower than men and were subjected to womenrsquos work
(tending to the children and needs of the husband) Men also married multiple times and women were
used as concubines
During the Shang dynasty the civilization along the Yellow River had canals for irrigating crops
Communities had drains that ran water out of town They made beer from millet The stable government
allowed for extended trading and use of money in the form of cowry shells Shang merchants traded in
salt iron copper tin lead and antimony some of which had to be imported from far away As early as
the 1300 BCE a bronze casting industry had developed This was later than the rise of bronze casting in
Europe and West Asia but it was the most advanced in the world
It was around 1300 BCE that the first known writing appeared in Shang civilization because the
government officials needed to have questions answered that would allow them to better govern This
writing was for divination done on plate-like portions of the bones of cattle or deer on seashells and
turtle shells and perhaps on wood By applying a pointed heated rod to a bone or shell the item cracked
and to which written symbol the crack traveled gave answers for various questions what the weather was
going to be like would there be flood would a harvest succeed or fail when might be the best time for
hunting or fishing there were also personal questions about illness or whether one should make a journey
Shang Violence and Splendor
To the east north and south of Shang civilization were those the Shang saw as barbarians including the
farming people along the Yangzi River Shang emperors sent out armies to repulse invaders and the
Shang emperors went beyond their domains to plunder and to capture foreign peoples needed for sacrifice
to their gods Uncovered tombs of emperors from the Shang period indicate that they could put into the
field as many as three to five thousand soldiers Found buried with the emperors were their personal
ornaments and spears with bronze blades and the remains of what had been bows and arrows Buried with
the emperors were also horses and chariots for transporting soldiers to battle And with the emperors in
death were their charioteers dogs servants and people in groups of ten -- people who had been
ceremonially beheaded with bronze axes
Zhou Empire Religion and Human Sacrifice
Shang rule was threatened by forces from outside and from within its empire To the west of Shang
civilization in the Wei River Valley lived a pastoral people called Zhou who led an alliance that included
other tribal peoples neighboring Shang civilization While the Shang emperor Zhouxin was occupied by
a war against tribal people to his southeast rebellions broke out among people that Shang monarchs
before him had conquered The Zhou and their allies saw the Shang emperors troubles as an opportunity
to move against him and in 1045 BCE they overpowered him at the battle of Mu-ye and had him
beheaded
A dynasty of Zhou emperors began ruling what had been Shang civilization They claimed that all lands
belonged to heaven that they were the sons of heaven and therefore that all lands and all people were
their subjects Seeing the lands they had conquered as too vast for one man to dominate the Zhou
emperors divided these lands into regions and assigned someone to rule each region in their name
choosing for this position a close family member a trusted member of their clan or the chief of a tribe
that had been allied with them against the Shang
Each local ruler had at his disposal all the lands around him He had his own militia And from the Zhou
emperors the local rulers received gifts such as chariots bronze weapons servants and animals The local
rulers received the title of lord (gong) Local rulers passed their positions to their sons their titles of lord
becoming hereditary And to control their areas better the lords made sub-lords of those who had
dominated the common people before they arrived A hierarchy of status and obligations emerged among
families and within families with older brothers ranking higher than younger brothers with rules of
succession as to which of the males would head his family If a married aristocrat became infatuated with
another woman rather than drive his wife from his home he could bring the other woman into the family
as a concubine where she would rank beneath his wife
Zhou emperors told those they had conquered that they the Zhou had ousted the ancestors of Shang
emperors from heaven and that heaven was occupied by their supreme god a god they called The Lord
on High who they said had commanded the downfall of the Shang emperors Like emperors in West
Asia Zhou emperors claimed that they ruled by divine right They claimed that they represented on earth
the Lord on High and that it was their duty to mediate with the Lord on High to perform appropriate
sacrifices and to maintain a proper relationship between heaven and their subjects They claimed that any
opposition to their rule was opposition to the will of heaven
It was from the Zhou emperors that local lords received the right to act as a priest to perform sacrifices
to have certain hymns sung and certain dances performed the right to propitiate the gods of local
mountains streams and of the soil and crops Meanwhile local aristocrats continued to keep track of their
ancestral heritage They married with religious rites and sanctions while common folk continued to have
no such marriages no surnames or recorded ancestors They merely lived together and were recognized as
a couple by their neighbors
Ancestor worship was also very important to the Shang It was thought that the success of crops and the
health and well being of people were based on the happiness of dead ancestors
The worship of various gods from the Shang period included gods of grain rain and agriculture -- one of
whom was believed to have had a virgin birth Among these gods was a god of the Yellow River who had
the body of a fish but the face of a man
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity five Research the social hierarchy religion political organization writing systems and
technological aspects of the societies listed on the SNAPSHOT Early Agricultural Societies Describe each aspect
of the society using specific evidence - in one or two clear sentences (SEE EXAMPLE of Olmec Society) Write
VERY neatly in ink Bring this chart with you on the FIRST DAY of school
The explanation is that the homelands of agriculture were instead merely those regions to which
the most numerous and most valuable domesticable wild plant and animal species were native Only in
those areas were incipient early farmers able to out-compete local hunterndashgatherers Once those locally
available wild species had been domesticated and had spread outside the homelands societies of
homelands had no further advantage other than that of a head start and they were eventually overtaken by
societies of more fertile or climatically more favored areas outside the homelands
For instance the Fertile Crescent of southwest Asia was home to wild wheats barley peas sheep
goats cows and pigs mdash a list that includes what are still the most valuable crops and livestock of the
modern world Hence hunterndashgatherers of the Fertile Crescent domesticated those species and became the
worlds first farmers and herders beginning around 8500 BCE That head start in food production led to
them and their close neighbors also developing the worlds first metal tools writing empires and
professional armies Those tools of conquest and Fertile Crescent human genes gradually spread west
into Europe and North Africa and east into the western Indian subcontinent and central Asia However
once those crops livestock and human inventions had spread Fertile Crescent societies possessed no
other advantages As all of those elements slowly spread northwest across Europe farming and power
also shifted northwest from the Fertile Crescent to areas where farming had never arisen independently mdash
first to Greece then to Italy and finally to northwest Europe Human societies of the Fertile Crescent
inadvertently committed slow ecological suicide in a zone of low rainfall prone to deforestation soil
erosion and salinization
The spread of food production
From the homelands of domestication food production spread around the world in either of two
ways The much less common way was for hunterndashgatherers outside the homelands to acquire crops or
livestock from the homelands enabling them to settle down as farmers or herders as attested by
archaeological evidence for substantial continuity of material culture and by genetic linguistic and
skeletal evidence of continuity of human populations The clearest such example of local adoption of food
production is in southern Africa where around 2000 years ago some Khoisan hunterndashgatherers acquired
Eurasian livestock (cattle sheep and goats) arriving from the north and became herders (so-called
Hottentots) Much more often however local hunterndashgatherers had no opportunity to acquire crops and
livestock before they were overrun or replaced by farmers expanding out of the homelands exploiting
their demographic technological political and military advantages over the hunterndashgatherers
Expansions of crops livestock and even people and technologies tended to occur more rapidly along
eastndashwest axes than along northndashsouth axes1 (Fig 3) The reason is obvious locations at the same latitude
share identical day-lengths and seasonalities often share similar climates habitats and diseases and hence
require less evolutionary change or adaptation of domesticates technologies and cultures than do
locations at different latitudes Examples include the rapid westwards and eastwards dispersal of wheat
horses wheels and writing of western Asian origin and the westwards dispersal of chickens citrus and
peaches of Chinese origin along the eastndashwest axis of Eurasia This can be contrasted with the slow
spread of Eurasian livestock and non-spread of Eurasian crops southwards along Africas northndashsouth
axis the slow spread of Mexican corn and the non-spread of Mexican writing and wheels and Andean
llamas and potatoes along the Americas northndashsouth axis and the slow spread of food production
southwards along the northndashsouth axis of the Indian subcontinent
Figure 3 The continental major axis is oriented eastndashwest
for Eurasia but northndashsouth for the Americas and Africa
The spread of food production tended to occur more
rapidly along eastndashwest axes than along northndashsouth axes mainly
because locations at the same latitudes required less evolutionary
change or adaptation of domesticates than did locations at
different latitudes
This is not to deny the existence of ecological barriers at
the same latitude within Asia and North America but the general
pattern remains Eurasias eastndashwest axis and the resulting rapid enrichment of societies in each part of
Eurasia by crops and technologies from other parts of Eurasia became one of the main ultimate reasons
why Eurasian peoples conquered Native American peoples rather than vice versa Eurasias eastndashwest
axis also explains why there is much less evidence for multiple independent domestications of the same
plant species (see below) and much more evidence for agriculturally driven language expansions in
Eurasia than in the Americas
Consequences of domestication Consequences for human societies
Beginning around 8500 BCE the transition from the hunterndashgatherer lifestyle to food production
enabled people to settle down next to their permanent gardens orchards and pastures instead of migrating
to follow seasonal shifts in wild food supplies (Some hunterndashgatherer societies in especially productive
environments were also sedentary but most were not) Food production was accompanied by a human
population explosion that has continued unabated to this day resulting from two separate factors First
the sedentary lifestyle permitted shorter birth intervals Nomadic hunterndashgatherers had previously spaced
out birth intervals at four years or more because a mother shifting camp can carry only one infant or slow
toddler Second plant and animal species that are edible to humans can be cultivated in much higher
density in our gardens orchards and pastures than in wild habitats
Food production also led to an explosion of technology because sedentary living permitted the
accumulation of heavy technology (such as forges and printing presses) that nomadic hunterndashgatherers
could not carry and because the storable food surpluses resulting from agriculture could be used to feed
full-time craftspeople and inventors By also feeding full-time kings bureaucrats nobles and soldiers
those food surpluses led to social stratification political centralization and standing armies All of these
overwhelming advantages are what enabled farmers eventually to displace hunterndashgatherers
Evolution of epidemic infectious diseases
The main killers of humans since the advent of agriculture have been acute highly infectious
epidemic diseases that are confined to humans and that either kill the victim quickly or if the victim
recovers immunize himher for life Such diseases could not have existed before the origins of
agriculture because they can sustain themselves only in large dense populations that did not exist before
agriculture hence they are often termed crowd diseases The mystery of the origins of many of these
diseases has been solved by molecular biological studies of recent decades demonstrating that they
evolved from similar epidemic diseases of our herd domestic animals with which we began to come into
close contact 10000 years ago Thus the evolution of these diseases depended on two separate roles of
domestication in creating much denser human populations and in permitting much more frequent
transmission of animal diseases from our domesticates than from hunted wild animals For instance
measles and tuberculosis arose from diseases of cattle influenza from a disease of pigs and ducks1 An
outstanding mystery remains the origins of smallpox did it reach us from camels or from cattle
Crowd diseases paradoxically became agents of conquest because exposed individuals acquired
immune resistance from childhood exposure and exposed populations gradually evolved genetic
resistance but unexposed populations had neither type of resistance In practice because 13 of our 14
large domestic mammals were Eurasian species evolution of crowd diseases was concentrated in Eurasia
and the diseases became the most important agents by which Eurasian colonists expanding overseas killed
indigenous peoples of the Americas Australia Pacific islands and southern Africa
The agricultural expansions
Because some peoples acquired domesticates before other peoples could and because
domesticates conferred eventual advantages such as guns germs and steel on the possessors the history
of the past 10000 years has consisted of farmers replacing hunterndashgatherers or less advanced farmers
These agricultural expansions originating mainly from the nine homelands of agriculture remade genetic
and linguistic maps of the world Among the most discussed (and often highly controversial) possible
examples are the expansions of Bantu-speaking farmers out of tropical West Africa over subequatorial
Africa Austronesian-speaking farmers out of Taiwan over Island Southeast Asia Fertile Crescent farmers
over Europe and Korean farmers over Japan
Activity three Without the ability to translate their writing script archaeologists today do not
understand nearly as much about the Indus River Valley civilization that flourished from 2600 to
1900 BCE although the artifacts found there have enhanced our knowledge of these ancient
peoples One mystery is what exactly happened to the civilizations of the Indus River Valley
Mesopotamia and Egypt were later absorbed into a broader Hellenistic and later Roman cultural
zone but civilization in the Indus River Valley instead disappeared Study the map and read the
articles ldquoThe Myth of the Aryan Invasion of Indiardquo ldquoWere they Copycats or Geniusesrdquo
ldquoEnvironment and Technology Environmental Stress in the Indus River Valleyrdquo and ldquoDid Aryans
kill them or a depressionrdquo Write an 800 word essay that addresses the following question
What are the debates that center around the disappearance of this ancient civilization (Include
examples from the articles) Do NOT go on-line and attempt to find any more information Do
NOT quote from the articles Turn in your essay to wwwturnitincom before the first day of
school
River Valley Civilizations
The Indus Valley Civilization was the first major urban culture of South Asia It reached its peak
from 2600 BC to 1900 BC roughly a period called by some archaeologists Mature Harappan as
distinguished from the earlier Neolithic Early Harappan regional cultures Spatially it is huge
comprising of about 1000 settlements of varying sizes and geographically includes almost all of modern
Pakistan parts of India as far east as Delhi and as far south as Bombay and parts of Afghanistan
The main corpus of writing dated from the Indus Civilization is in the form of some two thousand
inscribed seals in good legible conditions (In case you dont know what seals are they are used to make
impressions on malleable material like clay)
Although these seals and samples of Indus writing have been floating around the scholastic world
for close to 70 years little progress has been made on deciphering this elegant script However we should
not blame scholars for their lack of progress for there are some major impediments to decipherment
1 Very short and brief texts The average number of symbols on the seals is 5 and the longest is
only 26
2 The language underneath is unknown
3 Lack of bilingual texts
For instance consider Champollion who deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs with all of these 3
important clues there were very long Egyptian texts he knew Coptic a descendant of Egyptian and the
Rosetta Stone a bilingual text between Greek and two written forms of Egyptian
But the script isnt as bad as undecipherable For one even though scholars dont have long texts
and bilingual texts they can still theorize about the language underneath the writing system There are
several competing theories about the language that the Indus script represent
A The language is completely unrelated to anything else meaning an isolate Well this doesnt get
us anywhere
B The language is Aryan (some form of Indian-Iranian Indo-European) The historical languages
spoken in Northern India and Pakistan all belong to the Indic branch of Indo-European including
Sanskrit Hindi Punjabi etc so maybe the people of the Indus valley spoke a very old Indo-
European language
The major problem with this model is the fact that horses played a very important role in all Indo-
European cultures being a people constantly on the move There is no escape from the fact that
the horse played a central role in the Vedic and Iranian cultures (Parpola 1986) Sidenote
Vedic means from the time of the Vedas the earliest text in India and the Vedic culture is from
around 1500 to 500 BC However no depiction of horses on seals nor any remains of horses have
been found so far before 2000 BC They only appear after 2000 BC Very likely there were no
Aryan speakers present before 2000 BC in the Indus Valley
C The language belongs to the Munda family of languages The Munda family is spoken largely in
eastern India and related to some Southeast Asian languages Like Aryan the reconstructed
vocabulary of early Munda does not reflect the Harappan culture So its candidacy for being the
language of the Indus Civilization is dim
D The language is Dravidian The Dravidian family of languages is spoken in Southern Indian but
Brahui is spoken in modern Pakistan So far this is the most promising model as in the following
points
o There are many Dravidian influences visible in the Vedic texts If the Aryan language
gradually replaced the Dravidian features from Dravidian would form a substratum in
Aryan One of these features is the appearance of retroflex consonants in Indian languages
both Indo-European and Dravidian In contrast retroflex consonants do not appear in any
other Indo-European language not even Iranian ones which are closest to Indic (For more
information on retroflex consonants please visit my Phonetics page)
o Another possible indication of Dravidian in the Indus texts is from structural analysis of
the texts which suggests that the language underneath is possibly agglutinative from the
fact that sign groups often have the same initial signs but different final signs The number
of these final signs range between 1 to 3 The final signs possibly represent grammatical
suffixes that modify the word (represented by the initial signs) Each suffix would
represent one specific modification and the entire cluster of suffixes would therefore put
the word through a series of modifications This suffix system can be found in Dravidian
but not Indo-European Indo-European tongues tend to change the final sounds to modify
the meaning of a word (a process called inflection) but repeated addition of sounds to the
end of word is extremely rare Often many suffixes in an agglutinative language
correspond to a single inflectional ending in an inflectional language
The Dravidian model isnt just an unapplicable theoryBut first we have to know what kind of
writing system is the Indus script
A count of the number of signs reveal a lot about the type of system being used Alphabetic
systems rarely have more than 40 symbols Syllabic systems like Linear B or Cherokee typically have 40
to 100 or so symbols The third ranges from logophonetic to logographic running upwards of hundreds of
signs (like 500 signs in Hieroglyphic Luwian and 5000 symbols in modern Chinese)
It appears that the maximum number of Indus script symbols is 400 although there are 200 basic
signs (ie signs that are not combined from others) This means that the Indus script is probably
logophonetic in that it has both signs used for their meanings and signs used for their phonetic values
Many signs start off as pictorial representation of a physical object often misleadingly called
pictograms They really are should be called logograms because they represent words in the language
However its next to impossible to write out a word with abstract meaning pictorially What all early
writers figured out was to use a logogram not for the object or idea it was originally supposed to stand for
but for all words sounding similar to the original word for that object or idea For example in English to
write leave we can use a picture of a leaf This is called rebus writing and is a tremendously common
pattern in all early writing systems We could also then use the same leaf symbol to stand for the sound
in relief adding another symbol in front of the leaf symbol in order to indicate the re sound So the
logogram gained a phonetic value as well
Testing the theory How can we take the theoretical framework so far and apply it to archaeological data
Numerals seem to represented by vertical lines (represented by number of lines in the glyph) but
they only go up to 7 Analysis reveal 4 more signs that appear in the same context as these numerals and
so they likely represent numbers higher than 7
The fact that no vertical-line numeral sign denotes 8 very likely means the Harappan language is
based 8 (For example the Arabic numerals that we use has symbols from 0 to 9 and to write ten we
have to combined the symbols 1 and 0 which identify our number system as based ten)
Base 8 languages are rare in the world but it does appear that early Dravidian is base 8 but later
changed to base 10 (possibly under Indo-European influence) When translated the count from 1 to 7 is
familiar to us one two three four five six seven However above seven the numbers
etymologies become non-numerical 8 is number 9 is many minus one and 10 is many (Fairservis
1983)
But can we actually read (not interpret) any symbol on the seals We should start with pictograms as
this one
Many scholars (Knorozov Parpola Mahadevan etc) see this sign as a fish
Fish in reconstructed Proto-Dravidian is micircn Coincidentally micircn is also the word for star
On many pots from Mohenjo Daro an Indus site there are drawings of fish and stars together and so
affirming this linguistic association
Going further often the numeral six appears before the fish Either it means 6 fish or
6 stars Old Tamil (a Dravidian language still spoken today) texts from just around the 1st
century AD recorded the name of the Pleiades a star cluster visible during autumn and
winter just above Orion as Six-Stars or aru-micircn Throughout the world titles with celestial
connotations are very common and the clause Six Stars forming part or whole of a Harappan title is not
unreasonable (Parpola 1986)
Sometimes symbols are added to the basic sign to make new signs Of these the one that
looks like a circumflex accent placed on top of the fish is quite interesting It is theorized to mean
roof and in Proto-Dravidian it is vecircymecircy This is phonetically similar to Proto-Dravidian word
for black may Together with fish it spells out mai-m-micircn or black star which in Old Tamil
means the planet Saturn In Sanskrit texts Saturn is associate the color black The god of death Yama is
the presiding of this planet and is usually depicted as riding on a dark buffalo
But the fish reading isnt accepted by all scholars William Fairservis saw it as a combination of
a loom twist and a human sign and form a honorific title pertaining to rulership (Fairservis 1983) I
however am more inclined to accept the fish identification
This is a quick overview of the current process in the decipherment of the Indus script For more
information you can either go to the following links or go to a good library for books and articles (check
out my references)
The Myth of the Aryan Invasion of India Richard Hooker 1996
They called themselves the noble ones or the superior ones Their names are lost their tribal names
are lost But when they found themselves conquerors they gave themselves the name superior or
noble
They were a tribal and nomadic peoples living in the far reaches of Euro-Asia in hostile steppe lands
barely scratching out a living They were unquestionably a tough people and they were fierce and war-
like Their religion reflects it dominated as it is by a storm-god or sky-god that enjoins warfare and
conquest This god was called something like Dyaus a word related to Zeus deus (the Latin word
for god) deva (the Sanskrit word for god) and of course the English word divine Their culture
was oriented around warfare and they were very good at it They were superior on horseback and rushed
into battle in chariots They were a tribal people ruled over by a war-chief or raja (the Latin word rex
(king) comes from the same root word along with the English regal) Somewhere in the early centuries
of the second millennium BC they began to migrate southwards in waves of steady conquest across the
face of Persia and the lands of India
There they would take on the name superior or noble to distinguish themselves from the people
they conquered Their name is derived from the Indo-European root word ar meaning noble In
Sanskrit they were the Aryas (Aryans) but that root ar would also serve as the foundation of the
name of the conquered Persian territories Iran This concept of nobility in fact seems to lie at the heart
of Indo-European consciousness for it appears in another countrys name Ireland or Eire You can
bet however that when a people go around calling themselves superior that it spells bad news for other
people
And there is no question that they were bad news for the southern Asians They swept over Persia with
lightening speed and spread across the northern river plains of India Their natures as a warlike
conquering people are still preserved in Vedic religion the foundation of Hinduism In the Rig Veda the
collection of praises to the gods the god Indra towers over the poetry as a conquering god one that
smashes cities and slays enemies The invading Aryans were originally nomadic peoples not agricultural
They penetrated India from the north-west settling first in the Indus valley Unlike the Harappans
however they eventually concentrated their populations along the Ganges floodplain The Ganges unlike
the Indus is far milder and more predictable in its flooding It must have been a paradise to a people from
the dry steppes of central Asia and Iran a paradise full of water and forest When they arrived the vast
northern plains were almost certainly densely forested Where now bare fields stretch to the horizon
when the Aryans arrived lush forests stretched to those very same horizons Clearing the forests over the
centuries was an epic project and one that is still preserved in Indian literature
The Aryans or Vedic civilization were a new start in Indian culture Harappa was more or less a dead
end (at least as far as we know) the Aryans adopted almost nothing of Harappan culture They built no
cities no states no granaries and used no writing Instead they were a warlike people that organized
themselves in individual tribal kinship units the jana The jana was ruled over by a war-chief These
tribes spread quickly over northern India and the Deccan In a process that we do not understand the basic
social unit of Aryan culture the jana slowly developed from an organization based on kinship to one
based on geography The jana became a janapada or nation and the jana-rajya or tribal kingdom
became the jana-rajyapada or national kingdom So powerfully ingrained into Indian culture is the
jana-pada that Indians still define themselves mainly by their territorial origins All the major territories
of modern India with their separate cultures and separate languages can be dated back to the early jana-
padas of Vedic India
The earliest history of the Aryans in India is called the Rigvedic Period (1700-1000 BC) after the
religious praise poems that are the oldest pieces of literature in India These poems the Rig Veda are
believed to represent the most primitive layer of
Indo-European religion and have many characteristics in common with Persian religion since the two
peoples are closely related in time In this early period their population was restricted to the Punjab in the
northern reaches of the Indus River and the Yamuna River near the Ganges They maintained the Aryan
tribal structure with a raja ruling over the tribal group in tandem with a council Each jana seems to have
had a chief priest the religion was focused almost entirely on a series of sacrifices to the gods The
Rigvedic peoples originally had only two social classes nobles and commoners Eventually they added a
third Dasas or darks These were we presume the darker-skinned people they had conquered By the
end of the Rigvedic period social class had settled into four rigid castes the caturvarnas or four
colors At the top of the caturvarnas were the priests or Brahmans Below the priests were the warriors
or nobles (Kshatriya) the craftspeople and merchants (Vaishya) and the servants (Shudra) who made
up the bulk of society These economic classes were legitimated by an elaborate religious system and
would be eventually subdivided into a huge number of economic sub-classes which we call castes
Social class by the end of the Rigvedic period became completely inflexible there was no such thing as
social mobility
In the early centuries of Later Vedic Period or Brahmanic Period (1000-500 BC) the Aryans
migrated across the Doab which is a large plain which separates the Yamuna River from the Ganges It
was a difficult project for the Doab was thickly forested the Aryans slowly burned and settled the Doab
until they reached the Ganges While the Rig Veda represents the most primitive religion of the Aryans
during the Rigvedic Period the religion of the Later Vedic period is dominated by the Brahmanas or
priestly book which was composed sometime between 1000 and 850 BC Later Vedic society is
dominated by the Brahmans and every aspect of Aryan life comes under the control of priestly rituals and
spells In history as the Indians understand it the Later Vedic Period is the Epic Age the great literary
heroic epics of Indian culture the Mahabharata and the Ramayana though they were composed
between 500 and 200 BC were probably originally formulated and told in the Later Vedic Period Both of
these epics deal with heroes from this period and demonstrate how Aryan cultural values as we can
understand them from the Rig Veda are being transformed by mixing with Indus cultures
What did the Aryans do with their time They seem to have had a well-developed musical culture and
song and dance dominated their society They were not greatly invested in the visual arts but their interest
in lyric poetry was unmatched They loved gambling They did not however have much interest in
writing even though they could have inherited a civilization and a writing system when they originally
settled India We do not know exactly when they became interested in writing but it may have been at the
end of the Brahmanic period somewhere between 650 and 500 BC Still there are no Aryan writings until
the Mauryan periodmdashfrom Harappa (2500-1750 BC) to Maurya (300 BC) is quite a long time The script
that the Mauryans used is called Brahmi script and was used to write not only the religious and literary
language of the time Sanskrit but also the vernacular languages This script Brahmi is the national
alphabet of India
The Vedic period then is a period of cultural mixing not of conquest Although the Aryans were a
conquering people when they first spread into India the culture of the Aryans would gradually mix with
indigenous cultures and the war-religion of the Aryans still preserved in parts of the Rig Veda slowly
became more ritualized and more meditative By 200 BC this process of mixing and transforming was
more or less complete and the culture we call Indian was fully formed
Were they Copycats or Geniuses How did the Harappans take the great leap from self-contained agricultural societies to a trade-oriented
luxury-conscious sophisticated urban civilization that gave the world the concept of town planning
Analyzing the evidence from various sites Possehl found that between 2600 BC and 2500 BC the
Harappans experienced a century of cathartic changes Before this he finds no breadboard models of the
expansion to come be it the invention of writing or the awesome town-planning techniques A
tremendous jump in human ability is evident So what or who caused it
In the past the reputed British archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler argued that ideas have wings and that
the Harappans were influenced by their trade contacts with the Sumerians But the diffusion theory of
civilization as it is called is slowly being given the heave-ho Cambridge historian Raymond Allchin an
authority on the subject says We are now beginning to see the foundation being laid in the preceding
100 to 200 years in smaller sites There appears to be a completely organic process of growth that threw
up the Harappan culture as we know it
Yet the evidence of that process continues to be scanty In Kunal in Haryana archaeologists recently
found what are known as proto Indus seals On pottery on many of the smaller sites in both India and
Pakistan graffiti similar to some figures on the script begin to appear And at Dholavira and at Banawali
in Haryana the distinction between the citadel and the lower city is beginning to evolve There is
however a huge jump in scale in such activity in those critical 100 years For in Harappa as in most
Indus sites the distinct gridiron pattern for streets appear a scientific system of drainage that linked up to
even the smallest house in the lower city is established precise weights and measures begin to circulate
and the writing system evolves So were the Harappans copycats Archaeologists say the Indus people
couldnrsquot have copied their town-planning from Egypt and Mesopotamia because in those civilizations the
roads meandered like village streets Nor was the writing similar to Sumer`s cuneiform or the Egyptian
hieroglyphics The Harappans had their own distinctive style Lal explains the dramatic change as a result
of centuries of growth reaching a critical mass that caused an unparalleled urban explosion Trade he
believes was the driving force of the revolution Even a skeptic like Possehl maintains that these are
indeed an expression of the Indian genius
Did Aryans kill them or a Depression Archaeologists are known to stumble but the kind of knocking Wheeler has taken over his Aryan
invasion theory has few parallels When the British archaeologist discovered a dozen skeletons in
Mohenjodaro he propounded a theory about the final massacre by marauding invaders that put an end to
the Indus civilization When an Indian scholar told him of Hariyuppa being mentioned in the Rigveda he
took it to mean Harappa And since a fort was known as pur and Indira the Aryan god was known as
Purandhara or destroyer of forts it all fitted neatly
After all werenrsquot the Indus cities among the most fortified Yet the past 50 years and more so the last
decade has shown just how wrong Wheeler was The last massacre theory was his imagination running
riot Far from being snuffed out there was a brilliant resurgence of Indus culture further south for a while
Possehl who made a recent study found that in 2000 BC in Pakistanrsquos Sindh district the sites were down
from 86 to 6 and in Cholistan 174 to 41 But in India the sites in Haryana Punjab and Rajasthan exploded
from 218 to 853 Possehl asks How can this be construed as an eclipse We are looking at a highly
mobile people
Allchin argues that there is clear indication that the rainfall pattern which had initially brought fertility
had become adverse in the Sindh region And theories that given the instability of the Himalayan region
there may have been a massive earthquake that possibly changed the course of rivers such as the Sarasvati
and affected many Indus cities The Indus people then migrated eastward Lal talks of steep decline in
trade because of problems in Sumer that resulted in a Great Depression and turned many urban centers
into ghost cities
Bisht concurs with Lal but goes a step further He says that after the quake hit the heart of the civilization
the Indus people migrated east which acted like a sort of bypass to their woes And like a dying candle it
shone brilliantly again but briefly before being snuffed out Dholavira Banawali Mehrgarh Harappa -- in
fact all the major cities show that as the cities declined encroachments on streets that were unseen at its
peak began to occur with alarming regularity There was a breakdown in sanitation and cities like their
modern-day counterparts in India simply ran themselves aground They were replaced by massive squatter
colonies and an explosion of rural sites as people disillusioned with cities went back to farming
communities A giant step backward
Yet it wasnrsquot as if all came to naught as was earlier believed Some of the writings survived in the pottery
of the following ages The weight and decimal system too lived on And so did the bullock-cart
technology that the Indus had perfected Rather than a violent transition there may have been an orderly
interaction with oncoming Aryans Lal in his most recent book even puts across the most audacious
theory Could the Bronze Age Harappans be Aryans themselves He says this because of the presence of
fire worship and the discovery of horse remains and idols in Indus sites Meadows dismisses it as
premature and points out that it was more likely that ass remains were mistaken for that of a horsersquos And
that the Vedas showed a great antipathy for urban centers
Whatever the cause it would take another 1000 years for a semblance of civilization to return to the
subcontinent -- a dire warning to modern India of the catastrophe that can befall an errant populace
Environmental Stress in the Indus Valley Source Quotation from D P Agarwal and R K Sood in Gregory L Possehl ed Harappan Civilization A Contemporary Perspective (Warminster
England Aris and Phillips 1982)229
The three river-valley civilizations discussed in this chapter were located in arid or semiarid regions Such
regions are particularly vulnerable to changes in the environment Scholars debates about the existence
and impact of changes in the climate and landscape of the Indus Valley illuminate some of the potential
factors at work as well as the difficulties of verifying and interpreting such long-ago changes
One of the points at issue is climatic change An earlier generation of scholars believed that the climate
of the Indus Valley was considerably wetter during the height of that civilization than it is now As
evidence they cited the enormous quantities of timber cut from extensive forests that would have been
needed to bake the millions of mud bricks used to construct the cities (see photo) the distribution of
human settlements on land that is now unfavorable for agriculture and the representation of jungle and
marsh animals on decorated seals This approach assumes that the growth of population prosperity and
complexity in the Indus Valley in the third millennium BCE required wet conditions and it concludes
that the change to a drier climate in the early second millennium BCE pushed this civilization into
decline
Other experts skeptical about a radical climatic change countered with alternative calculations of the
amount of timber needed and evidence of plant remains-particularly barley a grain that is tolerant of dry
conditions However recent studies of the stabilization of sand dunes which occurs in periods of heavy
rainfall and analysis of the sediment deposited by rivers and winds have been used to strengthen the
claim that the Indus Valley used to be wetter and in the early-to-mid second millennium BCE entered a
period of relatively dry conditions that have persisted to the present
A much clearer case can be made for changes in the landscape caused by shifts in the courses of rivers
These shifts are due in many cases to tectonic forces such as earthquakes Dry channels whether
detected in satellite photographs or by on-the-ground inspection reveal the location of old riverbeds and
it appears that a second major river system the Hakra once ran parallel to the Indus some distance to the
east The Hakra with teeming towns and fertile fields along its banks appears to have been a second axis
of this civilization Either the Sutlej which now feeds into the Indus or the Yamuna which now pours
into the Ganges may have been the main source of water for this long-gone system before undergoing a
change of course The consequences of the drying-up of this major waterway must have been immense-
the loss of huge amounts of arable land and the food that it produced the abandonment of cities and
villages and consequent migration of their populations shifts in the trade routes and desperate
competition for shrinking resources
As for the Indus itself the present-day course of the lower reaches of the river has shifted 100 miles
(161 kilometers) to the west since the arrival of the Greek conqueror Alexander the Great in the late
fourth century BCE and the deposit of massive volumes of silt has pushed the mouth of the river 50
miles (80 kilometers) farther south Such a shift of the river bed and buildup of alluvial deposits also may
have occurred in the third and second millennia BCE
A recent study concludes It is obvious that ecological stresses caused both climatically and
technically played an important role in the life and decay of the Indus civilization
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity four Read the article below about the early Chinese dynasties Using information from
the article write an 800 word essay that describes the influence of the environment religion and
gender on the formation of the government of ancient China Again do NOT look up additional
information use only what is provided Also do NOT quote from the articles paraphrase and
summarize only Turn in your essay to wwwturnitincom before the first day of school
The Shang and Zhou Dynasties By 5000 BCE agricultural communities had spread through much of what is now called China and there
were agricultural villages from the Wei River Valley eastward parallel with the great Yellow River
(Huang He) which flowed out of the Kunlun Mountains to the deciduous forest and loess soil region of
the North China Plain Where people were free of forest and had access to water they grew millet -- as
early as 5500 BCE -- while they continued to hunt deer and other game to fish and gather food And they
raised dogs pigs and chickens They built one-room homes dug into the earth with roofs of clay or
thatch pit homes grouped in villages They had spinning wheels and knitted and wove fibers And they
made pottery decorated with art
Flooding along the Yellow River was worse than it was along the Yangzi River to the south Along the
Yangzi River through the Hubei Basin and on the coastal plain to Hangzhou Bay farming had also
developed but people along the Yellow River had to work harder at flood control and irrigation and
perhaps this stimulated a greater effort at organization At any rate the North China Plain became the
largest area with a relatively dense population
Where people were producing more food than they needed to survive warriors had the incentive not only
to plunder but also to conquer And conquering kings arose on the North China Plain as they did in West
Asia The first dynasty of kings in the North China Plain has been described as belonging to the Xia
family - whose rule is thought to have begun around 2200 BCE But the first dynasty of which there is
historical evidence is that of the Shang family The Shang clan came out of the Wei River Valley just west
of the North China Plain By around 1500 BCE give or take a century or so the Shang unified people
along the North China Plain The military had chariots each with an aristocrat archer a driver and
sometimes also a man with a spear The Shang built an empire in much the same way as other conquerors
by leaving behind a garrison force to police local people by turning a local king into a subservient ally
free to manage local matters and by taxing the conquered
Around 1384 BCE the Shang moved their capital to Yin As a regular pastime the Shang emperors and
nobles hunted in organized game drives Emperors and aristocrats had splendid homes with walls of
pounded earth or earthen bricks while common people continued to live in their pit homes of earlier times
A Shang emperor was chief priest and he had an administrative bureaucracy with councilors lesser
priests and diviners As with other warring civilizations slaves were taken the slaves laboring at growing
crops And women in Shang civilization were subservient to men with aristocratic women enjoying a
greater freedom and equality than common women The role of the woman was to be gentle calm
respectful and to obey her husband Women were lower than men and were subjected to womenrsquos work
(tending to the children and needs of the husband) Men also married multiple times and women were
used as concubines
During the Shang dynasty the civilization along the Yellow River had canals for irrigating crops
Communities had drains that ran water out of town They made beer from millet The stable government
allowed for extended trading and use of money in the form of cowry shells Shang merchants traded in
salt iron copper tin lead and antimony some of which had to be imported from far away As early as
the 1300 BCE a bronze casting industry had developed This was later than the rise of bronze casting in
Europe and West Asia but it was the most advanced in the world
It was around 1300 BCE that the first known writing appeared in Shang civilization because the
government officials needed to have questions answered that would allow them to better govern This
writing was for divination done on plate-like portions of the bones of cattle or deer on seashells and
turtle shells and perhaps on wood By applying a pointed heated rod to a bone or shell the item cracked
and to which written symbol the crack traveled gave answers for various questions what the weather was
going to be like would there be flood would a harvest succeed or fail when might be the best time for
hunting or fishing there were also personal questions about illness or whether one should make a journey
Shang Violence and Splendor
To the east north and south of Shang civilization were those the Shang saw as barbarians including the
farming people along the Yangzi River Shang emperors sent out armies to repulse invaders and the
Shang emperors went beyond their domains to plunder and to capture foreign peoples needed for sacrifice
to their gods Uncovered tombs of emperors from the Shang period indicate that they could put into the
field as many as three to five thousand soldiers Found buried with the emperors were their personal
ornaments and spears with bronze blades and the remains of what had been bows and arrows Buried with
the emperors were also horses and chariots for transporting soldiers to battle And with the emperors in
death were their charioteers dogs servants and people in groups of ten -- people who had been
ceremonially beheaded with bronze axes
Zhou Empire Religion and Human Sacrifice
Shang rule was threatened by forces from outside and from within its empire To the west of Shang
civilization in the Wei River Valley lived a pastoral people called Zhou who led an alliance that included
other tribal peoples neighboring Shang civilization While the Shang emperor Zhouxin was occupied by
a war against tribal people to his southeast rebellions broke out among people that Shang monarchs
before him had conquered The Zhou and their allies saw the Shang emperors troubles as an opportunity
to move against him and in 1045 BCE they overpowered him at the battle of Mu-ye and had him
beheaded
A dynasty of Zhou emperors began ruling what had been Shang civilization They claimed that all lands
belonged to heaven that they were the sons of heaven and therefore that all lands and all people were
their subjects Seeing the lands they had conquered as too vast for one man to dominate the Zhou
emperors divided these lands into regions and assigned someone to rule each region in their name
choosing for this position a close family member a trusted member of their clan or the chief of a tribe
that had been allied with them against the Shang
Each local ruler had at his disposal all the lands around him He had his own militia And from the Zhou
emperors the local rulers received gifts such as chariots bronze weapons servants and animals The local
rulers received the title of lord (gong) Local rulers passed their positions to their sons their titles of lord
becoming hereditary And to control their areas better the lords made sub-lords of those who had
dominated the common people before they arrived A hierarchy of status and obligations emerged among
families and within families with older brothers ranking higher than younger brothers with rules of
succession as to which of the males would head his family If a married aristocrat became infatuated with
another woman rather than drive his wife from his home he could bring the other woman into the family
as a concubine where she would rank beneath his wife
Zhou emperors told those they had conquered that they the Zhou had ousted the ancestors of Shang
emperors from heaven and that heaven was occupied by their supreme god a god they called The Lord
on High who they said had commanded the downfall of the Shang emperors Like emperors in West
Asia Zhou emperors claimed that they ruled by divine right They claimed that they represented on earth
the Lord on High and that it was their duty to mediate with the Lord on High to perform appropriate
sacrifices and to maintain a proper relationship between heaven and their subjects They claimed that any
opposition to their rule was opposition to the will of heaven
It was from the Zhou emperors that local lords received the right to act as a priest to perform sacrifices
to have certain hymns sung and certain dances performed the right to propitiate the gods of local
mountains streams and of the soil and crops Meanwhile local aristocrats continued to keep track of their
ancestral heritage They married with religious rites and sanctions while common folk continued to have
no such marriages no surnames or recorded ancestors They merely lived together and were recognized as
a couple by their neighbors
Ancestor worship was also very important to the Shang It was thought that the success of crops and the
health and well being of people were based on the happiness of dead ancestors
The worship of various gods from the Shang period included gods of grain rain and agriculture -- one of
whom was believed to have had a virgin birth Among these gods was a god of the Yellow River who had
the body of a fish but the face of a man
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity five Research the social hierarchy religion political organization writing systems and
technological aspects of the societies listed on the SNAPSHOT Early Agricultural Societies Describe each aspect
of the society using specific evidence - in one or two clear sentences (SEE EXAMPLE of Olmec Society) Write
VERY neatly in ink Bring this chart with you on the FIRST DAY of school
pattern remains Eurasias eastndashwest axis and the resulting rapid enrichment of societies in each part of
Eurasia by crops and technologies from other parts of Eurasia became one of the main ultimate reasons
why Eurasian peoples conquered Native American peoples rather than vice versa Eurasias eastndashwest
axis also explains why there is much less evidence for multiple independent domestications of the same
plant species (see below) and much more evidence for agriculturally driven language expansions in
Eurasia than in the Americas
Consequences of domestication Consequences for human societies
Beginning around 8500 BCE the transition from the hunterndashgatherer lifestyle to food production
enabled people to settle down next to their permanent gardens orchards and pastures instead of migrating
to follow seasonal shifts in wild food supplies (Some hunterndashgatherer societies in especially productive
environments were also sedentary but most were not) Food production was accompanied by a human
population explosion that has continued unabated to this day resulting from two separate factors First
the sedentary lifestyle permitted shorter birth intervals Nomadic hunterndashgatherers had previously spaced
out birth intervals at four years or more because a mother shifting camp can carry only one infant or slow
toddler Second plant and animal species that are edible to humans can be cultivated in much higher
density in our gardens orchards and pastures than in wild habitats
Food production also led to an explosion of technology because sedentary living permitted the
accumulation of heavy technology (such as forges and printing presses) that nomadic hunterndashgatherers
could not carry and because the storable food surpluses resulting from agriculture could be used to feed
full-time craftspeople and inventors By also feeding full-time kings bureaucrats nobles and soldiers
those food surpluses led to social stratification political centralization and standing armies All of these
overwhelming advantages are what enabled farmers eventually to displace hunterndashgatherers
Evolution of epidemic infectious diseases
The main killers of humans since the advent of agriculture have been acute highly infectious
epidemic diseases that are confined to humans and that either kill the victim quickly or if the victim
recovers immunize himher for life Such diseases could not have existed before the origins of
agriculture because they can sustain themselves only in large dense populations that did not exist before
agriculture hence they are often termed crowd diseases The mystery of the origins of many of these
diseases has been solved by molecular biological studies of recent decades demonstrating that they
evolved from similar epidemic diseases of our herd domestic animals with which we began to come into
close contact 10000 years ago Thus the evolution of these diseases depended on two separate roles of
domestication in creating much denser human populations and in permitting much more frequent
transmission of animal diseases from our domesticates than from hunted wild animals For instance
measles and tuberculosis arose from diseases of cattle influenza from a disease of pigs and ducks1 An
outstanding mystery remains the origins of smallpox did it reach us from camels or from cattle
Crowd diseases paradoxically became agents of conquest because exposed individuals acquired
immune resistance from childhood exposure and exposed populations gradually evolved genetic
resistance but unexposed populations had neither type of resistance In practice because 13 of our 14
large domestic mammals were Eurasian species evolution of crowd diseases was concentrated in Eurasia
and the diseases became the most important agents by which Eurasian colonists expanding overseas killed
indigenous peoples of the Americas Australia Pacific islands and southern Africa
The agricultural expansions
Because some peoples acquired domesticates before other peoples could and because
domesticates conferred eventual advantages such as guns germs and steel on the possessors the history
of the past 10000 years has consisted of farmers replacing hunterndashgatherers or less advanced farmers
These agricultural expansions originating mainly from the nine homelands of agriculture remade genetic
and linguistic maps of the world Among the most discussed (and often highly controversial) possible
examples are the expansions of Bantu-speaking farmers out of tropical West Africa over subequatorial
Africa Austronesian-speaking farmers out of Taiwan over Island Southeast Asia Fertile Crescent farmers
over Europe and Korean farmers over Japan
Activity three Without the ability to translate their writing script archaeologists today do not
understand nearly as much about the Indus River Valley civilization that flourished from 2600 to
1900 BCE although the artifacts found there have enhanced our knowledge of these ancient
peoples One mystery is what exactly happened to the civilizations of the Indus River Valley
Mesopotamia and Egypt were later absorbed into a broader Hellenistic and later Roman cultural
zone but civilization in the Indus River Valley instead disappeared Study the map and read the
articles ldquoThe Myth of the Aryan Invasion of Indiardquo ldquoWere they Copycats or Geniusesrdquo
ldquoEnvironment and Technology Environmental Stress in the Indus River Valleyrdquo and ldquoDid Aryans
kill them or a depressionrdquo Write an 800 word essay that addresses the following question
What are the debates that center around the disappearance of this ancient civilization (Include
examples from the articles) Do NOT go on-line and attempt to find any more information Do
NOT quote from the articles Turn in your essay to wwwturnitincom before the first day of
school
River Valley Civilizations
The Indus Valley Civilization was the first major urban culture of South Asia It reached its peak
from 2600 BC to 1900 BC roughly a period called by some archaeologists Mature Harappan as
distinguished from the earlier Neolithic Early Harappan regional cultures Spatially it is huge
comprising of about 1000 settlements of varying sizes and geographically includes almost all of modern
Pakistan parts of India as far east as Delhi and as far south as Bombay and parts of Afghanistan
The main corpus of writing dated from the Indus Civilization is in the form of some two thousand
inscribed seals in good legible conditions (In case you dont know what seals are they are used to make
impressions on malleable material like clay)
Although these seals and samples of Indus writing have been floating around the scholastic world
for close to 70 years little progress has been made on deciphering this elegant script However we should
not blame scholars for their lack of progress for there are some major impediments to decipherment
1 Very short and brief texts The average number of symbols on the seals is 5 and the longest is
only 26
2 The language underneath is unknown
3 Lack of bilingual texts
For instance consider Champollion who deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs with all of these 3
important clues there were very long Egyptian texts he knew Coptic a descendant of Egyptian and the
Rosetta Stone a bilingual text between Greek and two written forms of Egyptian
But the script isnt as bad as undecipherable For one even though scholars dont have long texts
and bilingual texts they can still theorize about the language underneath the writing system There are
several competing theories about the language that the Indus script represent
A The language is completely unrelated to anything else meaning an isolate Well this doesnt get
us anywhere
B The language is Aryan (some form of Indian-Iranian Indo-European) The historical languages
spoken in Northern India and Pakistan all belong to the Indic branch of Indo-European including
Sanskrit Hindi Punjabi etc so maybe the people of the Indus valley spoke a very old Indo-
European language
The major problem with this model is the fact that horses played a very important role in all Indo-
European cultures being a people constantly on the move There is no escape from the fact that
the horse played a central role in the Vedic and Iranian cultures (Parpola 1986) Sidenote
Vedic means from the time of the Vedas the earliest text in India and the Vedic culture is from
around 1500 to 500 BC However no depiction of horses on seals nor any remains of horses have
been found so far before 2000 BC They only appear after 2000 BC Very likely there were no
Aryan speakers present before 2000 BC in the Indus Valley
C The language belongs to the Munda family of languages The Munda family is spoken largely in
eastern India and related to some Southeast Asian languages Like Aryan the reconstructed
vocabulary of early Munda does not reflect the Harappan culture So its candidacy for being the
language of the Indus Civilization is dim
D The language is Dravidian The Dravidian family of languages is spoken in Southern Indian but
Brahui is spoken in modern Pakistan So far this is the most promising model as in the following
points
o There are many Dravidian influences visible in the Vedic texts If the Aryan language
gradually replaced the Dravidian features from Dravidian would form a substratum in
Aryan One of these features is the appearance of retroflex consonants in Indian languages
both Indo-European and Dravidian In contrast retroflex consonants do not appear in any
other Indo-European language not even Iranian ones which are closest to Indic (For more
information on retroflex consonants please visit my Phonetics page)
o Another possible indication of Dravidian in the Indus texts is from structural analysis of
the texts which suggests that the language underneath is possibly agglutinative from the
fact that sign groups often have the same initial signs but different final signs The number
of these final signs range between 1 to 3 The final signs possibly represent grammatical
suffixes that modify the word (represented by the initial signs) Each suffix would
represent one specific modification and the entire cluster of suffixes would therefore put
the word through a series of modifications This suffix system can be found in Dravidian
but not Indo-European Indo-European tongues tend to change the final sounds to modify
the meaning of a word (a process called inflection) but repeated addition of sounds to the
end of word is extremely rare Often many suffixes in an agglutinative language
correspond to a single inflectional ending in an inflectional language
The Dravidian model isnt just an unapplicable theoryBut first we have to know what kind of
writing system is the Indus script
A count of the number of signs reveal a lot about the type of system being used Alphabetic
systems rarely have more than 40 symbols Syllabic systems like Linear B or Cherokee typically have 40
to 100 or so symbols The third ranges from logophonetic to logographic running upwards of hundreds of
signs (like 500 signs in Hieroglyphic Luwian and 5000 symbols in modern Chinese)
It appears that the maximum number of Indus script symbols is 400 although there are 200 basic
signs (ie signs that are not combined from others) This means that the Indus script is probably
logophonetic in that it has both signs used for their meanings and signs used for their phonetic values
Many signs start off as pictorial representation of a physical object often misleadingly called
pictograms They really are should be called logograms because they represent words in the language
However its next to impossible to write out a word with abstract meaning pictorially What all early
writers figured out was to use a logogram not for the object or idea it was originally supposed to stand for
but for all words sounding similar to the original word for that object or idea For example in English to
write leave we can use a picture of a leaf This is called rebus writing and is a tremendously common
pattern in all early writing systems We could also then use the same leaf symbol to stand for the sound
in relief adding another symbol in front of the leaf symbol in order to indicate the re sound So the
logogram gained a phonetic value as well
Testing the theory How can we take the theoretical framework so far and apply it to archaeological data
Numerals seem to represented by vertical lines (represented by number of lines in the glyph) but
they only go up to 7 Analysis reveal 4 more signs that appear in the same context as these numerals and
so they likely represent numbers higher than 7
The fact that no vertical-line numeral sign denotes 8 very likely means the Harappan language is
based 8 (For example the Arabic numerals that we use has symbols from 0 to 9 and to write ten we
have to combined the symbols 1 and 0 which identify our number system as based ten)
Base 8 languages are rare in the world but it does appear that early Dravidian is base 8 but later
changed to base 10 (possibly under Indo-European influence) When translated the count from 1 to 7 is
familiar to us one two three four five six seven However above seven the numbers
etymologies become non-numerical 8 is number 9 is many minus one and 10 is many (Fairservis
1983)
But can we actually read (not interpret) any symbol on the seals We should start with pictograms as
this one
Many scholars (Knorozov Parpola Mahadevan etc) see this sign as a fish
Fish in reconstructed Proto-Dravidian is micircn Coincidentally micircn is also the word for star
On many pots from Mohenjo Daro an Indus site there are drawings of fish and stars together and so
affirming this linguistic association
Going further often the numeral six appears before the fish Either it means 6 fish or
6 stars Old Tamil (a Dravidian language still spoken today) texts from just around the 1st
century AD recorded the name of the Pleiades a star cluster visible during autumn and
winter just above Orion as Six-Stars or aru-micircn Throughout the world titles with celestial
connotations are very common and the clause Six Stars forming part or whole of a Harappan title is not
unreasonable (Parpola 1986)
Sometimes symbols are added to the basic sign to make new signs Of these the one that
looks like a circumflex accent placed on top of the fish is quite interesting It is theorized to mean
roof and in Proto-Dravidian it is vecircymecircy This is phonetically similar to Proto-Dravidian word
for black may Together with fish it spells out mai-m-micircn or black star which in Old Tamil
means the planet Saturn In Sanskrit texts Saturn is associate the color black The god of death Yama is
the presiding of this planet and is usually depicted as riding on a dark buffalo
But the fish reading isnt accepted by all scholars William Fairservis saw it as a combination of
a loom twist and a human sign and form a honorific title pertaining to rulership (Fairservis 1983) I
however am more inclined to accept the fish identification
This is a quick overview of the current process in the decipherment of the Indus script For more
information you can either go to the following links or go to a good library for books and articles (check
out my references)
The Myth of the Aryan Invasion of India Richard Hooker 1996
They called themselves the noble ones or the superior ones Their names are lost their tribal names
are lost But when they found themselves conquerors they gave themselves the name superior or
noble
They were a tribal and nomadic peoples living in the far reaches of Euro-Asia in hostile steppe lands
barely scratching out a living They were unquestionably a tough people and they were fierce and war-
like Their religion reflects it dominated as it is by a storm-god or sky-god that enjoins warfare and
conquest This god was called something like Dyaus a word related to Zeus deus (the Latin word
for god) deva (the Sanskrit word for god) and of course the English word divine Their culture
was oriented around warfare and they were very good at it They were superior on horseback and rushed
into battle in chariots They were a tribal people ruled over by a war-chief or raja (the Latin word rex
(king) comes from the same root word along with the English regal) Somewhere in the early centuries
of the second millennium BC they began to migrate southwards in waves of steady conquest across the
face of Persia and the lands of India
There they would take on the name superior or noble to distinguish themselves from the people
they conquered Their name is derived from the Indo-European root word ar meaning noble In
Sanskrit they were the Aryas (Aryans) but that root ar would also serve as the foundation of the
name of the conquered Persian territories Iran This concept of nobility in fact seems to lie at the heart
of Indo-European consciousness for it appears in another countrys name Ireland or Eire You can
bet however that when a people go around calling themselves superior that it spells bad news for other
people
And there is no question that they were bad news for the southern Asians They swept over Persia with
lightening speed and spread across the northern river plains of India Their natures as a warlike
conquering people are still preserved in Vedic religion the foundation of Hinduism In the Rig Veda the
collection of praises to the gods the god Indra towers over the poetry as a conquering god one that
smashes cities and slays enemies The invading Aryans were originally nomadic peoples not agricultural
They penetrated India from the north-west settling first in the Indus valley Unlike the Harappans
however they eventually concentrated their populations along the Ganges floodplain The Ganges unlike
the Indus is far milder and more predictable in its flooding It must have been a paradise to a people from
the dry steppes of central Asia and Iran a paradise full of water and forest When they arrived the vast
northern plains were almost certainly densely forested Where now bare fields stretch to the horizon
when the Aryans arrived lush forests stretched to those very same horizons Clearing the forests over the
centuries was an epic project and one that is still preserved in Indian literature
The Aryans or Vedic civilization were a new start in Indian culture Harappa was more or less a dead
end (at least as far as we know) the Aryans adopted almost nothing of Harappan culture They built no
cities no states no granaries and used no writing Instead they were a warlike people that organized
themselves in individual tribal kinship units the jana The jana was ruled over by a war-chief These
tribes spread quickly over northern India and the Deccan In a process that we do not understand the basic
social unit of Aryan culture the jana slowly developed from an organization based on kinship to one
based on geography The jana became a janapada or nation and the jana-rajya or tribal kingdom
became the jana-rajyapada or national kingdom So powerfully ingrained into Indian culture is the
jana-pada that Indians still define themselves mainly by their territorial origins All the major territories
of modern India with their separate cultures and separate languages can be dated back to the early jana-
padas of Vedic India
The earliest history of the Aryans in India is called the Rigvedic Period (1700-1000 BC) after the
religious praise poems that are the oldest pieces of literature in India These poems the Rig Veda are
believed to represent the most primitive layer of
Indo-European religion and have many characteristics in common with Persian religion since the two
peoples are closely related in time In this early period their population was restricted to the Punjab in the
northern reaches of the Indus River and the Yamuna River near the Ganges They maintained the Aryan
tribal structure with a raja ruling over the tribal group in tandem with a council Each jana seems to have
had a chief priest the religion was focused almost entirely on a series of sacrifices to the gods The
Rigvedic peoples originally had only two social classes nobles and commoners Eventually they added a
third Dasas or darks These were we presume the darker-skinned people they had conquered By the
end of the Rigvedic period social class had settled into four rigid castes the caturvarnas or four
colors At the top of the caturvarnas were the priests or Brahmans Below the priests were the warriors
or nobles (Kshatriya) the craftspeople and merchants (Vaishya) and the servants (Shudra) who made
up the bulk of society These economic classes were legitimated by an elaborate religious system and
would be eventually subdivided into a huge number of economic sub-classes which we call castes
Social class by the end of the Rigvedic period became completely inflexible there was no such thing as
social mobility
In the early centuries of Later Vedic Period or Brahmanic Period (1000-500 BC) the Aryans
migrated across the Doab which is a large plain which separates the Yamuna River from the Ganges It
was a difficult project for the Doab was thickly forested the Aryans slowly burned and settled the Doab
until they reached the Ganges While the Rig Veda represents the most primitive religion of the Aryans
during the Rigvedic Period the religion of the Later Vedic period is dominated by the Brahmanas or
priestly book which was composed sometime between 1000 and 850 BC Later Vedic society is
dominated by the Brahmans and every aspect of Aryan life comes under the control of priestly rituals and
spells In history as the Indians understand it the Later Vedic Period is the Epic Age the great literary
heroic epics of Indian culture the Mahabharata and the Ramayana though they were composed
between 500 and 200 BC were probably originally formulated and told in the Later Vedic Period Both of
these epics deal with heroes from this period and demonstrate how Aryan cultural values as we can
understand them from the Rig Veda are being transformed by mixing with Indus cultures
What did the Aryans do with their time They seem to have had a well-developed musical culture and
song and dance dominated their society They were not greatly invested in the visual arts but their interest
in lyric poetry was unmatched They loved gambling They did not however have much interest in
writing even though they could have inherited a civilization and a writing system when they originally
settled India We do not know exactly when they became interested in writing but it may have been at the
end of the Brahmanic period somewhere between 650 and 500 BC Still there are no Aryan writings until
the Mauryan periodmdashfrom Harappa (2500-1750 BC) to Maurya (300 BC) is quite a long time The script
that the Mauryans used is called Brahmi script and was used to write not only the religious and literary
language of the time Sanskrit but also the vernacular languages This script Brahmi is the national
alphabet of India
The Vedic period then is a period of cultural mixing not of conquest Although the Aryans were a
conquering people when they first spread into India the culture of the Aryans would gradually mix with
indigenous cultures and the war-religion of the Aryans still preserved in parts of the Rig Veda slowly
became more ritualized and more meditative By 200 BC this process of mixing and transforming was
more or less complete and the culture we call Indian was fully formed
Were they Copycats or Geniuses How did the Harappans take the great leap from self-contained agricultural societies to a trade-oriented
luxury-conscious sophisticated urban civilization that gave the world the concept of town planning
Analyzing the evidence from various sites Possehl found that between 2600 BC and 2500 BC the
Harappans experienced a century of cathartic changes Before this he finds no breadboard models of the
expansion to come be it the invention of writing or the awesome town-planning techniques A
tremendous jump in human ability is evident So what or who caused it
In the past the reputed British archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler argued that ideas have wings and that
the Harappans were influenced by their trade contacts with the Sumerians But the diffusion theory of
civilization as it is called is slowly being given the heave-ho Cambridge historian Raymond Allchin an
authority on the subject says We are now beginning to see the foundation being laid in the preceding
100 to 200 years in smaller sites There appears to be a completely organic process of growth that threw
up the Harappan culture as we know it
Yet the evidence of that process continues to be scanty In Kunal in Haryana archaeologists recently
found what are known as proto Indus seals On pottery on many of the smaller sites in both India and
Pakistan graffiti similar to some figures on the script begin to appear And at Dholavira and at Banawali
in Haryana the distinction between the citadel and the lower city is beginning to evolve There is
however a huge jump in scale in such activity in those critical 100 years For in Harappa as in most
Indus sites the distinct gridiron pattern for streets appear a scientific system of drainage that linked up to
even the smallest house in the lower city is established precise weights and measures begin to circulate
and the writing system evolves So were the Harappans copycats Archaeologists say the Indus people
couldnrsquot have copied their town-planning from Egypt and Mesopotamia because in those civilizations the
roads meandered like village streets Nor was the writing similar to Sumer`s cuneiform or the Egyptian
hieroglyphics The Harappans had their own distinctive style Lal explains the dramatic change as a result
of centuries of growth reaching a critical mass that caused an unparalleled urban explosion Trade he
believes was the driving force of the revolution Even a skeptic like Possehl maintains that these are
indeed an expression of the Indian genius
Did Aryans kill them or a Depression Archaeologists are known to stumble but the kind of knocking Wheeler has taken over his Aryan
invasion theory has few parallels When the British archaeologist discovered a dozen skeletons in
Mohenjodaro he propounded a theory about the final massacre by marauding invaders that put an end to
the Indus civilization When an Indian scholar told him of Hariyuppa being mentioned in the Rigveda he
took it to mean Harappa And since a fort was known as pur and Indira the Aryan god was known as
Purandhara or destroyer of forts it all fitted neatly
After all werenrsquot the Indus cities among the most fortified Yet the past 50 years and more so the last
decade has shown just how wrong Wheeler was The last massacre theory was his imagination running
riot Far from being snuffed out there was a brilliant resurgence of Indus culture further south for a while
Possehl who made a recent study found that in 2000 BC in Pakistanrsquos Sindh district the sites were down
from 86 to 6 and in Cholistan 174 to 41 But in India the sites in Haryana Punjab and Rajasthan exploded
from 218 to 853 Possehl asks How can this be construed as an eclipse We are looking at a highly
mobile people
Allchin argues that there is clear indication that the rainfall pattern which had initially brought fertility
had become adverse in the Sindh region And theories that given the instability of the Himalayan region
there may have been a massive earthquake that possibly changed the course of rivers such as the Sarasvati
and affected many Indus cities The Indus people then migrated eastward Lal talks of steep decline in
trade because of problems in Sumer that resulted in a Great Depression and turned many urban centers
into ghost cities
Bisht concurs with Lal but goes a step further He says that after the quake hit the heart of the civilization
the Indus people migrated east which acted like a sort of bypass to their woes And like a dying candle it
shone brilliantly again but briefly before being snuffed out Dholavira Banawali Mehrgarh Harappa -- in
fact all the major cities show that as the cities declined encroachments on streets that were unseen at its
peak began to occur with alarming regularity There was a breakdown in sanitation and cities like their
modern-day counterparts in India simply ran themselves aground They were replaced by massive squatter
colonies and an explosion of rural sites as people disillusioned with cities went back to farming
communities A giant step backward
Yet it wasnrsquot as if all came to naught as was earlier believed Some of the writings survived in the pottery
of the following ages The weight and decimal system too lived on And so did the bullock-cart
technology that the Indus had perfected Rather than a violent transition there may have been an orderly
interaction with oncoming Aryans Lal in his most recent book even puts across the most audacious
theory Could the Bronze Age Harappans be Aryans themselves He says this because of the presence of
fire worship and the discovery of horse remains and idols in Indus sites Meadows dismisses it as
premature and points out that it was more likely that ass remains were mistaken for that of a horsersquos And
that the Vedas showed a great antipathy for urban centers
Whatever the cause it would take another 1000 years for a semblance of civilization to return to the
subcontinent -- a dire warning to modern India of the catastrophe that can befall an errant populace
Environmental Stress in the Indus Valley Source Quotation from D P Agarwal and R K Sood in Gregory L Possehl ed Harappan Civilization A Contemporary Perspective (Warminster
England Aris and Phillips 1982)229
The three river-valley civilizations discussed in this chapter were located in arid or semiarid regions Such
regions are particularly vulnerable to changes in the environment Scholars debates about the existence
and impact of changes in the climate and landscape of the Indus Valley illuminate some of the potential
factors at work as well as the difficulties of verifying and interpreting such long-ago changes
One of the points at issue is climatic change An earlier generation of scholars believed that the climate
of the Indus Valley was considerably wetter during the height of that civilization than it is now As
evidence they cited the enormous quantities of timber cut from extensive forests that would have been
needed to bake the millions of mud bricks used to construct the cities (see photo) the distribution of
human settlements on land that is now unfavorable for agriculture and the representation of jungle and
marsh animals on decorated seals This approach assumes that the growth of population prosperity and
complexity in the Indus Valley in the third millennium BCE required wet conditions and it concludes
that the change to a drier climate in the early second millennium BCE pushed this civilization into
decline
Other experts skeptical about a radical climatic change countered with alternative calculations of the
amount of timber needed and evidence of plant remains-particularly barley a grain that is tolerant of dry
conditions However recent studies of the stabilization of sand dunes which occurs in periods of heavy
rainfall and analysis of the sediment deposited by rivers and winds have been used to strengthen the
claim that the Indus Valley used to be wetter and in the early-to-mid second millennium BCE entered a
period of relatively dry conditions that have persisted to the present
A much clearer case can be made for changes in the landscape caused by shifts in the courses of rivers
These shifts are due in many cases to tectonic forces such as earthquakes Dry channels whether
detected in satellite photographs or by on-the-ground inspection reveal the location of old riverbeds and
it appears that a second major river system the Hakra once ran parallel to the Indus some distance to the
east The Hakra with teeming towns and fertile fields along its banks appears to have been a second axis
of this civilization Either the Sutlej which now feeds into the Indus or the Yamuna which now pours
into the Ganges may have been the main source of water for this long-gone system before undergoing a
change of course The consequences of the drying-up of this major waterway must have been immense-
the loss of huge amounts of arable land and the food that it produced the abandonment of cities and
villages and consequent migration of their populations shifts in the trade routes and desperate
competition for shrinking resources
As for the Indus itself the present-day course of the lower reaches of the river has shifted 100 miles
(161 kilometers) to the west since the arrival of the Greek conqueror Alexander the Great in the late
fourth century BCE and the deposit of massive volumes of silt has pushed the mouth of the river 50
miles (80 kilometers) farther south Such a shift of the river bed and buildup of alluvial deposits also may
have occurred in the third and second millennia BCE
A recent study concludes It is obvious that ecological stresses caused both climatically and
technically played an important role in the life and decay of the Indus civilization
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity four Read the article below about the early Chinese dynasties Using information from
the article write an 800 word essay that describes the influence of the environment religion and
gender on the formation of the government of ancient China Again do NOT look up additional
information use only what is provided Also do NOT quote from the articles paraphrase and
summarize only Turn in your essay to wwwturnitincom before the first day of school
The Shang and Zhou Dynasties By 5000 BCE agricultural communities had spread through much of what is now called China and there
were agricultural villages from the Wei River Valley eastward parallel with the great Yellow River
(Huang He) which flowed out of the Kunlun Mountains to the deciduous forest and loess soil region of
the North China Plain Where people were free of forest and had access to water they grew millet -- as
early as 5500 BCE -- while they continued to hunt deer and other game to fish and gather food And they
raised dogs pigs and chickens They built one-room homes dug into the earth with roofs of clay or
thatch pit homes grouped in villages They had spinning wheels and knitted and wove fibers And they
made pottery decorated with art
Flooding along the Yellow River was worse than it was along the Yangzi River to the south Along the
Yangzi River through the Hubei Basin and on the coastal plain to Hangzhou Bay farming had also
developed but people along the Yellow River had to work harder at flood control and irrigation and
perhaps this stimulated a greater effort at organization At any rate the North China Plain became the
largest area with a relatively dense population
Where people were producing more food than they needed to survive warriors had the incentive not only
to plunder but also to conquer And conquering kings arose on the North China Plain as they did in West
Asia The first dynasty of kings in the North China Plain has been described as belonging to the Xia
family - whose rule is thought to have begun around 2200 BCE But the first dynasty of which there is
historical evidence is that of the Shang family The Shang clan came out of the Wei River Valley just west
of the North China Plain By around 1500 BCE give or take a century or so the Shang unified people
along the North China Plain The military had chariots each with an aristocrat archer a driver and
sometimes also a man with a spear The Shang built an empire in much the same way as other conquerors
by leaving behind a garrison force to police local people by turning a local king into a subservient ally
free to manage local matters and by taxing the conquered
Around 1384 BCE the Shang moved their capital to Yin As a regular pastime the Shang emperors and
nobles hunted in organized game drives Emperors and aristocrats had splendid homes with walls of
pounded earth or earthen bricks while common people continued to live in their pit homes of earlier times
A Shang emperor was chief priest and he had an administrative bureaucracy with councilors lesser
priests and diviners As with other warring civilizations slaves were taken the slaves laboring at growing
crops And women in Shang civilization were subservient to men with aristocratic women enjoying a
greater freedom and equality than common women The role of the woman was to be gentle calm
respectful and to obey her husband Women were lower than men and were subjected to womenrsquos work
(tending to the children and needs of the husband) Men also married multiple times and women were
used as concubines
During the Shang dynasty the civilization along the Yellow River had canals for irrigating crops
Communities had drains that ran water out of town They made beer from millet The stable government
allowed for extended trading and use of money in the form of cowry shells Shang merchants traded in
salt iron copper tin lead and antimony some of which had to be imported from far away As early as
the 1300 BCE a bronze casting industry had developed This was later than the rise of bronze casting in
Europe and West Asia but it was the most advanced in the world
It was around 1300 BCE that the first known writing appeared in Shang civilization because the
government officials needed to have questions answered that would allow them to better govern This
writing was for divination done on plate-like portions of the bones of cattle or deer on seashells and
turtle shells and perhaps on wood By applying a pointed heated rod to a bone or shell the item cracked
and to which written symbol the crack traveled gave answers for various questions what the weather was
going to be like would there be flood would a harvest succeed or fail when might be the best time for
hunting or fishing there were also personal questions about illness or whether one should make a journey
Shang Violence and Splendor
To the east north and south of Shang civilization were those the Shang saw as barbarians including the
farming people along the Yangzi River Shang emperors sent out armies to repulse invaders and the
Shang emperors went beyond their domains to plunder and to capture foreign peoples needed for sacrifice
to their gods Uncovered tombs of emperors from the Shang period indicate that they could put into the
field as many as three to five thousand soldiers Found buried with the emperors were their personal
ornaments and spears with bronze blades and the remains of what had been bows and arrows Buried with
the emperors were also horses and chariots for transporting soldiers to battle And with the emperors in
death were their charioteers dogs servants and people in groups of ten -- people who had been
ceremonially beheaded with bronze axes
Zhou Empire Religion and Human Sacrifice
Shang rule was threatened by forces from outside and from within its empire To the west of Shang
civilization in the Wei River Valley lived a pastoral people called Zhou who led an alliance that included
other tribal peoples neighboring Shang civilization While the Shang emperor Zhouxin was occupied by
a war against tribal people to his southeast rebellions broke out among people that Shang monarchs
before him had conquered The Zhou and their allies saw the Shang emperors troubles as an opportunity
to move against him and in 1045 BCE they overpowered him at the battle of Mu-ye and had him
beheaded
A dynasty of Zhou emperors began ruling what had been Shang civilization They claimed that all lands
belonged to heaven that they were the sons of heaven and therefore that all lands and all people were
their subjects Seeing the lands they had conquered as too vast for one man to dominate the Zhou
emperors divided these lands into regions and assigned someone to rule each region in their name
choosing for this position a close family member a trusted member of their clan or the chief of a tribe
that had been allied with them against the Shang
Each local ruler had at his disposal all the lands around him He had his own militia And from the Zhou
emperors the local rulers received gifts such as chariots bronze weapons servants and animals The local
rulers received the title of lord (gong) Local rulers passed their positions to their sons their titles of lord
becoming hereditary And to control their areas better the lords made sub-lords of those who had
dominated the common people before they arrived A hierarchy of status and obligations emerged among
families and within families with older brothers ranking higher than younger brothers with rules of
succession as to which of the males would head his family If a married aristocrat became infatuated with
another woman rather than drive his wife from his home he could bring the other woman into the family
as a concubine where she would rank beneath his wife
Zhou emperors told those they had conquered that they the Zhou had ousted the ancestors of Shang
emperors from heaven and that heaven was occupied by their supreme god a god they called The Lord
on High who they said had commanded the downfall of the Shang emperors Like emperors in West
Asia Zhou emperors claimed that they ruled by divine right They claimed that they represented on earth
the Lord on High and that it was their duty to mediate with the Lord on High to perform appropriate
sacrifices and to maintain a proper relationship between heaven and their subjects They claimed that any
opposition to their rule was opposition to the will of heaven
It was from the Zhou emperors that local lords received the right to act as a priest to perform sacrifices
to have certain hymns sung and certain dances performed the right to propitiate the gods of local
mountains streams and of the soil and crops Meanwhile local aristocrats continued to keep track of their
ancestral heritage They married with religious rites and sanctions while common folk continued to have
no such marriages no surnames or recorded ancestors They merely lived together and were recognized as
a couple by their neighbors
Ancestor worship was also very important to the Shang It was thought that the success of crops and the
health and well being of people were based on the happiness of dead ancestors
The worship of various gods from the Shang period included gods of grain rain and agriculture -- one of
whom was believed to have had a virgin birth Among these gods was a god of the Yellow River who had
the body of a fish but the face of a man
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity five Research the social hierarchy religion political organization writing systems and
technological aspects of the societies listed on the SNAPSHOT Early Agricultural Societies Describe each aspect
of the society using specific evidence - in one or two clear sentences (SEE EXAMPLE of Olmec Society) Write
VERY neatly in ink Bring this chart with you on the FIRST DAY of school
Activity three Without the ability to translate their writing script archaeologists today do not
understand nearly as much about the Indus River Valley civilization that flourished from 2600 to
1900 BCE although the artifacts found there have enhanced our knowledge of these ancient
peoples One mystery is what exactly happened to the civilizations of the Indus River Valley
Mesopotamia and Egypt were later absorbed into a broader Hellenistic and later Roman cultural
zone but civilization in the Indus River Valley instead disappeared Study the map and read the
articles ldquoThe Myth of the Aryan Invasion of Indiardquo ldquoWere they Copycats or Geniusesrdquo
ldquoEnvironment and Technology Environmental Stress in the Indus River Valleyrdquo and ldquoDid Aryans
kill them or a depressionrdquo Write an 800 word essay that addresses the following question
What are the debates that center around the disappearance of this ancient civilization (Include
examples from the articles) Do NOT go on-line and attempt to find any more information Do
NOT quote from the articles Turn in your essay to wwwturnitincom before the first day of
school
River Valley Civilizations
The Indus Valley Civilization was the first major urban culture of South Asia It reached its peak
from 2600 BC to 1900 BC roughly a period called by some archaeologists Mature Harappan as
distinguished from the earlier Neolithic Early Harappan regional cultures Spatially it is huge
comprising of about 1000 settlements of varying sizes and geographically includes almost all of modern
Pakistan parts of India as far east as Delhi and as far south as Bombay and parts of Afghanistan
The main corpus of writing dated from the Indus Civilization is in the form of some two thousand
inscribed seals in good legible conditions (In case you dont know what seals are they are used to make
impressions on malleable material like clay)
Although these seals and samples of Indus writing have been floating around the scholastic world
for close to 70 years little progress has been made on deciphering this elegant script However we should
not blame scholars for their lack of progress for there are some major impediments to decipherment
1 Very short and brief texts The average number of symbols on the seals is 5 and the longest is
only 26
2 The language underneath is unknown
3 Lack of bilingual texts
For instance consider Champollion who deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs with all of these 3
important clues there were very long Egyptian texts he knew Coptic a descendant of Egyptian and the
Rosetta Stone a bilingual text between Greek and two written forms of Egyptian
But the script isnt as bad as undecipherable For one even though scholars dont have long texts
and bilingual texts they can still theorize about the language underneath the writing system There are
several competing theories about the language that the Indus script represent
A The language is completely unrelated to anything else meaning an isolate Well this doesnt get
us anywhere
B The language is Aryan (some form of Indian-Iranian Indo-European) The historical languages
spoken in Northern India and Pakistan all belong to the Indic branch of Indo-European including
Sanskrit Hindi Punjabi etc so maybe the people of the Indus valley spoke a very old Indo-
European language
The major problem with this model is the fact that horses played a very important role in all Indo-
European cultures being a people constantly on the move There is no escape from the fact that
the horse played a central role in the Vedic and Iranian cultures (Parpola 1986) Sidenote
Vedic means from the time of the Vedas the earliest text in India and the Vedic culture is from
around 1500 to 500 BC However no depiction of horses on seals nor any remains of horses have
been found so far before 2000 BC They only appear after 2000 BC Very likely there were no
Aryan speakers present before 2000 BC in the Indus Valley
C The language belongs to the Munda family of languages The Munda family is spoken largely in
eastern India and related to some Southeast Asian languages Like Aryan the reconstructed
vocabulary of early Munda does not reflect the Harappan culture So its candidacy for being the
language of the Indus Civilization is dim
D The language is Dravidian The Dravidian family of languages is spoken in Southern Indian but
Brahui is spoken in modern Pakistan So far this is the most promising model as in the following
points
o There are many Dravidian influences visible in the Vedic texts If the Aryan language
gradually replaced the Dravidian features from Dravidian would form a substratum in
Aryan One of these features is the appearance of retroflex consonants in Indian languages
both Indo-European and Dravidian In contrast retroflex consonants do not appear in any
other Indo-European language not even Iranian ones which are closest to Indic (For more
information on retroflex consonants please visit my Phonetics page)
o Another possible indication of Dravidian in the Indus texts is from structural analysis of
the texts which suggests that the language underneath is possibly agglutinative from the
fact that sign groups often have the same initial signs but different final signs The number
of these final signs range between 1 to 3 The final signs possibly represent grammatical
suffixes that modify the word (represented by the initial signs) Each suffix would
represent one specific modification and the entire cluster of suffixes would therefore put
the word through a series of modifications This suffix system can be found in Dravidian
but not Indo-European Indo-European tongues tend to change the final sounds to modify
the meaning of a word (a process called inflection) but repeated addition of sounds to the
end of word is extremely rare Often many suffixes in an agglutinative language
correspond to a single inflectional ending in an inflectional language
The Dravidian model isnt just an unapplicable theoryBut first we have to know what kind of
writing system is the Indus script
A count of the number of signs reveal a lot about the type of system being used Alphabetic
systems rarely have more than 40 symbols Syllabic systems like Linear B or Cherokee typically have 40
to 100 or so symbols The third ranges from logophonetic to logographic running upwards of hundreds of
signs (like 500 signs in Hieroglyphic Luwian and 5000 symbols in modern Chinese)
It appears that the maximum number of Indus script symbols is 400 although there are 200 basic
signs (ie signs that are not combined from others) This means that the Indus script is probably
logophonetic in that it has both signs used for their meanings and signs used for their phonetic values
Many signs start off as pictorial representation of a physical object often misleadingly called
pictograms They really are should be called logograms because they represent words in the language
However its next to impossible to write out a word with abstract meaning pictorially What all early
writers figured out was to use a logogram not for the object or idea it was originally supposed to stand for
but for all words sounding similar to the original word for that object or idea For example in English to
write leave we can use a picture of a leaf This is called rebus writing and is a tremendously common
pattern in all early writing systems We could also then use the same leaf symbol to stand for the sound
in relief adding another symbol in front of the leaf symbol in order to indicate the re sound So the
logogram gained a phonetic value as well
Testing the theory How can we take the theoretical framework so far and apply it to archaeological data
Numerals seem to represented by vertical lines (represented by number of lines in the glyph) but
they only go up to 7 Analysis reveal 4 more signs that appear in the same context as these numerals and
so they likely represent numbers higher than 7
The fact that no vertical-line numeral sign denotes 8 very likely means the Harappan language is
based 8 (For example the Arabic numerals that we use has symbols from 0 to 9 and to write ten we
have to combined the symbols 1 and 0 which identify our number system as based ten)
Base 8 languages are rare in the world but it does appear that early Dravidian is base 8 but later
changed to base 10 (possibly under Indo-European influence) When translated the count from 1 to 7 is
familiar to us one two three four five six seven However above seven the numbers
etymologies become non-numerical 8 is number 9 is many minus one and 10 is many (Fairservis
1983)
But can we actually read (not interpret) any symbol on the seals We should start with pictograms as
this one
Many scholars (Knorozov Parpola Mahadevan etc) see this sign as a fish
Fish in reconstructed Proto-Dravidian is micircn Coincidentally micircn is also the word for star
On many pots from Mohenjo Daro an Indus site there are drawings of fish and stars together and so
affirming this linguistic association
Going further often the numeral six appears before the fish Either it means 6 fish or
6 stars Old Tamil (a Dravidian language still spoken today) texts from just around the 1st
century AD recorded the name of the Pleiades a star cluster visible during autumn and
winter just above Orion as Six-Stars or aru-micircn Throughout the world titles with celestial
connotations are very common and the clause Six Stars forming part or whole of a Harappan title is not
unreasonable (Parpola 1986)
Sometimes symbols are added to the basic sign to make new signs Of these the one that
looks like a circumflex accent placed on top of the fish is quite interesting It is theorized to mean
roof and in Proto-Dravidian it is vecircymecircy This is phonetically similar to Proto-Dravidian word
for black may Together with fish it spells out mai-m-micircn or black star which in Old Tamil
means the planet Saturn In Sanskrit texts Saturn is associate the color black The god of death Yama is
the presiding of this planet and is usually depicted as riding on a dark buffalo
But the fish reading isnt accepted by all scholars William Fairservis saw it as a combination of
a loom twist and a human sign and form a honorific title pertaining to rulership (Fairservis 1983) I
however am more inclined to accept the fish identification
This is a quick overview of the current process in the decipherment of the Indus script For more
information you can either go to the following links or go to a good library for books and articles (check
out my references)
The Myth of the Aryan Invasion of India Richard Hooker 1996
They called themselves the noble ones or the superior ones Their names are lost their tribal names
are lost But when they found themselves conquerors they gave themselves the name superior or
noble
They were a tribal and nomadic peoples living in the far reaches of Euro-Asia in hostile steppe lands
barely scratching out a living They were unquestionably a tough people and they were fierce and war-
like Their religion reflects it dominated as it is by a storm-god or sky-god that enjoins warfare and
conquest This god was called something like Dyaus a word related to Zeus deus (the Latin word
for god) deva (the Sanskrit word for god) and of course the English word divine Their culture
was oriented around warfare and they were very good at it They were superior on horseback and rushed
into battle in chariots They were a tribal people ruled over by a war-chief or raja (the Latin word rex
(king) comes from the same root word along with the English regal) Somewhere in the early centuries
of the second millennium BC they began to migrate southwards in waves of steady conquest across the
face of Persia and the lands of India
There they would take on the name superior or noble to distinguish themselves from the people
they conquered Their name is derived from the Indo-European root word ar meaning noble In
Sanskrit they were the Aryas (Aryans) but that root ar would also serve as the foundation of the
name of the conquered Persian territories Iran This concept of nobility in fact seems to lie at the heart
of Indo-European consciousness for it appears in another countrys name Ireland or Eire You can
bet however that when a people go around calling themselves superior that it spells bad news for other
people
And there is no question that they were bad news for the southern Asians They swept over Persia with
lightening speed and spread across the northern river plains of India Their natures as a warlike
conquering people are still preserved in Vedic religion the foundation of Hinduism In the Rig Veda the
collection of praises to the gods the god Indra towers over the poetry as a conquering god one that
smashes cities and slays enemies The invading Aryans were originally nomadic peoples not agricultural
They penetrated India from the north-west settling first in the Indus valley Unlike the Harappans
however they eventually concentrated their populations along the Ganges floodplain The Ganges unlike
the Indus is far milder and more predictable in its flooding It must have been a paradise to a people from
the dry steppes of central Asia and Iran a paradise full of water and forest When they arrived the vast
northern plains were almost certainly densely forested Where now bare fields stretch to the horizon
when the Aryans arrived lush forests stretched to those very same horizons Clearing the forests over the
centuries was an epic project and one that is still preserved in Indian literature
The Aryans or Vedic civilization were a new start in Indian culture Harappa was more or less a dead
end (at least as far as we know) the Aryans adopted almost nothing of Harappan culture They built no
cities no states no granaries and used no writing Instead they were a warlike people that organized
themselves in individual tribal kinship units the jana The jana was ruled over by a war-chief These
tribes spread quickly over northern India and the Deccan In a process that we do not understand the basic
social unit of Aryan culture the jana slowly developed from an organization based on kinship to one
based on geography The jana became a janapada or nation and the jana-rajya or tribal kingdom
became the jana-rajyapada or national kingdom So powerfully ingrained into Indian culture is the
jana-pada that Indians still define themselves mainly by their territorial origins All the major territories
of modern India with their separate cultures and separate languages can be dated back to the early jana-
padas of Vedic India
The earliest history of the Aryans in India is called the Rigvedic Period (1700-1000 BC) after the
religious praise poems that are the oldest pieces of literature in India These poems the Rig Veda are
believed to represent the most primitive layer of
Indo-European religion and have many characteristics in common with Persian religion since the two
peoples are closely related in time In this early period their population was restricted to the Punjab in the
northern reaches of the Indus River and the Yamuna River near the Ganges They maintained the Aryan
tribal structure with a raja ruling over the tribal group in tandem with a council Each jana seems to have
had a chief priest the religion was focused almost entirely on a series of sacrifices to the gods The
Rigvedic peoples originally had only two social classes nobles and commoners Eventually they added a
third Dasas or darks These were we presume the darker-skinned people they had conquered By the
end of the Rigvedic period social class had settled into four rigid castes the caturvarnas or four
colors At the top of the caturvarnas were the priests or Brahmans Below the priests were the warriors
or nobles (Kshatriya) the craftspeople and merchants (Vaishya) and the servants (Shudra) who made
up the bulk of society These economic classes were legitimated by an elaborate religious system and
would be eventually subdivided into a huge number of economic sub-classes which we call castes
Social class by the end of the Rigvedic period became completely inflexible there was no such thing as
social mobility
In the early centuries of Later Vedic Period or Brahmanic Period (1000-500 BC) the Aryans
migrated across the Doab which is a large plain which separates the Yamuna River from the Ganges It
was a difficult project for the Doab was thickly forested the Aryans slowly burned and settled the Doab
until they reached the Ganges While the Rig Veda represents the most primitive religion of the Aryans
during the Rigvedic Period the religion of the Later Vedic period is dominated by the Brahmanas or
priestly book which was composed sometime between 1000 and 850 BC Later Vedic society is
dominated by the Brahmans and every aspect of Aryan life comes under the control of priestly rituals and
spells In history as the Indians understand it the Later Vedic Period is the Epic Age the great literary
heroic epics of Indian culture the Mahabharata and the Ramayana though they were composed
between 500 and 200 BC were probably originally formulated and told in the Later Vedic Period Both of
these epics deal with heroes from this period and demonstrate how Aryan cultural values as we can
understand them from the Rig Veda are being transformed by mixing with Indus cultures
What did the Aryans do with their time They seem to have had a well-developed musical culture and
song and dance dominated their society They were not greatly invested in the visual arts but their interest
in lyric poetry was unmatched They loved gambling They did not however have much interest in
writing even though they could have inherited a civilization and a writing system when they originally
settled India We do not know exactly when they became interested in writing but it may have been at the
end of the Brahmanic period somewhere between 650 and 500 BC Still there are no Aryan writings until
the Mauryan periodmdashfrom Harappa (2500-1750 BC) to Maurya (300 BC) is quite a long time The script
that the Mauryans used is called Brahmi script and was used to write not only the religious and literary
language of the time Sanskrit but also the vernacular languages This script Brahmi is the national
alphabet of India
The Vedic period then is a period of cultural mixing not of conquest Although the Aryans were a
conquering people when they first spread into India the culture of the Aryans would gradually mix with
indigenous cultures and the war-religion of the Aryans still preserved in parts of the Rig Veda slowly
became more ritualized and more meditative By 200 BC this process of mixing and transforming was
more or less complete and the culture we call Indian was fully formed
Were they Copycats or Geniuses How did the Harappans take the great leap from self-contained agricultural societies to a trade-oriented
luxury-conscious sophisticated urban civilization that gave the world the concept of town planning
Analyzing the evidence from various sites Possehl found that between 2600 BC and 2500 BC the
Harappans experienced a century of cathartic changes Before this he finds no breadboard models of the
expansion to come be it the invention of writing or the awesome town-planning techniques A
tremendous jump in human ability is evident So what or who caused it
In the past the reputed British archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler argued that ideas have wings and that
the Harappans were influenced by their trade contacts with the Sumerians But the diffusion theory of
civilization as it is called is slowly being given the heave-ho Cambridge historian Raymond Allchin an
authority on the subject says We are now beginning to see the foundation being laid in the preceding
100 to 200 years in smaller sites There appears to be a completely organic process of growth that threw
up the Harappan culture as we know it
Yet the evidence of that process continues to be scanty In Kunal in Haryana archaeologists recently
found what are known as proto Indus seals On pottery on many of the smaller sites in both India and
Pakistan graffiti similar to some figures on the script begin to appear And at Dholavira and at Banawali
in Haryana the distinction between the citadel and the lower city is beginning to evolve There is
however a huge jump in scale in such activity in those critical 100 years For in Harappa as in most
Indus sites the distinct gridiron pattern for streets appear a scientific system of drainage that linked up to
even the smallest house in the lower city is established precise weights and measures begin to circulate
and the writing system evolves So were the Harappans copycats Archaeologists say the Indus people
couldnrsquot have copied their town-planning from Egypt and Mesopotamia because in those civilizations the
roads meandered like village streets Nor was the writing similar to Sumer`s cuneiform or the Egyptian
hieroglyphics The Harappans had their own distinctive style Lal explains the dramatic change as a result
of centuries of growth reaching a critical mass that caused an unparalleled urban explosion Trade he
believes was the driving force of the revolution Even a skeptic like Possehl maintains that these are
indeed an expression of the Indian genius
Did Aryans kill them or a Depression Archaeologists are known to stumble but the kind of knocking Wheeler has taken over his Aryan
invasion theory has few parallels When the British archaeologist discovered a dozen skeletons in
Mohenjodaro he propounded a theory about the final massacre by marauding invaders that put an end to
the Indus civilization When an Indian scholar told him of Hariyuppa being mentioned in the Rigveda he
took it to mean Harappa And since a fort was known as pur and Indira the Aryan god was known as
Purandhara or destroyer of forts it all fitted neatly
After all werenrsquot the Indus cities among the most fortified Yet the past 50 years and more so the last
decade has shown just how wrong Wheeler was The last massacre theory was his imagination running
riot Far from being snuffed out there was a brilliant resurgence of Indus culture further south for a while
Possehl who made a recent study found that in 2000 BC in Pakistanrsquos Sindh district the sites were down
from 86 to 6 and in Cholistan 174 to 41 But in India the sites in Haryana Punjab and Rajasthan exploded
from 218 to 853 Possehl asks How can this be construed as an eclipse We are looking at a highly
mobile people
Allchin argues that there is clear indication that the rainfall pattern which had initially brought fertility
had become adverse in the Sindh region And theories that given the instability of the Himalayan region
there may have been a massive earthquake that possibly changed the course of rivers such as the Sarasvati
and affected many Indus cities The Indus people then migrated eastward Lal talks of steep decline in
trade because of problems in Sumer that resulted in a Great Depression and turned many urban centers
into ghost cities
Bisht concurs with Lal but goes a step further He says that after the quake hit the heart of the civilization
the Indus people migrated east which acted like a sort of bypass to their woes And like a dying candle it
shone brilliantly again but briefly before being snuffed out Dholavira Banawali Mehrgarh Harappa -- in
fact all the major cities show that as the cities declined encroachments on streets that were unseen at its
peak began to occur with alarming regularity There was a breakdown in sanitation and cities like their
modern-day counterparts in India simply ran themselves aground They were replaced by massive squatter
colonies and an explosion of rural sites as people disillusioned with cities went back to farming
communities A giant step backward
Yet it wasnrsquot as if all came to naught as was earlier believed Some of the writings survived in the pottery
of the following ages The weight and decimal system too lived on And so did the bullock-cart
technology that the Indus had perfected Rather than a violent transition there may have been an orderly
interaction with oncoming Aryans Lal in his most recent book even puts across the most audacious
theory Could the Bronze Age Harappans be Aryans themselves He says this because of the presence of
fire worship and the discovery of horse remains and idols in Indus sites Meadows dismisses it as
premature and points out that it was more likely that ass remains were mistaken for that of a horsersquos And
that the Vedas showed a great antipathy for urban centers
Whatever the cause it would take another 1000 years for a semblance of civilization to return to the
subcontinent -- a dire warning to modern India of the catastrophe that can befall an errant populace
Environmental Stress in the Indus Valley Source Quotation from D P Agarwal and R K Sood in Gregory L Possehl ed Harappan Civilization A Contemporary Perspective (Warminster
England Aris and Phillips 1982)229
The three river-valley civilizations discussed in this chapter were located in arid or semiarid regions Such
regions are particularly vulnerable to changes in the environment Scholars debates about the existence
and impact of changes in the climate and landscape of the Indus Valley illuminate some of the potential
factors at work as well as the difficulties of verifying and interpreting such long-ago changes
One of the points at issue is climatic change An earlier generation of scholars believed that the climate
of the Indus Valley was considerably wetter during the height of that civilization than it is now As
evidence they cited the enormous quantities of timber cut from extensive forests that would have been
needed to bake the millions of mud bricks used to construct the cities (see photo) the distribution of
human settlements on land that is now unfavorable for agriculture and the representation of jungle and
marsh animals on decorated seals This approach assumes that the growth of population prosperity and
complexity in the Indus Valley in the third millennium BCE required wet conditions and it concludes
that the change to a drier climate in the early second millennium BCE pushed this civilization into
decline
Other experts skeptical about a radical climatic change countered with alternative calculations of the
amount of timber needed and evidence of plant remains-particularly barley a grain that is tolerant of dry
conditions However recent studies of the stabilization of sand dunes which occurs in periods of heavy
rainfall and analysis of the sediment deposited by rivers and winds have been used to strengthen the
claim that the Indus Valley used to be wetter and in the early-to-mid second millennium BCE entered a
period of relatively dry conditions that have persisted to the present
A much clearer case can be made for changes in the landscape caused by shifts in the courses of rivers
These shifts are due in many cases to tectonic forces such as earthquakes Dry channels whether
detected in satellite photographs or by on-the-ground inspection reveal the location of old riverbeds and
it appears that a second major river system the Hakra once ran parallel to the Indus some distance to the
east The Hakra with teeming towns and fertile fields along its banks appears to have been a second axis
of this civilization Either the Sutlej which now feeds into the Indus or the Yamuna which now pours
into the Ganges may have been the main source of water for this long-gone system before undergoing a
change of course The consequences of the drying-up of this major waterway must have been immense-
the loss of huge amounts of arable land and the food that it produced the abandonment of cities and
villages and consequent migration of their populations shifts in the trade routes and desperate
competition for shrinking resources
As for the Indus itself the present-day course of the lower reaches of the river has shifted 100 miles
(161 kilometers) to the west since the arrival of the Greek conqueror Alexander the Great in the late
fourth century BCE and the deposit of massive volumes of silt has pushed the mouth of the river 50
miles (80 kilometers) farther south Such a shift of the river bed and buildup of alluvial deposits also may
have occurred in the third and second millennia BCE
A recent study concludes It is obvious that ecological stresses caused both climatically and
technically played an important role in the life and decay of the Indus civilization
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity four Read the article below about the early Chinese dynasties Using information from
the article write an 800 word essay that describes the influence of the environment religion and
gender on the formation of the government of ancient China Again do NOT look up additional
information use only what is provided Also do NOT quote from the articles paraphrase and
summarize only Turn in your essay to wwwturnitincom before the first day of school
The Shang and Zhou Dynasties By 5000 BCE agricultural communities had spread through much of what is now called China and there
were agricultural villages from the Wei River Valley eastward parallel with the great Yellow River
(Huang He) which flowed out of the Kunlun Mountains to the deciduous forest and loess soil region of
the North China Plain Where people were free of forest and had access to water they grew millet -- as
early as 5500 BCE -- while they continued to hunt deer and other game to fish and gather food And they
raised dogs pigs and chickens They built one-room homes dug into the earth with roofs of clay or
thatch pit homes grouped in villages They had spinning wheels and knitted and wove fibers And they
made pottery decorated with art
Flooding along the Yellow River was worse than it was along the Yangzi River to the south Along the
Yangzi River through the Hubei Basin and on the coastal plain to Hangzhou Bay farming had also
developed but people along the Yellow River had to work harder at flood control and irrigation and
perhaps this stimulated a greater effort at organization At any rate the North China Plain became the
largest area with a relatively dense population
Where people were producing more food than they needed to survive warriors had the incentive not only
to plunder but also to conquer And conquering kings arose on the North China Plain as they did in West
Asia The first dynasty of kings in the North China Plain has been described as belonging to the Xia
family - whose rule is thought to have begun around 2200 BCE But the first dynasty of which there is
historical evidence is that of the Shang family The Shang clan came out of the Wei River Valley just west
of the North China Plain By around 1500 BCE give or take a century or so the Shang unified people
along the North China Plain The military had chariots each with an aristocrat archer a driver and
sometimes also a man with a spear The Shang built an empire in much the same way as other conquerors
by leaving behind a garrison force to police local people by turning a local king into a subservient ally
free to manage local matters and by taxing the conquered
Around 1384 BCE the Shang moved their capital to Yin As a regular pastime the Shang emperors and
nobles hunted in organized game drives Emperors and aristocrats had splendid homes with walls of
pounded earth or earthen bricks while common people continued to live in their pit homes of earlier times
A Shang emperor was chief priest and he had an administrative bureaucracy with councilors lesser
priests and diviners As with other warring civilizations slaves were taken the slaves laboring at growing
crops And women in Shang civilization were subservient to men with aristocratic women enjoying a
greater freedom and equality than common women The role of the woman was to be gentle calm
respectful and to obey her husband Women were lower than men and were subjected to womenrsquos work
(tending to the children and needs of the husband) Men also married multiple times and women were
used as concubines
During the Shang dynasty the civilization along the Yellow River had canals for irrigating crops
Communities had drains that ran water out of town They made beer from millet The stable government
allowed for extended trading and use of money in the form of cowry shells Shang merchants traded in
salt iron copper tin lead and antimony some of which had to be imported from far away As early as
the 1300 BCE a bronze casting industry had developed This was later than the rise of bronze casting in
Europe and West Asia but it was the most advanced in the world
It was around 1300 BCE that the first known writing appeared in Shang civilization because the
government officials needed to have questions answered that would allow them to better govern This
writing was for divination done on plate-like portions of the bones of cattle or deer on seashells and
turtle shells and perhaps on wood By applying a pointed heated rod to a bone or shell the item cracked
and to which written symbol the crack traveled gave answers for various questions what the weather was
going to be like would there be flood would a harvest succeed or fail when might be the best time for
hunting or fishing there were also personal questions about illness or whether one should make a journey
Shang Violence and Splendor
To the east north and south of Shang civilization were those the Shang saw as barbarians including the
farming people along the Yangzi River Shang emperors sent out armies to repulse invaders and the
Shang emperors went beyond their domains to plunder and to capture foreign peoples needed for sacrifice
to their gods Uncovered tombs of emperors from the Shang period indicate that they could put into the
field as many as three to five thousand soldiers Found buried with the emperors were their personal
ornaments and spears with bronze blades and the remains of what had been bows and arrows Buried with
the emperors were also horses and chariots for transporting soldiers to battle And with the emperors in
death were their charioteers dogs servants and people in groups of ten -- people who had been
ceremonially beheaded with bronze axes
Zhou Empire Religion and Human Sacrifice
Shang rule was threatened by forces from outside and from within its empire To the west of Shang
civilization in the Wei River Valley lived a pastoral people called Zhou who led an alliance that included
other tribal peoples neighboring Shang civilization While the Shang emperor Zhouxin was occupied by
a war against tribal people to his southeast rebellions broke out among people that Shang monarchs
before him had conquered The Zhou and their allies saw the Shang emperors troubles as an opportunity
to move against him and in 1045 BCE they overpowered him at the battle of Mu-ye and had him
beheaded
A dynasty of Zhou emperors began ruling what had been Shang civilization They claimed that all lands
belonged to heaven that they were the sons of heaven and therefore that all lands and all people were
their subjects Seeing the lands they had conquered as too vast for one man to dominate the Zhou
emperors divided these lands into regions and assigned someone to rule each region in their name
choosing for this position a close family member a trusted member of their clan or the chief of a tribe
that had been allied with them against the Shang
Each local ruler had at his disposal all the lands around him He had his own militia And from the Zhou
emperors the local rulers received gifts such as chariots bronze weapons servants and animals The local
rulers received the title of lord (gong) Local rulers passed their positions to their sons their titles of lord
becoming hereditary And to control their areas better the lords made sub-lords of those who had
dominated the common people before they arrived A hierarchy of status and obligations emerged among
families and within families with older brothers ranking higher than younger brothers with rules of
succession as to which of the males would head his family If a married aristocrat became infatuated with
another woman rather than drive his wife from his home he could bring the other woman into the family
as a concubine where she would rank beneath his wife
Zhou emperors told those they had conquered that they the Zhou had ousted the ancestors of Shang
emperors from heaven and that heaven was occupied by their supreme god a god they called The Lord
on High who they said had commanded the downfall of the Shang emperors Like emperors in West
Asia Zhou emperors claimed that they ruled by divine right They claimed that they represented on earth
the Lord on High and that it was their duty to mediate with the Lord on High to perform appropriate
sacrifices and to maintain a proper relationship between heaven and their subjects They claimed that any
opposition to their rule was opposition to the will of heaven
It was from the Zhou emperors that local lords received the right to act as a priest to perform sacrifices
to have certain hymns sung and certain dances performed the right to propitiate the gods of local
mountains streams and of the soil and crops Meanwhile local aristocrats continued to keep track of their
ancestral heritage They married with religious rites and sanctions while common folk continued to have
no such marriages no surnames or recorded ancestors They merely lived together and were recognized as
a couple by their neighbors
Ancestor worship was also very important to the Shang It was thought that the success of crops and the
health and well being of people were based on the happiness of dead ancestors
The worship of various gods from the Shang period included gods of grain rain and agriculture -- one of
whom was believed to have had a virgin birth Among these gods was a god of the Yellow River who had
the body of a fish but the face of a man
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity five Research the social hierarchy religion political organization writing systems and
technological aspects of the societies listed on the SNAPSHOT Early Agricultural Societies Describe each aspect
of the society using specific evidence - in one or two clear sentences (SEE EXAMPLE of Olmec Society) Write
VERY neatly in ink Bring this chart with you on the FIRST DAY of school
For instance consider Champollion who deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs with all of these 3
important clues there were very long Egyptian texts he knew Coptic a descendant of Egyptian and the
Rosetta Stone a bilingual text between Greek and two written forms of Egyptian
But the script isnt as bad as undecipherable For one even though scholars dont have long texts
and bilingual texts they can still theorize about the language underneath the writing system There are
several competing theories about the language that the Indus script represent
A The language is completely unrelated to anything else meaning an isolate Well this doesnt get
us anywhere
B The language is Aryan (some form of Indian-Iranian Indo-European) The historical languages
spoken in Northern India and Pakistan all belong to the Indic branch of Indo-European including
Sanskrit Hindi Punjabi etc so maybe the people of the Indus valley spoke a very old Indo-
European language
The major problem with this model is the fact that horses played a very important role in all Indo-
European cultures being a people constantly on the move There is no escape from the fact that
the horse played a central role in the Vedic and Iranian cultures (Parpola 1986) Sidenote
Vedic means from the time of the Vedas the earliest text in India and the Vedic culture is from
around 1500 to 500 BC However no depiction of horses on seals nor any remains of horses have
been found so far before 2000 BC They only appear after 2000 BC Very likely there were no
Aryan speakers present before 2000 BC in the Indus Valley
C The language belongs to the Munda family of languages The Munda family is spoken largely in
eastern India and related to some Southeast Asian languages Like Aryan the reconstructed
vocabulary of early Munda does not reflect the Harappan culture So its candidacy for being the
language of the Indus Civilization is dim
D The language is Dravidian The Dravidian family of languages is spoken in Southern Indian but
Brahui is spoken in modern Pakistan So far this is the most promising model as in the following
points
o There are many Dravidian influences visible in the Vedic texts If the Aryan language
gradually replaced the Dravidian features from Dravidian would form a substratum in
Aryan One of these features is the appearance of retroflex consonants in Indian languages
both Indo-European and Dravidian In contrast retroflex consonants do not appear in any
other Indo-European language not even Iranian ones which are closest to Indic (For more
information on retroflex consonants please visit my Phonetics page)
o Another possible indication of Dravidian in the Indus texts is from structural analysis of
the texts which suggests that the language underneath is possibly agglutinative from the
fact that sign groups often have the same initial signs but different final signs The number
of these final signs range between 1 to 3 The final signs possibly represent grammatical
suffixes that modify the word (represented by the initial signs) Each suffix would
represent one specific modification and the entire cluster of suffixes would therefore put
the word through a series of modifications This suffix system can be found in Dravidian
but not Indo-European Indo-European tongues tend to change the final sounds to modify
the meaning of a word (a process called inflection) but repeated addition of sounds to the
end of word is extremely rare Often many suffixes in an agglutinative language
correspond to a single inflectional ending in an inflectional language
The Dravidian model isnt just an unapplicable theoryBut first we have to know what kind of
writing system is the Indus script
A count of the number of signs reveal a lot about the type of system being used Alphabetic
systems rarely have more than 40 symbols Syllabic systems like Linear B or Cherokee typically have 40
to 100 or so symbols The third ranges from logophonetic to logographic running upwards of hundreds of
signs (like 500 signs in Hieroglyphic Luwian and 5000 symbols in modern Chinese)
It appears that the maximum number of Indus script symbols is 400 although there are 200 basic
signs (ie signs that are not combined from others) This means that the Indus script is probably
logophonetic in that it has both signs used for their meanings and signs used for their phonetic values
Many signs start off as pictorial representation of a physical object often misleadingly called
pictograms They really are should be called logograms because they represent words in the language
However its next to impossible to write out a word with abstract meaning pictorially What all early
writers figured out was to use a logogram not for the object or idea it was originally supposed to stand for
but for all words sounding similar to the original word for that object or idea For example in English to
write leave we can use a picture of a leaf This is called rebus writing and is a tremendously common
pattern in all early writing systems We could also then use the same leaf symbol to stand for the sound
in relief adding another symbol in front of the leaf symbol in order to indicate the re sound So the
logogram gained a phonetic value as well
Testing the theory How can we take the theoretical framework so far and apply it to archaeological data
Numerals seem to represented by vertical lines (represented by number of lines in the glyph) but
they only go up to 7 Analysis reveal 4 more signs that appear in the same context as these numerals and
so they likely represent numbers higher than 7
The fact that no vertical-line numeral sign denotes 8 very likely means the Harappan language is
based 8 (For example the Arabic numerals that we use has symbols from 0 to 9 and to write ten we
have to combined the symbols 1 and 0 which identify our number system as based ten)
Base 8 languages are rare in the world but it does appear that early Dravidian is base 8 but later
changed to base 10 (possibly under Indo-European influence) When translated the count from 1 to 7 is
familiar to us one two three four five six seven However above seven the numbers
etymologies become non-numerical 8 is number 9 is many minus one and 10 is many (Fairservis
1983)
But can we actually read (not interpret) any symbol on the seals We should start with pictograms as
this one
Many scholars (Knorozov Parpola Mahadevan etc) see this sign as a fish
Fish in reconstructed Proto-Dravidian is micircn Coincidentally micircn is also the word for star
On many pots from Mohenjo Daro an Indus site there are drawings of fish and stars together and so
affirming this linguistic association
Going further often the numeral six appears before the fish Either it means 6 fish or
6 stars Old Tamil (a Dravidian language still spoken today) texts from just around the 1st
century AD recorded the name of the Pleiades a star cluster visible during autumn and
winter just above Orion as Six-Stars or aru-micircn Throughout the world titles with celestial
connotations are very common and the clause Six Stars forming part or whole of a Harappan title is not
unreasonable (Parpola 1986)
Sometimes symbols are added to the basic sign to make new signs Of these the one that
looks like a circumflex accent placed on top of the fish is quite interesting It is theorized to mean
roof and in Proto-Dravidian it is vecircymecircy This is phonetically similar to Proto-Dravidian word
for black may Together with fish it spells out mai-m-micircn or black star which in Old Tamil
means the planet Saturn In Sanskrit texts Saturn is associate the color black The god of death Yama is
the presiding of this planet and is usually depicted as riding on a dark buffalo
But the fish reading isnt accepted by all scholars William Fairservis saw it as a combination of
a loom twist and a human sign and form a honorific title pertaining to rulership (Fairservis 1983) I
however am more inclined to accept the fish identification
This is a quick overview of the current process in the decipherment of the Indus script For more
information you can either go to the following links or go to a good library for books and articles (check
out my references)
The Myth of the Aryan Invasion of India Richard Hooker 1996
They called themselves the noble ones or the superior ones Their names are lost their tribal names
are lost But when they found themselves conquerors they gave themselves the name superior or
noble
They were a tribal and nomadic peoples living in the far reaches of Euro-Asia in hostile steppe lands
barely scratching out a living They were unquestionably a tough people and they were fierce and war-
like Their religion reflects it dominated as it is by a storm-god or sky-god that enjoins warfare and
conquest This god was called something like Dyaus a word related to Zeus deus (the Latin word
for god) deva (the Sanskrit word for god) and of course the English word divine Their culture
was oriented around warfare and they were very good at it They were superior on horseback and rushed
into battle in chariots They were a tribal people ruled over by a war-chief or raja (the Latin word rex
(king) comes from the same root word along with the English regal) Somewhere in the early centuries
of the second millennium BC they began to migrate southwards in waves of steady conquest across the
face of Persia and the lands of India
There they would take on the name superior or noble to distinguish themselves from the people
they conquered Their name is derived from the Indo-European root word ar meaning noble In
Sanskrit they were the Aryas (Aryans) but that root ar would also serve as the foundation of the
name of the conquered Persian territories Iran This concept of nobility in fact seems to lie at the heart
of Indo-European consciousness for it appears in another countrys name Ireland or Eire You can
bet however that when a people go around calling themselves superior that it spells bad news for other
people
And there is no question that they were bad news for the southern Asians They swept over Persia with
lightening speed and spread across the northern river plains of India Their natures as a warlike
conquering people are still preserved in Vedic religion the foundation of Hinduism In the Rig Veda the
collection of praises to the gods the god Indra towers over the poetry as a conquering god one that
smashes cities and slays enemies The invading Aryans were originally nomadic peoples not agricultural
They penetrated India from the north-west settling first in the Indus valley Unlike the Harappans
however they eventually concentrated their populations along the Ganges floodplain The Ganges unlike
the Indus is far milder and more predictable in its flooding It must have been a paradise to a people from
the dry steppes of central Asia and Iran a paradise full of water and forest When they arrived the vast
northern plains were almost certainly densely forested Where now bare fields stretch to the horizon
when the Aryans arrived lush forests stretched to those very same horizons Clearing the forests over the
centuries was an epic project and one that is still preserved in Indian literature
The Aryans or Vedic civilization were a new start in Indian culture Harappa was more or less a dead
end (at least as far as we know) the Aryans adopted almost nothing of Harappan culture They built no
cities no states no granaries and used no writing Instead they were a warlike people that organized
themselves in individual tribal kinship units the jana The jana was ruled over by a war-chief These
tribes spread quickly over northern India and the Deccan In a process that we do not understand the basic
social unit of Aryan culture the jana slowly developed from an organization based on kinship to one
based on geography The jana became a janapada or nation and the jana-rajya or tribal kingdom
became the jana-rajyapada or national kingdom So powerfully ingrained into Indian culture is the
jana-pada that Indians still define themselves mainly by their territorial origins All the major territories
of modern India with their separate cultures and separate languages can be dated back to the early jana-
padas of Vedic India
The earliest history of the Aryans in India is called the Rigvedic Period (1700-1000 BC) after the
religious praise poems that are the oldest pieces of literature in India These poems the Rig Veda are
believed to represent the most primitive layer of
Indo-European religion and have many characteristics in common with Persian religion since the two
peoples are closely related in time In this early period their population was restricted to the Punjab in the
northern reaches of the Indus River and the Yamuna River near the Ganges They maintained the Aryan
tribal structure with a raja ruling over the tribal group in tandem with a council Each jana seems to have
had a chief priest the religion was focused almost entirely on a series of sacrifices to the gods The
Rigvedic peoples originally had only two social classes nobles and commoners Eventually they added a
third Dasas or darks These were we presume the darker-skinned people they had conquered By the
end of the Rigvedic period social class had settled into four rigid castes the caturvarnas or four
colors At the top of the caturvarnas were the priests or Brahmans Below the priests were the warriors
or nobles (Kshatriya) the craftspeople and merchants (Vaishya) and the servants (Shudra) who made
up the bulk of society These economic classes were legitimated by an elaborate religious system and
would be eventually subdivided into a huge number of economic sub-classes which we call castes
Social class by the end of the Rigvedic period became completely inflexible there was no such thing as
social mobility
In the early centuries of Later Vedic Period or Brahmanic Period (1000-500 BC) the Aryans
migrated across the Doab which is a large plain which separates the Yamuna River from the Ganges It
was a difficult project for the Doab was thickly forested the Aryans slowly burned and settled the Doab
until they reached the Ganges While the Rig Veda represents the most primitive religion of the Aryans
during the Rigvedic Period the religion of the Later Vedic period is dominated by the Brahmanas or
priestly book which was composed sometime between 1000 and 850 BC Later Vedic society is
dominated by the Brahmans and every aspect of Aryan life comes under the control of priestly rituals and
spells In history as the Indians understand it the Later Vedic Period is the Epic Age the great literary
heroic epics of Indian culture the Mahabharata and the Ramayana though they were composed
between 500 and 200 BC were probably originally formulated and told in the Later Vedic Period Both of
these epics deal with heroes from this period and demonstrate how Aryan cultural values as we can
understand them from the Rig Veda are being transformed by mixing with Indus cultures
What did the Aryans do with their time They seem to have had a well-developed musical culture and
song and dance dominated their society They were not greatly invested in the visual arts but their interest
in lyric poetry was unmatched They loved gambling They did not however have much interest in
writing even though they could have inherited a civilization and a writing system when they originally
settled India We do not know exactly when they became interested in writing but it may have been at the
end of the Brahmanic period somewhere between 650 and 500 BC Still there are no Aryan writings until
the Mauryan periodmdashfrom Harappa (2500-1750 BC) to Maurya (300 BC) is quite a long time The script
that the Mauryans used is called Brahmi script and was used to write not only the religious and literary
language of the time Sanskrit but also the vernacular languages This script Brahmi is the national
alphabet of India
The Vedic period then is a period of cultural mixing not of conquest Although the Aryans were a
conquering people when they first spread into India the culture of the Aryans would gradually mix with
indigenous cultures and the war-religion of the Aryans still preserved in parts of the Rig Veda slowly
became more ritualized and more meditative By 200 BC this process of mixing and transforming was
more or less complete and the culture we call Indian was fully formed
Were they Copycats or Geniuses How did the Harappans take the great leap from self-contained agricultural societies to a trade-oriented
luxury-conscious sophisticated urban civilization that gave the world the concept of town planning
Analyzing the evidence from various sites Possehl found that between 2600 BC and 2500 BC the
Harappans experienced a century of cathartic changes Before this he finds no breadboard models of the
expansion to come be it the invention of writing or the awesome town-planning techniques A
tremendous jump in human ability is evident So what or who caused it
In the past the reputed British archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler argued that ideas have wings and that
the Harappans were influenced by their trade contacts with the Sumerians But the diffusion theory of
civilization as it is called is slowly being given the heave-ho Cambridge historian Raymond Allchin an
authority on the subject says We are now beginning to see the foundation being laid in the preceding
100 to 200 years in smaller sites There appears to be a completely organic process of growth that threw
up the Harappan culture as we know it
Yet the evidence of that process continues to be scanty In Kunal in Haryana archaeologists recently
found what are known as proto Indus seals On pottery on many of the smaller sites in both India and
Pakistan graffiti similar to some figures on the script begin to appear And at Dholavira and at Banawali
in Haryana the distinction between the citadel and the lower city is beginning to evolve There is
however a huge jump in scale in such activity in those critical 100 years For in Harappa as in most
Indus sites the distinct gridiron pattern for streets appear a scientific system of drainage that linked up to
even the smallest house in the lower city is established precise weights and measures begin to circulate
and the writing system evolves So were the Harappans copycats Archaeologists say the Indus people
couldnrsquot have copied their town-planning from Egypt and Mesopotamia because in those civilizations the
roads meandered like village streets Nor was the writing similar to Sumer`s cuneiform or the Egyptian
hieroglyphics The Harappans had their own distinctive style Lal explains the dramatic change as a result
of centuries of growth reaching a critical mass that caused an unparalleled urban explosion Trade he
believes was the driving force of the revolution Even a skeptic like Possehl maintains that these are
indeed an expression of the Indian genius
Did Aryans kill them or a Depression Archaeologists are known to stumble but the kind of knocking Wheeler has taken over his Aryan
invasion theory has few parallels When the British archaeologist discovered a dozen skeletons in
Mohenjodaro he propounded a theory about the final massacre by marauding invaders that put an end to
the Indus civilization When an Indian scholar told him of Hariyuppa being mentioned in the Rigveda he
took it to mean Harappa And since a fort was known as pur and Indira the Aryan god was known as
Purandhara or destroyer of forts it all fitted neatly
After all werenrsquot the Indus cities among the most fortified Yet the past 50 years and more so the last
decade has shown just how wrong Wheeler was The last massacre theory was his imagination running
riot Far from being snuffed out there was a brilliant resurgence of Indus culture further south for a while
Possehl who made a recent study found that in 2000 BC in Pakistanrsquos Sindh district the sites were down
from 86 to 6 and in Cholistan 174 to 41 But in India the sites in Haryana Punjab and Rajasthan exploded
from 218 to 853 Possehl asks How can this be construed as an eclipse We are looking at a highly
mobile people
Allchin argues that there is clear indication that the rainfall pattern which had initially brought fertility
had become adverse in the Sindh region And theories that given the instability of the Himalayan region
there may have been a massive earthquake that possibly changed the course of rivers such as the Sarasvati
and affected many Indus cities The Indus people then migrated eastward Lal talks of steep decline in
trade because of problems in Sumer that resulted in a Great Depression and turned many urban centers
into ghost cities
Bisht concurs with Lal but goes a step further He says that after the quake hit the heart of the civilization
the Indus people migrated east which acted like a sort of bypass to their woes And like a dying candle it
shone brilliantly again but briefly before being snuffed out Dholavira Banawali Mehrgarh Harappa -- in
fact all the major cities show that as the cities declined encroachments on streets that were unseen at its
peak began to occur with alarming regularity There was a breakdown in sanitation and cities like their
modern-day counterparts in India simply ran themselves aground They were replaced by massive squatter
colonies and an explosion of rural sites as people disillusioned with cities went back to farming
communities A giant step backward
Yet it wasnrsquot as if all came to naught as was earlier believed Some of the writings survived in the pottery
of the following ages The weight and decimal system too lived on And so did the bullock-cart
technology that the Indus had perfected Rather than a violent transition there may have been an orderly
interaction with oncoming Aryans Lal in his most recent book even puts across the most audacious
theory Could the Bronze Age Harappans be Aryans themselves He says this because of the presence of
fire worship and the discovery of horse remains and idols in Indus sites Meadows dismisses it as
premature and points out that it was more likely that ass remains were mistaken for that of a horsersquos And
that the Vedas showed a great antipathy for urban centers
Whatever the cause it would take another 1000 years for a semblance of civilization to return to the
subcontinent -- a dire warning to modern India of the catastrophe that can befall an errant populace
Environmental Stress in the Indus Valley Source Quotation from D P Agarwal and R K Sood in Gregory L Possehl ed Harappan Civilization A Contemporary Perspective (Warminster
England Aris and Phillips 1982)229
The three river-valley civilizations discussed in this chapter were located in arid or semiarid regions Such
regions are particularly vulnerable to changes in the environment Scholars debates about the existence
and impact of changes in the climate and landscape of the Indus Valley illuminate some of the potential
factors at work as well as the difficulties of verifying and interpreting such long-ago changes
One of the points at issue is climatic change An earlier generation of scholars believed that the climate
of the Indus Valley was considerably wetter during the height of that civilization than it is now As
evidence they cited the enormous quantities of timber cut from extensive forests that would have been
needed to bake the millions of mud bricks used to construct the cities (see photo) the distribution of
human settlements on land that is now unfavorable for agriculture and the representation of jungle and
marsh animals on decorated seals This approach assumes that the growth of population prosperity and
complexity in the Indus Valley in the third millennium BCE required wet conditions and it concludes
that the change to a drier climate in the early second millennium BCE pushed this civilization into
decline
Other experts skeptical about a radical climatic change countered with alternative calculations of the
amount of timber needed and evidence of plant remains-particularly barley a grain that is tolerant of dry
conditions However recent studies of the stabilization of sand dunes which occurs in periods of heavy
rainfall and analysis of the sediment deposited by rivers and winds have been used to strengthen the
claim that the Indus Valley used to be wetter and in the early-to-mid second millennium BCE entered a
period of relatively dry conditions that have persisted to the present
A much clearer case can be made for changes in the landscape caused by shifts in the courses of rivers
These shifts are due in many cases to tectonic forces such as earthquakes Dry channels whether
detected in satellite photographs or by on-the-ground inspection reveal the location of old riverbeds and
it appears that a second major river system the Hakra once ran parallel to the Indus some distance to the
east The Hakra with teeming towns and fertile fields along its banks appears to have been a second axis
of this civilization Either the Sutlej which now feeds into the Indus or the Yamuna which now pours
into the Ganges may have been the main source of water for this long-gone system before undergoing a
change of course The consequences of the drying-up of this major waterway must have been immense-
the loss of huge amounts of arable land and the food that it produced the abandonment of cities and
villages and consequent migration of their populations shifts in the trade routes and desperate
competition for shrinking resources
As for the Indus itself the present-day course of the lower reaches of the river has shifted 100 miles
(161 kilometers) to the west since the arrival of the Greek conqueror Alexander the Great in the late
fourth century BCE and the deposit of massive volumes of silt has pushed the mouth of the river 50
miles (80 kilometers) farther south Such a shift of the river bed and buildup of alluvial deposits also may
have occurred in the third and second millennia BCE
A recent study concludes It is obvious that ecological stresses caused both climatically and
technically played an important role in the life and decay of the Indus civilization
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity four Read the article below about the early Chinese dynasties Using information from
the article write an 800 word essay that describes the influence of the environment religion and
gender on the formation of the government of ancient China Again do NOT look up additional
information use only what is provided Also do NOT quote from the articles paraphrase and
summarize only Turn in your essay to wwwturnitincom before the first day of school
The Shang and Zhou Dynasties By 5000 BCE agricultural communities had spread through much of what is now called China and there
were agricultural villages from the Wei River Valley eastward parallel with the great Yellow River
(Huang He) which flowed out of the Kunlun Mountains to the deciduous forest and loess soil region of
the North China Plain Where people were free of forest and had access to water they grew millet -- as
early as 5500 BCE -- while they continued to hunt deer and other game to fish and gather food And they
raised dogs pigs and chickens They built one-room homes dug into the earth with roofs of clay or
thatch pit homes grouped in villages They had spinning wheels and knitted and wove fibers And they
made pottery decorated with art
Flooding along the Yellow River was worse than it was along the Yangzi River to the south Along the
Yangzi River through the Hubei Basin and on the coastal plain to Hangzhou Bay farming had also
developed but people along the Yellow River had to work harder at flood control and irrigation and
perhaps this stimulated a greater effort at organization At any rate the North China Plain became the
largest area with a relatively dense population
Where people were producing more food than they needed to survive warriors had the incentive not only
to plunder but also to conquer And conquering kings arose on the North China Plain as they did in West
Asia The first dynasty of kings in the North China Plain has been described as belonging to the Xia
family - whose rule is thought to have begun around 2200 BCE But the first dynasty of which there is
historical evidence is that of the Shang family The Shang clan came out of the Wei River Valley just west
of the North China Plain By around 1500 BCE give or take a century or so the Shang unified people
along the North China Plain The military had chariots each with an aristocrat archer a driver and
sometimes also a man with a spear The Shang built an empire in much the same way as other conquerors
by leaving behind a garrison force to police local people by turning a local king into a subservient ally
free to manage local matters and by taxing the conquered
Around 1384 BCE the Shang moved their capital to Yin As a regular pastime the Shang emperors and
nobles hunted in organized game drives Emperors and aristocrats had splendid homes with walls of
pounded earth or earthen bricks while common people continued to live in their pit homes of earlier times
A Shang emperor was chief priest and he had an administrative bureaucracy with councilors lesser
priests and diviners As with other warring civilizations slaves were taken the slaves laboring at growing
crops And women in Shang civilization were subservient to men with aristocratic women enjoying a
greater freedom and equality than common women The role of the woman was to be gentle calm
respectful and to obey her husband Women were lower than men and were subjected to womenrsquos work
(tending to the children and needs of the husband) Men also married multiple times and women were
used as concubines
During the Shang dynasty the civilization along the Yellow River had canals for irrigating crops
Communities had drains that ran water out of town They made beer from millet The stable government
allowed for extended trading and use of money in the form of cowry shells Shang merchants traded in
salt iron copper tin lead and antimony some of which had to be imported from far away As early as
the 1300 BCE a bronze casting industry had developed This was later than the rise of bronze casting in
Europe and West Asia but it was the most advanced in the world
It was around 1300 BCE that the first known writing appeared in Shang civilization because the
government officials needed to have questions answered that would allow them to better govern This
writing was for divination done on plate-like portions of the bones of cattle or deer on seashells and
turtle shells and perhaps on wood By applying a pointed heated rod to a bone or shell the item cracked
and to which written symbol the crack traveled gave answers for various questions what the weather was
going to be like would there be flood would a harvest succeed or fail when might be the best time for
hunting or fishing there were also personal questions about illness or whether one should make a journey
Shang Violence and Splendor
To the east north and south of Shang civilization were those the Shang saw as barbarians including the
farming people along the Yangzi River Shang emperors sent out armies to repulse invaders and the
Shang emperors went beyond their domains to plunder and to capture foreign peoples needed for sacrifice
to their gods Uncovered tombs of emperors from the Shang period indicate that they could put into the
field as many as three to five thousand soldiers Found buried with the emperors were their personal
ornaments and spears with bronze blades and the remains of what had been bows and arrows Buried with
the emperors were also horses and chariots for transporting soldiers to battle And with the emperors in
death were their charioteers dogs servants and people in groups of ten -- people who had been
ceremonially beheaded with bronze axes
Zhou Empire Religion and Human Sacrifice
Shang rule was threatened by forces from outside and from within its empire To the west of Shang
civilization in the Wei River Valley lived a pastoral people called Zhou who led an alliance that included
other tribal peoples neighboring Shang civilization While the Shang emperor Zhouxin was occupied by
a war against tribal people to his southeast rebellions broke out among people that Shang monarchs
before him had conquered The Zhou and their allies saw the Shang emperors troubles as an opportunity
to move against him and in 1045 BCE they overpowered him at the battle of Mu-ye and had him
beheaded
A dynasty of Zhou emperors began ruling what had been Shang civilization They claimed that all lands
belonged to heaven that they were the sons of heaven and therefore that all lands and all people were
their subjects Seeing the lands they had conquered as too vast for one man to dominate the Zhou
emperors divided these lands into regions and assigned someone to rule each region in their name
choosing for this position a close family member a trusted member of their clan or the chief of a tribe
that had been allied with them against the Shang
Each local ruler had at his disposal all the lands around him He had his own militia And from the Zhou
emperors the local rulers received gifts such as chariots bronze weapons servants and animals The local
rulers received the title of lord (gong) Local rulers passed their positions to their sons their titles of lord
becoming hereditary And to control their areas better the lords made sub-lords of those who had
dominated the common people before they arrived A hierarchy of status and obligations emerged among
families and within families with older brothers ranking higher than younger brothers with rules of
succession as to which of the males would head his family If a married aristocrat became infatuated with
another woman rather than drive his wife from his home he could bring the other woman into the family
as a concubine where she would rank beneath his wife
Zhou emperors told those they had conquered that they the Zhou had ousted the ancestors of Shang
emperors from heaven and that heaven was occupied by their supreme god a god they called The Lord
on High who they said had commanded the downfall of the Shang emperors Like emperors in West
Asia Zhou emperors claimed that they ruled by divine right They claimed that they represented on earth
the Lord on High and that it was their duty to mediate with the Lord on High to perform appropriate
sacrifices and to maintain a proper relationship between heaven and their subjects They claimed that any
opposition to their rule was opposition to the will of heaven
It was from the Zhou emperors that local lords received the right to act as a priest to perform sacrifices
to have certain hymns sung and certain dances performed the right to propitiate the gods of local
mountains streams and of the soil and crops Meanwhile local aristocrats continued to keep track of their
ancestral heritage They married with religious rites and sanctions while common folk continued to have
no such marriages no surnames or recorded ancestors They merely lived together and were recognized as
a couple by their neighbors
Ancestor worship was also very important to the Shang It was thought that the success of crops and the
health and well being of people were based on the happiness of dead ancestors
The worship of various gods from the Shang period included gods of grain rain and agriculture -- one of
whom was believed to have had a virgin birth Among these gods was a god of the Yellow River who had
the body of a fish but the face of a man
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity five Research the social hierarchy religion political organization writing systems and
technological aspects of the societies listed on the SNAPSHOT Early Agricultural Societies Describe each aspect
of the society using specific evidence - in one or two clear sentences (SEE EXAMPLE of Olmec Society) Write
VERY neatly in ink Bring this chart with you on the FIRST DAY of school
It appears that the maximum number of Indus script symbols is 400 although there are 200 basic
signs (ie signs that are not combined from others) This means that the Indus script is probably
logophonetic in that it has both signs used for their meanings and signs used for their phonetic values
Many signs start off as pictorial representation of a physical object often misleadingly called
pictograms They really are should be called logograms because they represent words in the language
However its next to impossible to write out a word with abstract meaning pictorially What all early
writers figured out was to use a logogram not for the object or idea it was originally supposed to stand for
but for all words sounding similar to the original word for that object or idea For example in English to
write leave we can use a picture of a leaf This is called rebus writing and is a tremendously common
pattern in all early writing systems We could also then use the same leaf symbol to stand for the sound
in relief adding another symbol in front of the leaf symbol in order to indicate the re sound So the
logogram gained a phonetic value as well
Testing the theory How can we take the theoretical framework so far and apply it to archaeological data
Numerals seem to represented by vertical lines (represented by number of lines in the glyph) but
they only go up to 7 Analysis reveal 4 more signs that appear in the same context as these numerals and
so they likely represent numbers higher than 7
The fact that no vertical-line numeral sign denotes 8 very likely means the Harappan language is
based 8 (For example the Arabic numerals that we use has symbols from 0 to 9 and to write ten we
have to combined the symbols 1 and 0 which identify our number system as based ten)
Base 8 languages are rare in the world but it does appear that early Dravidian is base 8 but later
changed to base 10 (possibly under Indo-European influence) When translated the count from 1 to 7 is
familiar to us one two three four five six seven However above seven the numbers
etymologies become non-numerical 8 is number 9 is many minus one and 10 is many (Fairservis
1983)
But can we actually read (not interpret) any symbol on the seals We should start with pictograms as
this one
Many scholars (Knorozov Parpola Mahadevan etc) see this sign as a fish
Fish in reconstructed Proto-Dravidian is micircn Coincidentally micircn is also the word for star
On many pots from Mohenjo Daro an Indus site there are drawings of fish and stars together and so
affirming this linguistic association
Going further often the numeral six appears before the fish Either it means 6 fish or
6 stars Old Tamil (a Dravidian language still spoken today) texts from just around the 1st
century AD recorded the name of the Pleiades a star cluster visible during autumn and
winter just above Orion as Six-Stars or aru-micircn Throughout the world titles with celestial
connotations are very common and the clause Six Stars forming part or whole of a Harappan title is not
unreasonable (Parpola 1986)
Sometimes symbols are added to the basic sign to make new signs Of these the one that
looks like a circumflex accent placed on top of the fish is quite interesting It is theorized to mean
roof and in Proto-Dravidian it is vecircymecircy This is phonetically similar to Proto-Dravidian word
for black may Together with fish it spells out mai-m-micircn or black star which in Old Tamil
means the planet Saturn In Sanskrit texts Saturn is associate the color black The god of death Yama is
the presiding of this planet and is usually depicted as riding on a dark buffalo
But the fish reading isnt accepted by all scholars William Fairservis saw it as a combination of
a loom twist and a human sign and form a honorific title pertaining to rulership (Fairservis 1983) I
however am more inclined to accept the fish identification
This is a quick overview of the current process in the decipherment of the Indus script For more
information you can either go to the following links or go to a good library for books and articles (check
out my references)
The Myth of the Aryan Invasion of India Richard Hooker 1996
They called themselves the noble ones or the superior ones Their names are lost their tribal names
are lost But when they found themselves conquerors they gave themselves the name superior or
noble
They were a tribal and nomadic peoples living in the far reaches of Euro-Asia in hostile steppe lands
barely scratching out a living They were unquestionably a tough people and they were fierce and war-
like Their religion reflects it dominated as it is by a storm-god or sky-god that enjoins warfare and
conquest This god was called something like Dyaus a word related to Zeus deus (the Latin word
for god) deva (the Sanskrit word for god) and of course the English word divine Their culture
was oriented around warfare and they were very good at it They were superior on horseback and rushed
into battle in chariots They were a tribal people ruled over by a war-chief or raja (the Latin word rex
(king) comes from the same root word along with the English regal) Somewhere in the early centuries
of the second millennium BC they began to migrate southwards in waves of steady conquest across the
face of Persia and the lands of India
There they would take on the name superior or noble to distinguish themselves from the people
they conquered Their name is derived from the Indo-European root word ar meaning noble In
Sanskrit they were the Aryas (Aryans) but that root ar would also serve as the foundation of the
name of the conquered Persian territories Iran This concept of nobility in fact seems to lie at the heart
of Indo-European consciousness for it appears in another countrys name Ireland or Eire You can
bet however that when a people go around calling themselves superior that it spells bad news for other
people
And there is no question that they were bad news for the southern Asians They swept over Persia with
lightening speed and spread across the northern river plains of India Their natures as a warlike
conquering people are still preserved in Vedic religion the foundation of Hinduism In the Rig Veda the
collection of praises to the gods the god Indra towers over the poetry as a conquering god one that
smashes cities and slays enemies The invading Aryans were originally nomadic peoples not agricultural
They penetrated India from the north-west settling first in the Indus valley Unlike the Harappans
however they eventually concentrated their populations along the Ganges floodplain The Ganges unlike
the Indus is far milder and more predictable in its flooding It must have been a paradise to a people from
the dry steppes of central Asia and Iran a paradise full of water and forest When they arrived the vast
northern plains were almost certainly densely forested Where now bare fields stretch to the horizon
when the Aryans arrived lush forests stretched to those very same horizons Clearing the forests over the
centuries was an epic project and one that is still preserved in Indian literature
The Aryans or Vedic civilization were a new start in Indian culture Harappa was more or less a dead
end (at least as far as we know) the Aryans adopted almost nothing of Harappan culture They built no
cities no states no granaries and used no writing Instead they were a warlike people that organized
themselves in individual tribal kinship units the jana The jana was ruled over by a war-chief These
tribes spread quickly over northern India and the Deccan In a process that we do not understand the basic
social unit of Aryan culture the jana slowly developed from an organization based on kinship to one
based on geography The jana became a janapada or nation and the jana-rajya or tribal kingdom
became the jana-rajyapada or national kingdom So powerfully ingrained into Indian culture is the
jana-pada that Indians still define themselves mainly by their territorial origins All the major territories
of modern India with their separate cultures and separate languages can be dated back to the early jana-
padas of Vedic India
The earliest history of the Aryans in India is called the Rigvedic Period (1700-1000 BC) after the
religious praise poems that are the oldest pieces of literature in India These poems the Rig Veda are
believed to represent the most primitive layer of
Indo-European religion and have many characteristics in common with Persian religion since the two
peoples are closely related in time In this early period their population was restricted to the Punjab in the
northern reaches of the Indus River and the Yamuna River near the Ganges They maintained the Aryan
tribal structure with a raja ruling over the tribal group in tandem with a council Each jana seems to have
had a chief priest the religion was focused almost entirely on a series of sacrifices to the gods The
Rigvedic peoples originally had only two social classes nobles and commoners Eventually they added a
third Dasas or darks These were we presume the darker-skinned people they had conquered By the
end of the Rigvedic period social class had settled into four rigid castes the caturvarnas or four
colors At the top of the caturvarnas were the priests or Brahmans Below the priests were the warriors
or nobles (Kshatriya) the craftspeople and merchants (Vaishya) and the servants (Shudra) who made
up the bulk of society These economic classes were legitimated by an elaborate religious system and
would be eventually subdivided into a huge number of economic sub-classes which we call castes
Social class by the end of the Rigvedic period became completely inflexible there was no such thing as
social mobility
In the early centuries of Later Vedic Period or Brahmanic Period (1000-500 BC) the Aryans
migrated across the Doab which is a large plain which separates the Yamuna River from the Ganges It
was a difficult project for the Doab was thickly forested the Aryans slowly burned and settled the Doab
until they reached the Ganges While the Rig Veda represents the most primitive religion of the Aryans
during the Rigvedic Period the religion of the Later Vedic period is dominated by the Brahmanas or
priestly book which was composed sometime between 1000 and 850 BC Later Vedic society is
dominated by the Brahmans and every aspect of Aryan life comes under the control of priestly rituals and
spells In history as the Indians understand it the Later Vedic Period is the Epic Age the great literary
heroic epics of Indian culture the Mahabharata and the Ramayana though they were composed
between 500 and 200 BC were probably originally formulated and told in the Later Vedic Period Both of
these epics deal with heroes from this period and demonstrate how Aryan cultural values as we can
understand them from the Rig Veda are being transformed by mixing with Indus cultures
What did the Aryans do with their time They seem to have had a well-developed musical culture and
song and dance dominated their society They were not greatly invested in the visual arts but their interest
in lyric poetry was unmatched They loved gambling They did not however have much interest in
writing even though they could have inherited a civilization and a writing system when they originally
settled India We do not know exactly when they became interested in writing but it may have been at the
end of the Brahmanic period somewhere between 650 and 500 BC Still there are no Aryan writings until
the Mauryan periodmdashfrom Harappa (2500-1750 BC) to Maurya (300 BC) is quite a long time The script
that the Mauryans used is called Brahmi script and was used to write not only the religious and literary
language of the time Sanskrit but also the vernacular languages This script Brahmi is the national
alphabet of India
The Vedic period then is a period of cultural mixing not of conquest Although the Aryans were a
conquering people when they first spread into India the culture of the Aryans would gradually mix with
indigenous cultures and the war-religion of the Aryans still preserved in parts of the Rig Veda slowly
became more ritualized and more meditative By 200 BC this process of mixing and transforming was
more or less complete and the culture we call Indian was fully formed
Were they Copycats or Geniuses How did the Harappans take the great leap from self-contained agricultural societies to a trade-oriented
luxury-conscious sophisticated urban civilization that gave the world the concept of town planning
Analyzing the evidence from various sites Possehl found that between 2600 BC and 2500 BC the
Harappans experienced a century of cathartic changes Before this he finds no breadboard models of the
expansion to come be it the invention of writing or the awesome town-planning techniques A
tremendous jump in human ability is evident So what or who caused it
In the past the reputed British archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler argued that ideas have wings and that
the Harappans were influenced by their trade contacts with the Sumerians But the diffusion theory of
civilization as it is called is slowly being given the heave-ho Cambridge historian Raymond Allchin an
authority on the subject says We are now beginning to see the foundation being laid in the preceding
100 to 200 years in smaller sites There appears to be a completely organic process of growth that threw
up the Harappan culture as we know it
Yet the evidence of that process continues to be scanty In Kunal in Haryana archaeologists recently
found what are known as proto Indus seals On pottery on many of the smaller sites in both India and
Pakistan graffiti similar to some figures on the script begin to appear And at Dholavira and at Banawali
in Haryana the distinction between the citadel and the lower city is beginning to evolve There is
however a huge jump in scale in such activity in those critical 100 years For in Harappa as in most
Indus sites the distinct gridiron pattern for streets appear a scientific system of drainage that linked up to
even the smallest house in the lower city is established precise weights and measures begin to circulate
and the writing system evolves So were the Harappans copycats Archaeologists say the Indus people
couldnrsquot have copied their town-planning from Egypt and Mesopotamia because in those civilizations the
roads meandered like village streets Nor was the writing similar to Sumer`s cuneiform or the Egyptian
hieroglyphics The Harappans had their own distinctive style Lal explains the dramatic change as a result
of centuries of growth reaching a critical mass that caused an unparalleled urban explosion Trade he
believes was the driving force of the revolution Even a skeptic like Possehl maintains that these are
indeed an expression of the Indian genius
Did Aryans kill them or a Depression Archaeologists are known to stumble but the kind of knocking Wheeler has taken over his Aryan
invasion theory has few parallels When the British archaeologist discovered a dozen skeletons in
Mohenjodaro he propounded a theory about the final massacre by marauding invaders that put an end to
the Indus civilization When an Indian scholar told him of Hariyuppa being mentioned in the Rigveda he
took it to mean Harappa And since a fort was known as pur and Indira the Aryan god was known as
Purandhara or destroyer of forts it all fitted neatly
After all werenrsquot the Indus cities among the most fortified Yet the past 50 years and more so the last
decade has shown just how wrong Wheeler was The last massacre theory was his imagination running
riot Far from being snuffed out there was a brilliant resurgence of Indus culture further south for a while
Possehl who made a recent study found that in 2000 BC in Pakistanrsquos Sindh district the sites were down
from 86 to 6 and in Cholistan 174 to 41 But in India the sites in Haryana Punjab and Rajasthan exploded
from 218 to 853 Possehl asks How can this be construed as an eclipse We are looking at a highly
mobile people
Allchin argues that there is clear indication that the rainfall pattern which had initially brought fertility
had become adverse in the Sindh region And theories that given the instability of the Himalayan region
there may have been a massive earthquake that possibly changed the course of rivers such as the Sarasvati
and affected many Indus cities The Indus people then migrated eastward Lal talks of steep decline in
trade because of problems in Sumer that resulted in a Great Depression and turned many urban centers
into ghost cities
Bisht concurs with Lal but goes a step further He says that after the quake hit the heart of the civilization
the Indus people migrated east which acted like a sort of bypass to their woes And like a dying candle it
shone brilliantly again but briefly before being snuffed out Dholavira Banawali Mehrgarh Harappa -- in
fact all the major cities show that as the cities declined encroachments on streets that were unseen at its
peak began to occur with alarming regularity There was a breakdown in sanitation and cities like their
modern-day counterparts in India simply ran themselves aground They were replaced by massive squatter
colonies and an explosion of rural sites as people disillusioned with cities went back to farming
communities A giant step backward
Yet it wasnrsquot as if all came to naught as was earlier believed Some of the writings survived in the pottery
of the following ages The weight and decimal system too lived on And so did the bullock-cart
technology that the Indus had perfected Rather than a violent transition there may have been an orderly
interaction with oncoming Aryans Lal in his most recent book even puts across the most audacious
theory Could the Bronze Age Harappans be Aryans themselves He says this because of the presence of
fire worship and the discovery of horse remains and idols in Indus sites Meadows dismisses it as
premature and points out that it was more likely that ass remains were mistaken for that of a horsersquos And
that the Vedas showed a great antipathy for urban centers
Whatever the cause it would take another 1000 years for a semblance of civilization to return to the
subcontinent -- a dire warning to modern India of the catastrophe that can befall an errant populace
Environmental Stress in the Indus Valley Source Quotation from D P Agarwal and R K Sood in Gregory L Possehl ed Harappan Civilization A Contemporary Perspective (Warminster
England Aris and Phillips 1982)229
The three river-valley civilizations discussed in this chapter were located in arid or semiarid regions Such
regions are particularly vulnerable to changes in the environment Scholars debates about the existence
and impact of changes in the climate and landscape of the Indus Valley illuminate some of the potential
factors at work as well as the difficulties of verifying and interpreting such long-ago changes
One of the points at issue is climatic change An earlier generation of scholars believed that the climate
of the Indus Valley was considerably wetter during the height of that civilization than it is now As
evidence they cited the enormous quantities of timber cut from extensive forests that would have been
needed to bake the millions of mud bricks used to construct the cities (see photo) the distribution of
human settlements on land that is now unfavorable for agriculture and the representation of jungle and
marsh animals on decorated seals This approach assumes that the growth of population prosperity and
complexity in the Indus Valley in the third millennium BCE required wet conditions and it concludes
that the change to a drier climate in the early second millennium BCE pushed this civilization into
decline
Other experts skeptical about a radical climatic change countered with alternative calculations of the
amount of timber needed and evidence of plant remains-particularly barley a grain that is tolerant of dry
conditions However recent studies of the stabilization of sand dunes which occurs in periods of heavy
rainfall and analysis of the sediment deposited by rivers and winds have been used to strengthen the
claim that the Indus Valley used to be wetter and in the early-to-mid second millennium BCE entered a
period of relatively dry conditions that have persisted to the present
A much clearer case can be made for changes in the landscape caused by shifts in the courses of rivers
These shifts are due in many cases to tectonic forces such as earthquakes Dry channels whether
detected in satellite photographs or by on-the-ground inspection reveal the location of old riverbeds and
it appears that a second major river system the Hakra once ran parallel to the Indus some distance to the
east The Hakra with teeming towns and fertile fields along its banks appears to have been a second axis
of this civilization Either the Sutlej which now feeds into the Indus or the Yamuna which now pours
into the Ganges may have been the main source of water for this long-gone system before undergoing a
change of course The consequences of the drying-up of this major waterway must have been immense-
the loss of huge amounts of arable land and the food that it produced the abandonment of cities and
villages and consequent migration of their populations shifts in the trade routes and desperate
competition for shrinking resources
As for the Indus itself the present-day course of the lower reaches of the river has shifted 100 miles
(161 kilometers) to the west since the arrival of the Greek conqueror Alexander the Great in the late
fourth century BCE and the deposit of massive volumes of silt has pushed the mouth of the river 50
miles (80 kilometers) farther south Such a shift of the river bed and buildup of alluvial deposits also may
have occurred in the third and second millennia BCE
A recent study concludes It is obvious that ecological stresses caused both climatically and
technically played an important role in the life and decay of the Indus civilization
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity four Read the article below about the early Chinese dynasties Using information from
the article write an 800 word essay that describes the influence of the environment religion and
gender on the formation of the government of ancient China Again do NOT look up additional
information use only what is provided Also do NOT quote from the articles paraphrase and
summarize only Turn in your essay to wwwturnitincom before the first day of school
The Shang and Zhou Dynasties By 5000 BCE agricultural communities had spread through much of what is now called China and there
were agricultural villages from the Wei River Valley eastward parallel with the great Yellow River
(Huang He) which flowed out of the Kunlun Mountains to the deciduous forest and loess soil region of
the North China Plain Where people were free of forest and had access to water they grew millet -- as
early as 5500 BCE -- while they continued to hunt deer and other game to fish and gather food And they
raised dogs pigs and chickens They built one-room homes dug into the earth with roofs of clay or
thatch pit homes grouped in villages They had spinning wheels and knitted and wove fibers And they
made pottery decorated with art
Flooding along the Yellow River was worse than it was along the Yangzi River to the south Along the
Yangzi River through the Hubei Basin and on the coastal plain to Hangzhou Bay farming had also
developed but people along the Yellow River had to work harder at flood control and irrigation and
perhaps this stimulated a greater effort at organization At any rate the North China Plain became the
largest area with a relatively dense population
Where people were producing more food than they needed to survive warriors had the incentive not only
to plunder but also to conquer And conquering kings arose on the North China Plain as they did in West
Asia The first dynasty of kings in the North China Plain has been described as belonging to the Xia
family - whose rule is thought to have begun around 2200 BCE But the first dynasty of which there is
historical evidence is that of the Shang family The Shang clan came out of the Wei River Valley just west
of the North China Plain By around 1500 BCE give or take a century or so the Shang unified people
along the North China Plain The military had chariots each with an aristocrat archer a driver and
sometimes also a man with a spear The Shang built an empire in much the same way as other conquerors
by leaving behind a garrison force to police local people by turning a local king into a subservient ally
free to manage local matters and by taxing the conquered
Around 1384 BCE the Shang moved their capital to Yin As a regular pastime the Shang emperors and
nobles hunted in organized game drives Emperors and aristocrats had splendid homes with walls of
pounded earth or earthen bricks while common people continued to live in their pit homes of earlier times
A Shang emperor was chief priest and he had an administrative bureaucracy with councilors lesser
priests and diviners As with other warring civilizations slaves were taken the slaves laboring at growing
crops And women in Shang civilization were subservient to men with aristocratic women enjoying a
greater freedom and equality than common women The role of the woman was to be gentle calm
respectful and to obey her husband Women were lower than men and were subjected to womenrsquos work
(tending to the children and needs of the husband) Men also married multiple times and women were
used as concubines
During the Shang dynasty the civilization along the Yellow River had canals for irrigating crops
Communities had drains that ran water out of town They made beer from millet The stable government
allowed for extended trading and use of money in the form of cowry shells Shang merchants traded in
salt iron copper tin lead and antimony some of which had to be imported from far away As early as
the 1300 BCE a bronze casting industry had developed This was later than the rise of bronze casting in
Europe and West Asia but it was the most advanced in the world
It was around 1300 BCE that the first known writing appeared in Shang civilization because the
government officials needed to have questions answered that would allow them to better govern This
writing was for divination done on plate-like portions of the bones of cattle or deer on seashells and
turtle shells and perhaps on wood By applying a pointed heated rod to a bone or shell the item cracked
and to which written symbol the crack traveled gave answers for various questions what the weather was
going to be like would there be flood would a harvest succeed or fail when might be the best time for
hunting or fishing there were also personal questions about illness or whether one should make a journey
Shang Violence and Splendor
To the east north and south of Shang civilization were those the Shang saw as barbarians including the
farming people along the Yangzi River Shang emperors sent out armies to repulse invaders and the
Shang emperors went beyond their domains to plunder and to capture foreign peoples needed for sacrifice
to their gods Uncovered tombs of emperors from the Shang period indicate that they could put into the
field as many as three to five thousand soldiers Found buried with the emperors were their personal
ornaments and spears with bronze blades and the remains of what had been bows and arrows Buried with
the emperors were also horses and chariots for transporting soldiers to battle And with the emperors in
death were their charioteers dogs servants and people in groups of ten -- people who had been
ceremonially beheaded with bronze axes
Zhou Empire Religion and Human Sacrifice
Shang rule was threatened by forces from outside and from within its empire To the west of Shang
civilization in the Wei River Valley lived a pastoral people called Zhou who led an alliance that included
other tribal peoples neighboring Shang civilization While the Shang emperor Zhouxin was occupied by
a war against tribal people to his southeast rebellions broke out among people that Shang monarchs
before him had conquered The Zhou and their allies saw the Shang emperors troubles as an opportunity
to move against him and in 1045 BCE they overpowered him at the battle of Mu-ye and had him
beheaded
A dynasty of Zhou emperors began ruling what had been Shang civilization They claimed that all lands
belonged to heaven that they were the sons of heaven and therefore that all lands and all people were
their subjects Seeing the lands they had conquered as too vast for one man to dominate the Zhou
emperors divided these lands into regions and assigned someone to rule each region in their name
choosing for this position a close family member a trusted member of their clan or the chief of a tribe
that had been allied with them against the Shang
Each local ruler had at his disposal all the lands around him He had his own militia And from the Zhou
emperors the local rulers received gifts such as chariots bronze weapons servants and animals The local
rulers received the title of lord (gong) Local rulers passed their positions to their sons their titles of lord
becoming hereditary And to control their areas better the lords made sub-lords of those who had
dominated the common people before they arrived A hierarchy of status and obligations emerged among
families and within families with older brothers ranking higher than younger brothers with rules of
succession as to which of the males would head his family If a married aristocrat became infatuated with
another woman rather than drive his wife from his home he could bring the other woman into the family
as a concubine where she would rank beneath his wife
Zhou emperors told those they had conquered that they the Zhou had ousted the ancestors of Shang
emperors from heaven and that heaven was occupied by their supreme god a god they called The Lord
on High who they said had commanded the downfall of the Shang emperors Like emperors in West
Asia Zhou emperors claimed that they ruled by divine right They claimed that they represented on earth
the Lord on High and that it was their duty to mediate with the Lord on High to perform appropriate
sacrifices and to maintain a proper relationship between heaven and their subjects They claimed that any
opposition to their rule was opposition to the will of heaven
It was from the Zhou emperors that local lords received the right to act as a priest to perform sacrifices
to have certain hymns sung and certain dances performed the right to propitiate the gods of local
mountains streams and of the soil and crops Meanwhile local aristocrats continued to keep track of their
ancestral heritage They married with religious rites and sanctions while common folk continued to have
no such marriages no surnames or recorded ancestors They merely lived together and were recognized as
a couple by their neighbors
Ancestor worship was also very important to the Shang It was thought that the success of crops and the
health and well being of people were based on the happiness of dead ancestors
The worship of various gods from the Shang period included gods of grain rain and agriculture -- one of
whom was believed to have had a virgin birth Among these gods was a god of the Yellow River who had
the body of a fish but the face of a man
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity five Research the social hierarchy religion political organization writing systems and
technological aspects of the societies listed on the SNAPSHOT Early Agricultural Societies Describe each aspect
of the society using specific evidence - in one or two clear sentences (SEE EXAMPLE of Olmec Society) Write
VERY neatly in ink Bring this chart with you on the FIRST DAY of school
The Myth of the Aryan Invasion of India Richard Hooker 1996
They called themselves the noble ones or the superior ones Their names are lost their tribal names
are lost But when they found themselves conquerors they gave themselves the name superior or
noble
They were a tribal and nomadic peoples living in the far reaches of Euro-Asia in hostile steppe lands
barely scratching out a living They were unquestionably a tough people and they were fierce and war-
like Their religion reflects it dominated as it is by a storm-god or sky-god that enjoins warfare and
conquest This god was called something like Dyaus a word related to Zeus deus (the Latin word
for god) deva (the Sanskrit word for god) and of course the English word divine Their culture
was oriented around warfare and they were very good at it They were superior on horseback and rushed
into battle in chariots They were a tribal people ruled over by a war-chief or raja (the Latin word rex
(king) comes from the same root word along with the English regal) Somewhere in the early centuries
of the second millennium BC they began to migrate southwards in waves of steady conquest across the
face of Persia and the lands of India
There they would take on the name superior or noble to distinguish themselves from the people
they conquered Their name is derived from the Indo-European root word ar meaning noble In
Sanskrit they were the Aryas (Aryans) but that root ar would also serve as the foundation of the
name of the conquered Persian territories Iran This concept of nobility in fact seems to lie at the heart
of Indo-European consciousness for it appears in another countrys name Ireland or Eire You can
bet however that when a people go around calling themselves superior that it spells bad news for other
people
And there is no question that they were bad news for the southern Asians They swept over Persia with
lightening speed and spread across the northern river plains of India Their natures as a warlike
conquering people are still preserved in Vedic religion the foundation of Hinduism In the Rig Veda the
collection of praises to the gods the god Indra towers over the poetry as a conquering god one that
smashes cities and slays enemies The invading Aryans were originally nomadic peoples not agricultural
They penetrated India from the north-west settling first in the Indus valley Unlike the Harappans
however they eventually concentrated their populations along the Ganges floodplain The Ganges unlike
the Indus is far milder and more predictable in its flooding It must have been a paradise to a people from
the dry steppes of central Asia and Iran a paradise full of water and forest When they arrived the vast
northern plains were almost certainly densely forested Where now bare fields stretch to the horizon
when the Aryans arrived lush forests stretched to those very same horizons Clearing the forests over the
centuries was an epic project and one that is still preserved in Indian literature
The Aryans or Vedic civilization were a new start in Indian culture Harappa was more or less a dead
end (at least as far as we know) the Aryans adopted almost nothing of Harappan culture They built no
cities no states no granaries and used no writing Instead they were a warlike people that organized
themselves in individual tribal kinship units the jana The jana was ruled over by a war-chief These
tribes spread quickly over northern India and the Deccan In a process that we do not understand the basic
social unit of Aryan culture the jana slowly developed from an organization based on kinship to one
based on geography The jana became a janapada or nation and the jana-rajya or tribal kingdom
became the jana-rajyapada or national kingdom So powerfully ingrained into Indian culture is the
jana-pada that Indians still define themselves mainly by their territorial origins All the major territories
of modern India with their separate cultures and separate languages can be dated back to the early jana-
padas of Vedic India
The earliest history of the Aryans in India is called the Rigvedic Period (1700-1000 BC) after the
religious praise poems that are the oldest pieces of literature in India These poems the Rig Veda are
believed to represent the most primitive layer of
Indo-European religion and have many characteristics in common with Persian religion since the two
peoples are closely related in time In this early period their population was restricted to the Punjab in the
northern reaches of the Indus River and the Yamuna River near the Ganges They maintained the Aryan
tribal structure with a raja ruling over the tribal group in tandem with a council Each jana seems to have
had a chief priest the religion was focused almost entirely on a series of sacrifices to the gods The
Rigvedic peoples originally had only two social classes nobles and commoners Eventually they added a
third Dasas or darks These were we presume the darker-skinned people they had conquered By the
end of the Rigvedic period social class had settled into four rigid castes the caturvarnas or four
colors At the top of the caturvarnas were the priests or Brahmans Below the priests were the warriors
or nobles (Kshatriya) the craftspeople and merchants (Vaishya) and the servants (Shudra) who made
up the bulk of society These economic classes were legitimated by an elaborate religious system and
would be eventually subdivided into a huge number of economic sub-classes which we call castes
Social class by the end of the Rigvedic period became completely inflexible there was no such thing as
social mobility
In the early centuries of Later Vedic Period or Brahmanic Period (1000-500 BC) the Aryans
migrated across the Doab which is a large plain which separates the Yamuna River from the Ganges It
was a difficult project for the Doab was thickly forested the Aryans slowly burned and settled the Doab
until they reached the Ganges While the Rig Veda represents the most primitive religion of the Aryans
during the Rigvedic Period the religion of the Later Vedic period is dominated by the Brahmanas or
priestly book which was composed sometime between 1000 and 850 BC Later Vedic society is
dominated by the Brahmans and every aspect of Aryan life comes under the control of priestly rituals and
spells In history as the Indians understand it the Later Vedic Period is the Epic Age the great literary
heroic epics of Indian culture the Mahabharata and the Ramayana though they were composed
between 500 and 200 BC were probably originally formulated and told in the Later Vedic Period Both of
these epics deal with heroes from this period and demonstrate how Aryan cultural values as we can
understand them from the Rig Veda are being transformed by mixing with Indus cultures
What did the Aryans do with their time They seem to have had a well-developed musical culture and
song and dance dominated their society They were not greatly invested in the visual arts but their interest
in lyric poetry was unmatched They loved gambling They did not however have much interest in
writing even though they could have inherited a civilization and a writing system when they originally
settled India We do not know exactly when they became interested in writing but it may have been at the
end of the Brahmanic period somewhere between 650 and 500 BC Still there are no Aryan writings until
the Mauryan periodmdashfrom Harappa (2500-1750 BC) to Maurya (300 BC) is quite a long time The script
that the Mauryans used is called Brahmi script and was used to write not only the religious and literary
language of the time Sanskrit but also the vernacular languages This script Brahmi is the national
alphabet of India
The Vedic period then is a period of cultural mixing not of conquest Although the Aryans were a
conquering people when they first spread into India the culture of the Aryans would gradually mix with
indigenous cultures and the war-religion of the Aryans still preserved in parts of the Rig Veda slowly
became more ritualized and more meditative By 200 BC this process of mixing and transforming was
more or less complete and the culture we call Indian was fully formed
Were they Copycats or Geniuses How did the Harappans take the great leap from self-contained agricultural societies to a trade-oriented
luxury-conscious sophisticated urban civilization that gave the world the concept of town planning
Analyzing the evidence from various sites Possehl found that between 2600 BC and 2500 BC the
Harappans experienced a century of cathartic changes Before this he finds no breadboard models of the
expansion to come be it the invention of writing or the awesome town-planning techniques A
tremendous jump in human ability is evident So what or who caused it
In the past the reputed British archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler argued that ideas have wings and that
the Harappans were influenced by their trade contacts with the Sumerians But the diffusion theory of
civilization as it is called is slowly being given the heave-ho Cambridge historian Raymond Allchin an
authority on the subject says We are now beginning to see the foundation being laid in the preceding
100 to 200 years in smaller sites There appears to be a completely organic process of growth that threw
up the Harappan culture as we know it
Yet the evidence of that process continues to be scanty In Kunal in Haryana archaeologists recently
found what are known as proto Indus seals On pottery on many of the smaller sites in both India and
Pakistan graffiti similar to some figures on the script begin to appear And at Dholavira and at Banawali
in Haryana the distinction between the citadel and the lower city is beginning to evolve There is
however a huge jump in scale in such activity in those critical 100 years For in Harappa as in most
Indus sites the distinct gridiron pattern for streets appear a scientific system of drainage that linked up to
even the smallest house in the lower city is established precise weights and measures begin to circulate
and the writing system evolves So were the Harappans copycats Archaeologists say the Indus people
couldnrsquot have copied their town-planning from Egypt and Mesopotamia because in those civilizations the
roads meandered like village streets Nor was the writing similar to Sumer`s cuneiform or the Egyptian
hieroglyphics The Harappans had their own distinctive style Lal explains the dramatic change as a result
of centuries of growth reaching a critical mass that caused an unparalleled urban explosion Trade he
believes was the driving force of the revolution Even a skeptic like Possehl maintains that these are
indeed an expression of the Indian genius
Did Aryans kill them or a Depression Archaeologists are known to stumble but the kind of knocking Wheeler has taken over his Aryan
invasion theory has few parallels When the British archaeologist discovered a dozen skeletons in
Mohenjodaro he propounded a theory about the final massacre by marauding invaders that put an end to
the Indus civilization When an Indian scholar told him of Hariyuppa being mentioned in the Rigveda he
took it to mean Harappa And since a fort was known as pur and Indira the Aryan god was known as
Purandhara or destroyer of forts it all fitted neatly
After all werenrsquot the Indus cities among the most fortified Yet the past 50 years and more so the last
decade has shown just how wrong Wheeler was The last massacre theory was his imagination running
riot Far from being snuffed out there was a brilliant resurgence of Indus culture further south for a while
Possehl who made a recent study found that in 2000 BC in Pakistanrsquos Sindh district the sites were down
from 86 to 6 and in Cholistan 174 to 41 But in India the sites in Haryana Punjab and Rajasthan exploded
from 218 to 853 Possehl asks How can this be construed as an eclipse We are looking at a highly
mobile people
Allchin argues that there is clear indication that the rainfall pattern which had initially brought fertility
had become adverse in the Sindh region And theories that given the instability of the Himalayan region
there may have been a massive earthquake that possibly changed the course of rivers such as the Sarasvati
and affected many Indus cities The Indus people then migrated eastward Lal talks of steep decline in
trade because of problems in Sumer that resulted in a Great Depression and turned many urban centers
into ghost cities
Bisht concurs with Lal but goes a step further He says that after the quake hit the heart of the civilization
the Indus people migrated east which acted like a sort of bypass to their woes And like a dying candle it
shone brilliantly again but briefly before being snuffed out Dholavira Banawali Mehrgarh Harappa -- in
fact all the major cities show that as the cities declined encroachments on streets that were unseen at its
peak began to occur with alarming regularity There was a breakdown in sanitation and cities like their
modern-day counterparts in India simply ran themselves aground They were replaced by massive squatter
colonies and an explosion of rural sites as people disillusioned with cities went back to farming
communities A giant step backward
Yet it wasnrsquot as if all came to naught as was earlier believed Some of the writings survived in the pottery
of the following ages The weight and decimal system too lived on And so did the bullock-cart
technology that the Indus had perfected Rather than a violent transition there may have been an orderly
interaction with oncoming Aryans Lal in his most recent book even puts across the most audacious
theory Could the Bronze Age Harappans be Aryans themselves He says this because of the presence of
fire worship and the discovery of horse remains and idols in Indus sites Meadows dismisses it as
premature and points out that it was more likely that ass remains were mistaken for that of a horsersquos And
that the Vedas showed a great antipathy for urban centers
Whatever the cause it would take another 1000 years for a semblance of civilization to return to the
subcontinent -- a dire warning to modern India of the catastrophe that can befall an errant populace
Environmental Stress in the Indus Valley Source Quotation from D P Agarwal and R K Sood in Gregory L Possehl ed Harappan Civilization A Contemporary Perspective (Warminster
England Aris and Phillips 1982)229
The three river-valley civilizations discussed in this chapter were located in arid or semiarid regions Such
regions are particularly vulnerable to changes in the environment Scholars debates about the existence
and impact of changes in the climate and landscape of the Indus Valley illuminate some of the potential
factors at work as well as the difficulties of verifying and interpreting such long-ago changes
One of the points at issue is climatic change An earlier generation of scholars believed that the climate
of the Indus Valley was considerably wetter during the height of that civilization than it is now As
evidence they cited the enormous quantities of timber cut from extensive forests that would have been
needed to bake the millions of mud bricks used to construct the cities (see photo) the distribution of
human settlements on land that is now unfavorable for agriculture and the representation of jungle and
marsh animals on decorated seals This approach assumes that the growth of population prosperity and
complexity in the Indus Valley in the third millennium BCE required wet conditions and it concludes
that the change to a drier climate in the early second millennium BCE pushed this civilization into
decline
Other experts skeptical about a radical climatic change countered with alternative calculations of the
amount of timber needed and evidence of plant remains-particularly barley a grain that is tolerant of dry
conditions However recent studies of the stabilization of sand dunes which occurs in periods of heavy
rainfall and analysis of the sediment deposited by rivers and winds have been used to strengthen the
claim that the Indus Valley used to be wetter and in the early-to-mid second millennium BCE entered a
period of relatively dry conditions that have persisted to the present
A much clearer case can be made for changes in the landscape caused by shifts in the courses of rivers
These shifts are due in many cases to tectonic forces such as earthquakes Dry channels whether
detected in satellite photographs or by on-the-ground inspection reveal the location of old riverbeds and
it appears that a second major river system the Hakra once ran parallel to the Indus some distance to the
east The Hakra with teeming towns and fertile fields along its banks appears to have been a second axis
of this civilization Either the Sutlej which now feeds into the Indus or the Yamuna which now pours
into the Ganges may have been the main source of water for this long-gone system before undergoing a
change of course The consequences of the drying-up of this major waterway must have been immense-
the loss of huge amounts of arable land and the food that it produced the abandonment of cities and
villages and consequent migration of their populations shifts in the trade routes and desperate
competition for shrinking resources
As for the Indus itself the present-day course of the lower reaches of the river has shifted 100 miles
(161 kilometers) to the west since the arrival of the Greek conqueror Alexander the Great in the late
fourth century BCE and the deposit of massive volumes of silt has pushed the mouth of the river 50
miles (80 kilometers) farther south Such a shift of the river bed and buildup of alluvial deposits also may
have occurred in the third and second millennia BCE
A recent study concludes It is obvious that ecological stresses caused both climatically and
technically played an important role in the life and decay of the Indus civilization
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity four Read the article below about the early Chinese dynasties Using information from
the article write an 800 word essay that describes the influence of the environment religion and
gender on the formation of the government of ancient China Again do NOT look up additional
information use only what is provided Also do NOT quote from the articles paraphrase and
summarize only Turn in your essay to wwwturnitincom before the first day of school
The Shang and Zhou Dynasties By 5000 BCE agricultural communities had spread through much of what is now called China and there
were agricultural villages from the Wei River Valley eastward parallel with the great Yellow River
(Huang He) which flowed out of the Kunlun Mountains to the deciduous forest and loess soil region of
the North China Plain Where people were free of forest and had access to water they grew millet -- as
early as 5500 BCE -- while they continued to hunt deer and other game to fish and gather food And they
raised dogs pigs and chickens They built one-room homes dug into the earth with roofs of clay or
thatch pit homes grouped in villages They had spinning wheels and knitted and wove fibers And they
made pottery decorated with art
Flooding along the Yellow River was worse than it was along the Yangzi River to the south Along the
Yangzi River through the Hubei Basin and on the coastal plain to Hangzhou Bay farming had also
developed but people along the Yellow River had to work harder at flood control and irrigation and
perhaps this stimulated a greater effort at organization At any rate the North China Plain became the
largest area with a relatively dense population
Where people were producing more food than they needed to survive warriors had the incentive not only
to plunder but also to conquer And conquering kings arose on the North China Plain as they did in West
Asia The first dynasty of kings in the North China Plain has been described as belonging to the Xia
family - whose rule is thought to have begun around 2200 BCE But the first dynasty of which there is
historical evidence is that of the Shang family The Shang clan came out of the Wei River Valley just west
of the North China Plain By around 1500 BCE give or take a century or so the Shang unified people
along the North China Plain The military had chariots each with an aristocrat archer a driver and
sometimes also a man with a spear The Shang built an empire in much the same way as other conquerors
by leaving behind a garrison force to police local people by turning a local king into a subservient ally
free to manage local matters and by taxing the conquered
Around 1384 BCE the Shang moved their capital to Yin As a regular pastime the Shang emperors and
nobles hunted in organized game drives Emperors and aristocrats had splendid homes with walls of
pounded earth or earthen bricks while common people continued to live in their pit homes of earlier times
A Shang emperor was chief priest and he had an administrative bureaucracy with councilors lesser
priests and diviners As with other warring civilizations slaves were taken the slaves laboring at growing
crops And women in Shang civilization were subservient to men with aristocratic women enjoying a
greater freedom and equality than common women The role of the woman was to be gentle calm
respectful and to obey her husband Women were lower than men and were subjected to womenrsquos work
(tending to the children and needs of the husband) Men also married multiple times and women were
used as concubines
During the Shang dynasty the civilization along the Yellow River had canals for irrigating crops
Communities had drains that ran water out of town They made beer from millet The stable government
allowed for extended trading and use of money in the form of cowry shells Shang merchants traded in
salt iron copper tin lead and antimony some of which had to be imported from far away As early as
the 1300 BCE a bronze casting industry had developed This was later than the rise of bronze casting in
Europe and West Asia but it was the most advanced in the world
It was around 1300 BCE that the first known writing appeared in Shang civilization because the
government officials needed to have questions answered that would allow them to better govern This
writing was for divination done on plate-like portions of the bones of cattle or deer on seashells and
turtle shells and perhaps on wood By applying a pointed heated rod to a bone or shell the item cracked
and to which written symbol the crack traveled gave answers for various questions what the weather was
going to be like would there be flood would a harvest succeed or fail when might be the best time for
hunting or fishing there were also personal questions about illness or whether one should make a journey
Shang Violence and Splendor
To the east north and south of Shang civilization were those the Shang saw as barbarians including the
farming people along the Yangzi River Shang emperors sent out armies to repulse invaders and the
Shang emperors went beyond their domains to plunder and to capture foreign peoples needed for sacrifice
to their gods Uncovered tombs of emperors from the Shang period indicate that they could put into the
field as many as three to five thousand soldiers Found buried with the emperors were their personal
ornaments and spears with bronze blades and the remains of what had been bows and arrows Buried with
the emperors were also horses and chariots for transporting soldiers to battle And with the emperors in
death were their charioteers dogs servants and people in groups of ten -- people who had been
ceremonially beheaded with bronze axes
Zhou Empire Religion and Human Sacrifice
Shang rule was threatened by forces from outside and from within its empire To the west of Shang
civilization in the Wei River Valley lived a pastoral people called Zhou who led an alliance that included
other tribal peoples neighboring Shang civilization While the Shang emperor Zhouxin was occupied by
a war against tribal people to his southeast rebellions broke out among people that Shang monarchs
before him had conquered The Zhou and their allies saw the Shang emperors troubles as an opportunity
to move against him and in 1045 BCE they overpowered him at the battle of Mu-ye and had him
beheaded
A dynasty of Zhou emperors began ruling what had been Shang civilization They claimed that all lands
belonged to heaven that they were the sons of heaven and therefore that all lands and all people were
their subjects Seeing the lands they had conquered as too vast for one man to dominate the Zhou
emperors divided these lands into regions and assigned someone to rule each region in their name
choosing for this position a close family member a trusted member of their clan or the chief of a tribe
that had been allied with them against the Shang
Each local ruler had at his disposal all the lands around him He had his own militia And from the Zhou
emperors the local rulers received gifts such as chariots bronze weapons servants and animals The local
rulers received the title of lord (gong) Local rulers passed their positions to their sons their titles of lord
becoming hereditary And to control their areas better the lords made sub-lords of those who had
dominated the common people before they arrived A hierarchy of status and obligations emerged among
families and within families with older brothers ranking higher than younger brothers with rules of
succession as to which of the males would head his family If a married aristocrat became infatuated with
another woman rather than drive his wife from his home he could bring the other woman into the family
as a concubine where she would rank beneath his wife
Zhou emperors told those they had conquered that they the Zhou had ousted the ancestors of Shang
emperors from heaven and that heaven was occupied by their supreme god a god they called The Lord
on High who they said had commanded the downfall of the Shang emperors Like emperors in West
Asia Zhou emperors claimed that they ruled by divine right They claimed that they represented on earth
the Lord on High and that it was their duty to mediate with the Lord on High to perform appropriate
sacrifices and to maintain a proper relationship between heaven and their subjects They claimed that any
opposition to their rule was opposition to the will of heaven
It was from the Zhou emperors that local lords received the right to act as a priest to perform sacrifices
to have certain hymns sung and certain dances performed the right to propitiate the gods of local
mountains streams and of the soil and crops Meanwhile local aristocrats continued to keep track of their
ancestral heritage They married with religious rites and sanctions while common folk continued to have
no such marriages no surnames or recorded ancestors They merely lived together and were recognized as
a couple by their neighbors
Ancestor worship was also very important to the Shang It was thought that the success of crops and the
health and well being of people were based on the happiness of dead ancestors
The worship of various gods from the Shang period included gods of grain rain and agriculture -- one of
whom was believed to have had a virgin birth Among these gods was a god of the Yellow River who had
the body of a fish but the face of a man
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity five Research the social hierarchy religion political organization writing systems and
technological aspects of the societies listed on the SNAPSHOT Early Agricultural Societies Describe each aspect
of the society using specific evidence - in one or two clear sentences (SEE EXAMPLE of Olmec Society) Write
VERY neatly in ink Bring this chart with you on the FIRST DAY of school
padas of Vedic India
The earliest history of the Aryans in India is called the Rigvedic Period (1700-1000 BC) after the
religious praise poems that are the oldest pieces of literature in India These poems the Rig Veda are
believed to represent the most primitive layer of
Indo-European religion and have many characteristics in common with Persian religion since the two
peoples are closely related in time In this early period their population was restricted to the Punjab in the
northern reaches of the Indus River and the Yamuna River near the Ganges They maintained the Aryan
tribal structure with a raja ruling over the tribal group in tandem with a council Each jana seems to have
had a chief priest the religion was focused almost entirely on a series of sacrifices to the gods The
Rigvedic peoples originally had only two social classes nobles and commoners Eventually they added a
third Dasas or darks These were we presume the darker-skinned people they had conquered By the
end of the Rigvedic period social class had settled into four rigid castes the caturvarnas or four
colors At the top of the caturvarnas were the priests or Brahmans Below the priests were the warriors
or nobles (Kshatriya) the craftspeople and merchants (Vaishya) and the servants (Shudra) who made
up the bulk of society These economic classes were legitimated by an elaborate religious system and
would be eventually subdivided into a huge number of economic sub-classes which we call castes
Social class by the end of the Rigvedic period became completely inflexible there was no such thing as
social mobility
In the early centuries of Later Vedic Period or Brahmanic Period (1000-500 BC) the Aryans
migrated across the Doab which is a large plain which separates the Yamuna River from the Ganges It
was a difficult project for the Doab was thickly forested the Aryans slowly burned and settled the Doab
until they reached the Ganges While the Rig Veda represents the most primitive religion of the Aryans
during the Rigvedic Period the religion of the Later Vedic period is dominated by the Brahmanas or
priestly book which was composed sometime between 1000 and 850 BC Later Vedic society is
dominated by the Brahmans and every aspect of Aryan life comes under the control of priestly rituals and
spells In history as the Indians understand it the Later Vedic Period is the Epic Age the great literary
heroic epics of Indian culture the Mahabharata and the Ramayana though they were composed
between 500 and 200 BC were probably originally formulated and told in the Later Vedic Period Both of
these epics deal with heroes from this period and demonstrate how Aryan cultural values as we can
understand them from the Rig Veda are being transformed by mixing with Indus cultures
What did the Aryans do with their time They seem to have had a well-developed musical culture and
song and dance dominated their society They were not greatly invested in the visual arts but their interest
in lyric poetry was unmatched They loved gambling They did not however have much interest in
writing even though they could have inherited a civilization and a writing system when they originally
settled India We do not know exactly when they became interested in writing but it may have been at the
end of the Brahmanic period somewhere between 650 and 500 BC Still there are no Aryan writings until
the Mauryan periodmdashfrom Harappa (2500-1750 BC) to Maurya (300 BC) is quite a long time The script
that the Mauryans used is called Brahmi script and was used to write not only the religious and literary
language of the time Sanskrit but also the vernacular languages This script Brahmi is the national
alphabet of India
The Vedic period then is a period of cultural mixing not of conquest Although the Aryans were a
conquering people when they first spread into India the culture of the Aryans would gradually mix with
indigenous cultures and the war-religion of the Aryans still preserved in parts of the Rig Veda slowly
became more ritualized and more meditative By 200 BC this process of mixing and transforming was
more or less complete and the culture we call Indian was fully formed
Were they Copycats or Geniuses How did the Harappans take the great leap from self-contained agricultural societies to a trade-oriented
luxury-conscious sophisticated urban civilization that gave the world the concept of town planning
Analyzing the evidence from various sites Possehl found that between 2600 BC and 2500 BC the
Harappans experienced a century of cathartic changes Before this he finds no breadboard models of the
expansion to come be it the invention of writing or the awesome town-planning techniques A
tremendous jump in human ability is evident So what or who caused it
In the past the reputed British archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler argued that ideas have wings and that
the Harappans were influenced by their trade contacts with the Sumerians But the diffusion theory of
civilization as it is called is slowly being given the heave-ho Cambridge historian Raymond Allchin an
authority on the subject says We are now beginning to see the foundation being laid in the preceding
100 to 200 years in smaller sites There appears to be a completely organic process of growth that threw
up the Harappan culture as we know it
Yet the evidence of that process continues to be scanty In Kunal in Haryana archaeologists recently
found what are known as proto Indus seals On pottery on many of the smaller sites in both India and
Pakistan graffiti similar to some figures on the script begin to appear And at Dholavira and at Banawali
in Haryana the distinction between the citadel and the lower city is beginning to evolve There is
however a huge jump in scale in such activity in those critical 100 years For in Harappa as in most
Indus sites the distinct gridiron pattern for streets appear a scientific system of drainage that linked up to
even the smallest house in the lower city is established precise weights and measures begin to circulate
and the writing system evolves So were the Harappans copycats Archaeologists say the Indus people
couldnrsquot have copied their town-planning from Egypt and Mesopotamia because in those civilizations the
roads meandered like village streets Nor was the writing similar to Sumer`s cuneiform or the Egyptian
hieroglyphics The Harappans had their own distinctive style Lal explains the dramatic change as a result
of centuries of growth reaching a critical mass that caused an unparalleled urban explosion Trade he
believes was the driving force of the revolution Even a skeptic like Possehl maintains that these are
indeed an expression of the Indian genius
Did Aryans kill them or a Depression Archaeologists are known to stumble but the kind of knocking Wheeler has taken over his Aryan
invasion theory has few parallels When the British archaeologist discovered a dozen skeletons in
Mohenjodaro he propounded a theory about the final massacre by marauding invaders that put an end to
the Indus civilization When an Indian scholar told him of Hariyuppa being mentioned in the Rigveda he
took it to mean Harappa And since a fort was known as pur and Indira the Aryan god was known as
Purandhara or destroyer of forts it all fitted neatly
After all werenrsquot the Indus cities among the most fortified Yet the past 50 years and more so the last
decade has shown just how wrong Wheeler was The last massacre theory was his imagination running
riot Far from being snuffed out there was a brilliant resurgence of Indus culture further south for a while
Possehl who made a recent study found that in 2000 BC in Pakistanrsquos Sindh district the sites were down
from 86 to 6 and in Cholistan 174 to 41 But in India the sites in Haryana Punjab and Rajasthan exploded
from 218 to 853 Possehl asks How can this be construed as an eclipse We are looking at a highly
mobile people
Allchin argues that there is clear indication that the rainfall pattern which had initially brought fertility
had become adverse in the Sindh region And theories that given the instability of the Himalayan region
there may have been a massive earthquake that possibly changed the course of rivers such as the Sarasvati
and affected many Indus cities The Indus people then migrated eastward Lal talks of steep decline in
trade because of problems in Sumer that resulted in a Great Depression and turned many urban centers
into ghost cities
Bisht concurs with Lal but goes a step further He says that after the quake hit the heart of the civilization
the Indus people migrated east which acted like a sort of bypass to their woes And like a dying candle it
shone brilliantly again but briefly before being snuffed out Dholavira Banawali Mehrgarh Harappa -- in
fact all the major cities show that as the cities declined encroachments on streets that were unseen at its
peak began to occur with alarming regularity There was a breakdown in sanitation and cities like their
modern-day counterparts in India simply ran themselves aground They were replaced by massive squatter
colonies and an explosion of rural sites as people disillusioned with cities went back to farming
communities A giant step backward
Yet it wasnrsquot as if all came to naught as was earlier believed Some of the writings survived in the pottery
of the following ages The weight and decimal system too lived on And so did the bullock-cart
technology that the Indus had perfected Rather than a violent transition there may have been an orderly
interaction with oncoming Aryans Lal in his most recent book even puts across the most audacious
theory Could the Bronze Age Harappans be Aryans themselves He says this because of the presence of
fire worship and the discovery of horse remains and idols in Indus sites Meadows dismisses it as
premature and points out that it was more likely that ass remains were mistaken for that of a horsersquos And
that the Vedas showed a great antipathy for urban centers
Whatever the cause it would take another 1000 years for a semblance of civilization to return to the
subcontinent -- a dire warning to modern India of the catastrophe that can befall an errant populace
Environmental Stress in the Indus Valley Source Quotation from D P Agarwal and R K Sood in Gregory L Possehl ed Harappan Civilization A Contemporary Perspective (Warminster
England Aris and Phillips 1982)229
The three river-valley civilizations discussed in this chapter were located in arid or semiarid regions Such
regions are particularly vulnerable to changes in the environment Scholars debates about the existence
and impact of changes in the climate and landscape of the Indus Valley illuminate some of the potential
factors at work as well as the difficulties of verifying and interpreting such long-ago changes
One of the points at issue is climatic change An earlier generation of scholars believed that the climate
of the Indus Valley was considerably wetter during the height of that civilization than it is now As
evidence they cited the enormous quantities of timber cut from extensive forests that would have been
needed to bake the millions of mud bricks used to construct the cities (see photo) the distribution of
human settlements on land that is now unfavorable for agriculture and the representation of jungle and
marsh animals on decorated seals This approach assumes that the growth of population prosperity and
complexity in the Indus Valley in the third millennium BCE required wet conditions and it concludes
that the change to a drier climate in the early second millennium BCE pushed this civilization into
decline
Other experts skeptical about a radical climatic change countered with alternative calculations of the
amount of timber needed and evidence of plant remains-particularly barley a grain that is tolerant of dry
conditions However recent studies of the stabilization of sand dunes which occurs in periods of heavy
rainfall and analysis of the sediment deposited by rivers and winds have been used to strengthen the
claim that the Indus Valley used to be wetter and in the early-to-mid second millennium BCE entered a
period of relatively dry conditions that have persisted to the present
A much clearer case can be made for changes in the landscape caused by shifts in the courses of rivers
These shifts are due in many cases to tectonic forces such as earthquakes Dry channels whether
detected in satellite photographs or by on-the-ground inspection reveal the location of old riverbeds and
it appears that a second major river system the Hakra once ran parallel to the Indus some distance to the
east The Hakra with teeming towns and fertile fields along its banks appears to have been a second axis
of this civilization Either the Sutlej which now feeds into the Indus or the Yamuna which now pours
into the Ganges may have been the main source of water for this long-gone system before undergoing a
change of course The consequences of the drying-up of this major waterway must have been immense-
the loss of huge amounts of arable land and the food that it produced the abandonment of cities and
villages and consequent migration of their populations shifts in the trade routes and desperate
competition for shrinking resources
As for the Indus itself the present-day course of the lower reaches of the river has shifted 100 miles
(161 kilometers) to the west since the arrival of the Greek conqueror Alexander the Great in the late
fourth century BCE and the deposit of massive volumes of silt has pushed the mouth of the river 50
miles (80 kilometers) farther south Such a shift of the river bed and buildup of alluvial deposits also may
have occurred in the third and second millennia BCE
A recent study concludes It is obvious that ecological stresses caused both climatically and
technically played an important role in the life and decay of the Indus civilization
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity four Read the article below about the early Chinese dynasties Using information from
the article write an 800 word essay that describes the influence of the environment religion and
gender on the formation of the government of ancient China Again do NOT look up additional
information use only what is provided Also do NOT quote from the articles paraphrase and
summarize only Turn in your essay to wwwturnitincom before the first day of school
The Shang and Zhou Dynasties By 5000 BCE agricultural communities had spread through much of what is now called China and there
were agricultural villages from the Wei River Valley eastward parallel with the great Yellow River
(Huang He) which flowed out of the Kunlun Mountains to the deciduous forest and loess soil region of
the North China Plain Where people were free of forest and had access to water they grew millet -- as
early as 5500 BCE -- while they continued to hunt deer and other game to fish and gather food And they
raised dogs pigs and chickens They built one-room homes dug into the earth with roofs of clay or
thatch pit homes grouped in villages They had spinning wheels and knitted and wove fibers And they
made pottery decorated with art
Flooding along the Yellow River was worse than it was along the Yangzi River to the south Along the
Yangzi River through the Hubei Basin and on the coastal plain to Hangzhou Bay farming had also
developed but people along the Yellow River had to work harder at flood control and irrigation and
perhaps this stimulated a greater effort at organization At any rate the North China Plain became the
largest area with a relatively dense population
Where people were producing more food than they needed to survive warriors had the incentive not only
to plunder but also to conquer And conquering kings arose on the North China Plain as they did in West
Asia The first dynasty of kings in the North China Plain has been described as belonging to the Xia
family - whose rule is thought to have begun around 2200 BCE But the first dynasty of which there is
historical evidence is that of the Shang family The Shang clan came out of the Wei River Valley just west
of the North China Plain By around 1500 BCE give or take a century or so the Shang unified people
along the North China Plain The military had chariots each with an aristocrat archer a driver and
sometimes also a man with a spear The Shang built an empire in much the same way as other conquerors
by leaving behind a garrison force to police local people by turning a local king into a subservient ally
free to manage local matters and by taxing the conquered
Around 1384 BCE the Shang moved their capital to Yin As a regular pastime the Shang emperors and
nobles hunted in organized game drives Emperors and aristocrats had splendid homes with walls of
pounded earth or earthen bricks while common people continued to live in their pit homes of earlier times
A Shang emperor was chief priest and he had an administrative bureaucracy with councilors lesser
priests and diviners As with other warring civilizations slaves were taken the slaves laboring at growing
crops And women in Shang civilization were subservient to men with aristocratic women enjoying a
greater freedom and equality than common women The role of the woman was to be gentle calm
respectful and to obey her husband Women were lower than men and were subjected to womenrsquos work
(tending to the children and needs of the husband) Men also married multiple times and women were
used as concubines
During the Shang dynasty the civilization along the Yellow River had canals for irrigating crops
Communities had drains that ran water out of town They made beer from millet The stable government
allowed for extended trading and use of money in the form of cowry shells Shang merchants traded in
salt iron copper tin lead and antimony some of which had to be imported from far away As early as
the 1300 BCE a bronze casting industry had developed This was later than the rise of bronze casting in
Europe and West Asia but it was the most advanced in the world
It was around 1300 BCE that the first known writing appeared in Shang civilization because the
government officials needed to have questions answered that would allow them to better govern This
writing was for divination done on plate-like portions of the bones of cattle or deer on seashells and
turtle shells and perhaps on wood By applying a pointed heated rod to a bone or shell the item cracked
and to which written symbol the crack traveled gave answers for various questions what the weather was
going to be like would there be flood would a harvest succeed or fail when might be the best time for
hunting or fishing there were also personal questions about illness or whether one should make a journey
Shang Violence and Splendor
To the east north and south of Shang civilization were those the Shang saw as barbarians including the
farming people along the Yangzi River Shang emperors sent out armies to repulse invaders and the
Shang emperors went beyond their domains to plunder and to capture foreign peoples needed for sacrifice
to their gods Uncovered tombs of emperors from the Shang period indicate that they could put into the
field as many as three to five thousand soldiers Found buried with the emperors were their personal
ornaments and spears with bronze blades and the remains of what had been bows and arrows Buried with
the emperors were also horses and chariots for transporting soldiers to battle And with the emperors in
death were their charioteers dogs servants and people in groups of ten -- people who had been
ceremonially beheaded with bronze axes
Zhou Empire Religion and Human Sacrifice
Shang rule was threatened by forces from outside and from within its empire To the west of Shang
civilization in the Wei River Valley lived a pastoral people called Zhou who led an alliance that included
other tribal peoples neighboring Shang civilization While the Shang emperor Zhouxin was occupied by
a war against tribal people to his southeast rebellions broke out among people that Shang monarchs
before him had conquered The Zhou and their allies saw the Shang emperors troubles as an opportunity
to move against him and in 1045 BCE they overpowered him at the battle of Mu-ye and had him
beheaded
A dynasty of Zhou emperors began ruling what had been Shang civilization They claimed that all lands
belonged to heaven that they were the sons of heaven and therefore that all lands and all people were
their subjects Seeing the lands they had conquered as too vast for one man to dominate the Zhou
emperors divided these lands into regions and assigned someone to rule each region in their name
choosing for this position a close family member a trusted member of their clan or the chief of a tribe
that had been allied with them against the Shang
Each local ruler had at his disposal all the lands around him He had his own militia And from the Zhou
emperors the local rulers received gifts such as chariots bronze weapons servants and animals The local
rulers received the title of lord (gong) Local rulers passed their positions to their sons their titles of lord
becoming hereditary And to control their areas better the lords made sub-lords of those who had
dominated the common people before they arrived A hierarchy of status and obligations emerged among
families and within families with older brothers ranking higher than younger brothers with rules of
succession as to which of the males would head his family If a married aristocrat became infatuated with
another woman rather than drive his wife from his home he could bring the other woman into the family
as a concubine where she would rank beneath his wife
Zhou emperors told those they had conquered that they the Zhou had ousted the ancestors of Shang
emperors from heaven and that heaven was occupied by their supreme god a god they called The Lord
on High who they said had commanded the downfall of the Shang emperors Like emperors in West
Asia Zhou emperors claimed that they ruled by divine right They claimed that they represented on earth
the Lord on High and that it was their duty to mediate with the Lord on High to perform appropriate
sacrifices and to maintain a proper relationship between heaven and their subjects They claimed that any
opposition to their rule was opposition to the will of heaven
It was from the Zhou emperors that local lords received the right to act as a priest to perform sacrifices
to have certain hymns sung and certain dances performed the right to propitiate the gods of local
mountains streams and of the soil and crops Meanwhile local aristocrats continued to keep track of their
ancestral heritage They married with religious rites and sanctions while common folk continued to have
no such marriages no surnames or recorded ancestors They merely lived together and were recognized as
a couple by their neighbors
Ancestor worship was also very important to the Shang It was thought that the success of crops and the
health and well being of people were based on the happiness of dead ancestors
The worship of various gods from the Shang period included gods of grain rain and agriculture -- one of
whom was believed to have had a virgin birth Among these gods was a god of the Yellow River who had
the body of a fish but the face of a man
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity five Research the social hierarchy religion political organization writing systems and
technological aspects of the societies listed on the SNAPSHOT Early Agricultural Societies Describe each aspect
of the society using specific evidence - in one or two clear sentences (SEE EXAMPLE of Olmec Society) Write
VERY neatly in ink Bring this chart with you on the FIRST DAY of school
Were they Copycats or Geniuses How did the Harappans take the great leap from self-contained agricultural societies to a trade-oriented
luxury-conscious sophisticated urban civilization that gave the world the concept of town planning
Analyzing the evidence from various sites Possehl found that between 2600 BC and 2500 BC the
Harappans experienced a century of cathartic changes Before this he finds no breadboard models of the
expansion to come be it the invention of writing or the awesome town-planning techniques A
tremendous jump in human ability is evident So what or who caused it
In the past the reputed British archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler argued that ideas have wings and that
the Harappans were influenced by their trade contacts with the Sumerians But the diffusion theory of
civilization as it is called is slowly being given the heave-ho Cambridge historian Raymond Allchin an
authority on the subject says We are now beginning to see the foundation being laid in the preceding
100 to 200 years in smaller sites There appears to be a completely organic process of growth that threw
up the Harappan culture as we know it
Yet the evidence of that process continues to be scanty In Kunal in Haryana archaeologists recently
found what are known as proto Indus seals On pottery on many of the smaller sites in both India and
Pakistan graffiti similar to some figures on the script begin to appear And at Dholavira and at Banawali
in Haryana the distinction between the citadel and the lower city is beginning to evolve There is
however a huge jump in scale in such activity in those critical 100 years For in Harappa as in most
Indus sites the distinct gridiron pattern for streets appear a scientific system of drainage that linked up to
even the smallest house in the lower city is established precise weights and measures begin to circulate
and the writing system evolves So were the Harappans copycats Archaeologists say the Indus people
couldnrsquot have copied their town-planning from Egypt and Mesopotamia because in those civilizations the
roads meandered like village streets Nor was the writing similar to Sumer`s cuneiform or the Egyptian
hieroglyphics The Harappans had their own distinctive style Lal explains the dramatic change as a result
of centuries of growth reaching a critical mass that caused an unparalleled urban explosion Trade he
believes was the driving force of the revolution Even a skeptic like Possehl maintains that these are
indeed an expression of the Indian genius
Did Aryans kill them or a Depression Archaeologists are known to stumble but the kind of knocking Wheeler has taken over his Aryan
invasion theory has few parallels When the British archaeologist discovered a dozen skeletons in
Mohenjodaro he propounded a theory about the final massacre by marauding invaders that put an end to
the Indus civilization When an Indian scholar told him of Hariyuppa being mentioned in the Rigveda he
took it to mean Harappa And since a fort was known as pur and Indira the Aryan god was known as
Purandhara or destroyer of forts it all fitted neatly
After all werenrsquot the Indus cities among the most fortified Yet the past 50 years and more so the last
decade has shown just how wrong Wheeler was The last massacre theory was his imagination running
riot Far from being snuffed out there was a brilliant resurgence of Indus culture further south for a while
Possehl who made a recent study found that in 2000 BC in Pakistanrsquos Sindh district the sites were down
from 86 to 6 and in Cholistan 174 to 41 But in India the sites in Haryana Punjab and Rajasthan exploded
from 218 to 853 Possehl asks How can this be construed as an eclipse We are looking at a highly
mobile people
Allchin argues that there is clear indication that the rainfall pattern which had initially brought fertility
had become adverse in the Sindh region And theories that given the instability of the Himalayan region
there may have been a massive earthquake that possibly changed the course of rivers such as the Sarasvati
and affected many Indus cities The Indus people then migrated eastward Lal talks of steep decline in
trade because of problems in Sumer that resulted in a Great Depression and turned many urban centers
into ghost cities
Bisht concurs with Lal but goes a step further He says that after the quake hit the heart of the civilization
the Indus people migrated east which acted like a sort of bypass to their woes And like a dying candle it
shone brilliantly again but briefly before being snuffed out Dholavira Banawali Mehrgarh Harappa -- in
fact all the major cities show that as the cities declined encroachments on streets that were unseen at its
peak began to occur with alarming regularity There was a breakdown in sanitation and cities like their
modern-day counterparts in India simply ran themselves aground They were replaced by massive squatter
colonies and an explosion of rural sites as people disillusioned with cities went back to farming
communities A giant step backward
Yet it wasnrsquot as if all came to naught as was earlier believed Some of the writings survived in the pottery
of the following ages The weight and decimal system too lived on And so did the bullock-cart
technology that the Indus had perfected Rather than a violent transition there may have been an orderly
interaction with oncoming Aryans Lal in his most recent book even puts across the most audacious
theory Could the Bronze Age Harappans be Aryans themselves He says this because of the presence of
fire worship and the discovery of horse remains and idols in Indus sites Meadows dismisses it as
premature and points out that it was more likely that ass remains were mistaken for that of a horsersquos And
that the Vedas showed a great antipathy for urban centers
Whatever the cause it would take another 1000 years for a semblance of civilization to return to the
subcontinent -- a dire warning to modern India of the catastrophe that can befall an errant populace
Environmental Stress in the Indus Valley Source Quotation from D P Agarwal and R K Sood in Gregory L Possehl ed Harappan Civilization A Contemporary Perspective (Warminster
England Aris and Phillips 1982)229
The three river-valley civilizations discussed in this chapter were located in arid or semiarid regions Such
regions are particularly vulnerable to changes in the environment Scholars debates about the existence
and impact of changes in the climate and landscape of the Indus Valley illuminate some of the potential
factors at work as well as the difficulties of verifying and interpreting such long-ago changes
One of the points at issue is climatic change An earlier generation of scholars believed that the climate
of the Indus Valley was considerably wetter during the height of that civilization than it is now As
evidence they cited the enormous quantities of timber cut from extensive forests that would have been
needed to bake the millions of mud bricks used to construct the cities (see photo) the distribution of
human settlements on land that is now unfavorable for agriculture and the representation of jungle and
marsh animals on decorated seals This approach assumes that the growth of population prosperity and
complexity in the Indus Valley in the third millennium BCE required wet conditions and it concludes
that the change to a drier climate in the early second millennium BCE pushed this civilization into
decline
Other experts skeptical about a radical climatic change countered with alternative calculations of the
amount of timber needed and evidence of plant remains-particularly barley a grain that is tolerant of dry
conditions However recent studies of the stabilization of sand dunes which occurs in periods of heavy
rainfall and analysis of the sediment deposited by rivers and winds have been used to strengthen the
claim that the Indus Valley used to be wetter and in the early-to-mid second millennium BCE entered a
period of relatively dry conditions that have persisted to the present
A much clearer case can be made for changes in the landscape caused by shifts in the courses of rivers
These shifts are due in many cases to tectonic forces such as earthquakes Dry channels whether
detected in satellite photographs or by on-the-ground inspection reveal the location of old riverbeds and
it appears that a second major river system the Hakra once ran parallel to the Indus some distance to the
east The Hakra with teeming towns and fertile fields along its banks appears to have been a second axis
of this civilization Either the Sutlej which now feeds into the Indus or the Yamuna which now pours
into the Ganges may have been the main source of water for this long-gone system before undergoing a
change of course The consequences of the drying-up of this major waterway must have been immense-
the loss of huge amounts of arable land and the food that it produced the abandonment of cities and
villages and consequent migration of their populations shifts in the trade routes and desperate
competition for shrinking resources
As for the Indus itself the present-day course of the lower reaches of the river has shifted 100 miles
(161 kilometers) to the west since the arrival of the Greek conqueror Alexander the Great in the late
fourth century BCE and the deposit of massive volumes of silt has pushed the mouth of the river 50
miles (80 kilometers) farther south Such a shift of the river bed and buildup of alluvial deposits also may
have occurred in the third and second millennia BCE
A recent study concludes It is obvious that ecological stresses caused both climatically and
technically played an important role in the life and decay of the Indus civilization
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity four Read the article below about the early Chinese dynasties Using information from
the article write an 800 word essay that describes the influence of the environment religion and
gender on the formation of the government of ancient China Again do NOT look up additional
information use only what is provided Also do NOT quote from the articles paraphrase and
summarize only Turn in your essay to wwwturnitincom before the first day of school
The Shang and Zhou Dynasties By 5000 BCE agricultural communities had spread through much of what is now called China and there
were agricultural villages from the Wei River Valley eastward parallel with the great Yellow River
(Huang He) which flowed out of the Kunlun Mountains to the deciduous forest and loess soil region of
the North China Plain Where people were free of forest and had access to water they grew millet -- as
early as 5500 BCE -- while they continued to hunt deer and other game to fish and gather food And they
raised dogs pigs and chickens They built one-room homes dug into the earth with roofs of clay or
thatch pit homes grouped in villages They had spinning wheels and knitted and wove fibers And they
made pottery decorated with art
Flooding along the Yellow River was worse than it was along the Yangzi River to the south Along the
Yangzi River through the Hubei Basin and on the coastal plain to Hangzhou Bay farming had also
developed but people along the Yellow River had to work harder at flood control and irrigation and
perhaps this stimulated a greater effort at organization At any rate the North China Plain became the
largest area with a relatively dense population
Where people were producing more food than they needed to survive warriors had the incentive not only
to plunder but also to conquer And conquering kings arose on the North China Plain as they did in West
Asia The first dynasty of kings in the North China Plain has been described as belonging to the Xia
family - whose rule is thought to have begun around 2200 BCE But the first dynasty of which there is
historical evidence is that of the Shang family The Shang clan came out of the Wei River Valley just west
of the North China Plain By around 1500 BCE give or take a century or so the Shang unified people
along the North China Plain The military had chariots each with an aristocrat archer a driver and
sometimes also a man with a spear The Shang built an empire in much the same way as other conquerors
by leaving behind a garrison force to police local people by turning a local king into a subservient ally
free to manage local matters and by taxing the conquered
Around 1384 BCE the Shang moved their capital to Yin As a regular pastime the Shang emperors and
nobles hunted in organized game drives Emperors and aristocrats had splendid homes with walls of
pounded earth or earthen bricks while common people continued to live in their pit homes of earlier times
A Shang emperor was chief priest and he had an administrative bureaucracy with councilors lesser
priests and diviners As with other warring civilizations slaves were taken the slaves laboring at growing
crops And women in Shang civilization were subservient to men with aristocratic women enjoying a
greater freedom and equality than common women The role of the woman was to be gentle calm
respectful and to obey her husband Women were lower than men and were subjected to womenrsquos work
(tending to the children and needs of the husband) Men also married multiple times and women were
used as concubines
During the Shang dynasty the civilization along the Yellow River had canals for irrigating crops
Communities had drains that ran water out of town They made beer from millet The stable government
allowed for extended trading and use of money in the form of cowry shells Shang merchants traded in
salt iron copper tin lead and antimony some of which had to be imported from far away As early as
the 1300 BCE a bronze casting industry had developed This was later than the rise of bronze casting in
Europe and West Asia but it was the most advanced in the world
It was around 1300 BCE that the first known writing appeared in Shang civilization because the
government officials needed to have questions answered that would allow them to better govern This
writing was for divination done on plate-like portions of the bones of cattle or deer on seashells and
turtle shells and perhaps on wood By applying a pointed heated rod to a bone or shell the item cracked
and to which written symbol the crack traveled gave answers for various questions what the weather was
going to be like would there be flood would a harvest succeed or fail when might be the best time for
hunting or fishing there were also personal questions about illness or whether one should make a journey
Shang Violence and Splendor
To the east north and south of Shang civilization were those the Shang saw as barbarians including the
farming people along the Yangzi River Shang emperors sent out armies to repulse invaders and the
Shang emperors went beyond their domains to plunder and to capture foreign peoples needed for sacrifice
to their gods Uncovered tombs of emperors from the Shang period indicate that they could put into the
field as many as three to five thousand soldiers Found buried with the emperors were their personal
ornaments and spears with bronze blades and the remains of what had been bows and arrows Buried with
the emperors were also horses and chariots for transporting soldiers to battle And with the emperors in
death were their charioteers dogs servants and people in groups of ten -- people who had been
ceremonially beheaded with bronze axes
Zhou Empire Religion and Human Sacrifice
Shang rule was threatened by forces from outside and from within its empire To the west of Shang
civilization in the Wei River Valley lived a pastoral people called Zhou who led an alliance that included
other tribal peoples neighboring Shang civilization While the Shang emperor Zhouxin was occupied by
a war against tribal people to his southeast rebellions broke out among people that Shang monarchs
before him had conquered The Zhou and their allies saw the Shang emperors troubles as an opportunity
to move against him and in 1045 BCE they overpowered him at the battle of Mu-ye and had him
beheaded
A dynasty of Zhou emperors began ruling what had been Shang civilization They claimed that all lands
belonged to heaven that they were the sons of heaven and therefore that all lands and all people were
their subjects Seeing the lands they had conquered as too vast for one man to dominate the Zhou
emperors divided these lands into regions and assigned someone to rule each region in their name
choosing for this position a close family member a trusted member of their clan or the chief of a tribe
that had been allied with them against the Shang
Each local ruler had at his disposal all the lands around him He had his own militia And from the Zhou
emperors the local rulers received gifts such as chariots bronze weapons servants and animals The local
rulers received the title of lord (gong) Local rulers passed their positions to their sons their titles of lord
becoming hereditary And to control their areas better the lords made sub-lords of those who had
dominated the common people before they arrived A hierarchy of status and obligations emerged among
families and within families with older brothers ranking higher than younger brothers with rules of
succession as to which of the males would head his family If a married aristocrat became infatuated with
another woman rather than drive his wife from his home he could bring the other woman into the family
as a concubine where she would rank beneath his wife
Zhou emperors told those they had conquered that they the Zhou had ousted the ancestors of Shang
emperors from heaven and that heaven was occupied by their supreme god a god they called The Lord
on High who they said had commanded the downfall of the Shang emperors Like emperors in West
Asia Zhou emperors claimed that they ruled by divine right They claimed that they represented on earth
the Lord on High and that it was their duty to mediate with the Lord on High to perform appropriate
sacrifices and to maintain a proper relationship between heaven and their subjects They claimed that any
opposition to their rule was opposition to the will of heaven
It was from the Zhou emperors that local lords received the right to act as a priest to perform sacrifices
to have certain hymns sung and certain dances performed the right to propitiate the gods of local
mountains streams and of the soil and crops Meanwhile local aristocrats continued to keep track of their
ancestral heritage They married with religious rites and sanctions while common folk continued to have
no such marriages no surnames or recorded ancestors They merely lived together and were recognized as
a couple by their neighbors
Ancestor worship was also very important to the Shang It was thought that the success of crops and the
health and well being of people were based on the happiness of dead ancestors
The worship of various gods from the Shang period included gods of grain rain and agriculture -- one of
whom was believed to have had a virgin birth Among these gods was a god of the Yellow River who had
the body of a fish but the face of a man
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity five Research the social hierarchy religion political organization writing systems and
technological aspects of the societies listed on the SNAPSHOT Early Agricultural Societies Describe each aspect
of the society using specific evidence - in one or two clear sentences (SEE EXAMPLE of Olmec Society) Write
VERY neatly in ink Bring this chart with you on the FIRST DAY of school
and affected many Indus cities The Indus people then migrated eastward Lal talks of steep decline in
trade because of problems in Sumer that resulted in a Great Depression and turned many urban centers
into ghost cities
Bisht concurs with Lal but goes a step further He says that after the quake hit the heart of the civilization
the Indus people migrated east which acted like a sort of bypass to their woes And like a dying candle it
shone brilliantly again but briefly before being snuffed out Dholavira Banawali Mehrgarh Harappa -- in
fact all the major cities show that as the cities declined encroachments on streets that were unseen at its
peak began to occur with alarming regularity There was a breakdown in sanitation and cities like their
modern-day counterparts in India simply ran themselves aground They were replaced by massive squatter
colonies and an explosion of rural sites as people disillusioned with cities went back to farming
communities A giant step backward
Yet it wasnrsquot as if all came to naught as was earlier believed Some of the writings survived in the pottery
of the following ages The weight and decimal system too lived on And so did the bullock-cart
technology that the Indus had perfected Rather than a violent transition there may have been an orderly
interaction with oncoming Aryans Lal in his most recent book even puts across the most audacious
theory Could the Bronze Age Harappans be Aryans themselves He says this because of the presence of
fire worship and the discovery of horse remains and idols in Indus sites Meadows dismisses it as
premature and points out that it was more likely that ass remains were mistaken for that of a horsersquos And
that the Vedas showed a great antipathy for urban centers
Whatever the cause it would take another 1000 years for a semblance of civilization to return to the
subcontinent -- a dire warning to modern India of the catastrophe that can befall an errant populace
Environmental Stress in the Indus Valley Source Quotation from D P Agarwal and R K Sood in Gregory L Possehl ed Harappan Civilization A Contemporary Perspective (Warminster
England Aris and Phillips 1982)229
The three river-valley civilizations discussed in this chapter were located in arid or semiarid regions Such
regions are particularly vulnerable to changes in the environment Scholars debates about the existence
and impact of changes in the climate and landscape of the Indus Valley illuminate some of the potential
factors at work as well as the difficulties of verifying and interpreting such long-ago changes
One of the points at issue is climatic change An earlier generation of scholars believed that the climate
of the Indus Valley was considerably wetter during the height of that civilization than it is now As
evidence they cited the enormous quantities of timber cut from extensive forests that would have been
needed to bake the millions of mud bricks used to construct the cities (see photo) the distribution of
human settlements on land that is now unfavorable for agriculture and the representation of jungle and
marsh animals on decorated seals This approach assumes that the growth of population prosperity and
complexity in the Indus Valley in the third millennium BCE required wet conditions and it concludes
that the change to a drier climate in the early second millennium BCE pushed this civilization into
decline
Other experts skeptical about a radical climatic change countered with alternative calculations of the
amount of timber needed and evidence of plant remains-particularly barley a grain that is tolerant of dry
conditions However recent studies of the stabilization of sand dunes which occurs in periods of heavy
rainfall and analysis of the sediment deposited by rivers and winds have been used to strengthen the
claim that the Indus Valley used to be wetter and in the early-to-mid second millennium BCE entered a
period of relatively dry conditions that have persisted to the present
A much clearer case can be made for changes in the landscape caused by shifts in the courses of rivers
These shifts are due in many cases to tectonic forces such as earthquakes Dry channels whether
detected in satellite photographs or by on-the-ground inspection reveal the location of old riverbeds and
it appears that a second major river system the Hakra once ran parallel to the Indus some distance to the
east The Hakra with teeming towns and fertile fields along its banks appears to have been a second axis
of this civilization Either the Sutlej which now feeds into the Indus or the Yamuna which now pours
into the Ganges may have been the main source of water for this long-gone system before undergoing a
change of course The consequences of the drying-up of this major waterway must have been immense-
the loss of huge amounts of arable land and the food that it produced the abandonment of cities and
villages and consequent migration of their populations shifts in the trade routes and desperate
competition for shrinking resources
As for the Indus itself the present-day course of the lower reaches of the river has shifted 100 miles
(161 kilometers) to the west since the arrival of the Greek conqueror Alexander the Great in the late
fourth century BCE and the deposit of massive volumes of silt has pushed the mouth of the river 50
miles (80 kilometers) farther south Such a shift of the river bed and buildup of alluvial deposits also may
have occurred in the third and second millennia BCE
A recent study concludes It is obvious that ecological stresses caused both climatically and
technically played an important role in the life and decay of the Indus civilization
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity four Read the article below about the early Chinese dynasties Using information from
the article write an 800 word essay that describes the influence of the environment religion and
gender on the formation of the government of ancient China Again do NOT look up additional
information use only what is provided Also do NOT quote from the articles paraphrase and
summarize only Turn in your essay to wwwturnitincom before the first day of school
The Shang and Zhou Dynasties By 5000 BCE agricultural communities had spread through much of what is now called China and there
were agricultural villages from the Wei River Valley eastward parallel with the great Yellow River
(Huang He) which flowed out of the Kunlun Mountains to the deciduous forest and loess soil region of
the North China Plain Where people were free of forest and had access to water they grew millet -- as
early as 5500 BCE -- while they continued to hunt deer and other game to fish and gather food And they
raised dogs pigs and chickens They built one-room homes dug into the earth with roofs of clay or
thatch pit homes grouped in villages They had spinning wheels and knitted and wove fibers And they
made pottery decorated with art
Flooding along the Yellow River was worse than it was along the Yangzi River to the south Along the
Yangzi River through the Hubei Basin and on the coastal plain to Hangzhou Bay farming had also
developed but people along the Yellow River had to work harder at flood control and irrigation and
perhaps this stimulated a greater effort at organization At any rate the North China Plain became the
largest area with a relatively dense population
Where people were producing more food than they needed to survive warriors had the incentive not only
to plunder but also to conquer And conquering kings arose on the North China Plain as they did in West
Asia The first dynasty of kings in the North China Plain has been described as belonging to the Xia
family - whose rule is thought to have begun around 2200 BCE But the first dynasty of which there is
historical evidence is that of the Shang family The Shang clan came out of the Wei River Valley just west
of the North China Plain By around 1500 BCE give or take a century or so the Shang unified people
along the North China Plain The military had chariots each with an aristocrat archer a driver and
sometimes also a man with a spear The Shang built an empire in much the same way as other conquerors
by leaving behind a garrison force to police local people by turning a local king into a subservient ally
free to manage local matters and by taxing the conquered
Around 1384 BCE the Shang moved their capital to Yin As a regular pastime the Shang emperors and
nobles hunted in organized game drives Emperors and aristocrats had splendid homes with walls of
pounded earth or earthen bricks while common people continued to live in their pit homes of earlier times
A Shang emperor was chief priest and he had an administrative bureaucracy with councilors lesser
priests and diviners As with other warring civilizations slaves were taken the slaves laboring at growing
crops And women in Shang civilization were subservient to men with aristocratic women enjoying a
greater freedom and equality than common women The role of the woman was to be gentle calm
respectful and to obey her husband Women were lower than men and were subjected to womenrsquos work
(tending to the children and needs of the husband) Men also married multiple times and women were
used as concubines
During the Shang dynasty the civilization along the Yellow River had canals for irrigating crops
Communities had drains that ran water out of town They made beer from millet The stable government
allowed for extended trading and use of money in the form of cowry shells Shang merchants traded in
salt iron copper tin lead and antimony some of which had to be imported from far away As early as
the 1300 BCE a bronze casting industry had developed This was later than the rise of bronze casting in
Europe and West Asia but it was the most advanced in the world
It was around 1300 BCE that the first known writing appeared in Shang civilization because the
government officials needed to have questions answered that would allow them to better govern This
writing was for divination done on plate-like portions of the bones of cattle or deer on seashells and
turtle shells and perhaps on wood By applying a pointed heated rod to a bone or shell the item cracked
and to which written symbol the crack traveled gave answers for various questions what the weather was
going to be like would there be flood would a harvest succeed or fail when might be the best time for
hunting or fishing there were also personal questions about illness or whether one should make a journey
Shang Violence and Splendor
To the east north and south of Shang civilization were those the Shang saw as barbarians including the
farming people along the Yangzi River Shang emperors sent out armies to repulse invaders and the
Shang emperors went beyond their domains to plunder and to capture foreign peoples needed for sacrifice
to their gods Uncovered tombs of emperors from the Shang period indicate that they could put into the
field as many as three to five thousand soldiers Found buried with the emperors were their personal
ornaments and spears with bronze blades and the remains of what had been bows and arrows Buried with
the emperors were also horses and chariots for transporting soldiers to battle And with the emperors in
death were their charioteers dogs servants and people in groups of ten -- people who had been
ceremonially beheaded with bronze axes
Zhou Empire Religion and Human Sacrifice
Shang rule was threatened by forces from outside and from within its empire To the west of Shang
civilization in the Wei River Valley lived a pastoral people called Zhou who led an alliance that included
other tribal peoples neighboring Shang civilization While the Shang emperor Zhouxin was occupied by
a war against tribal people to his southeast rebellions broke out among people that Shang monarchs
before him had conquered The Zhou and their allies saw the Shang emperors troubles as an opportunity
to move against him and in 1045 BCE they overpowered him at the battle of Mu-ye and had him
beheaded
A dynasty of Zhou emperors began ruling what had been Shang civilization They claimed that all lands
belonged to heaven that they were the sons of heaven and therefore that all lands and all people were
their subjects Seeing the lands they had conquered as too vast for one man to dominate the Zhou
emperors divided these lands into regions and assigned someone to rule each region in their name
choosing for this position a close family member a trusted member of their clan or the chief of a tribe
that had been allied with them against the Shang
Each local ruler had at his disposal all the lands around him He had his own militia And from the Zhou
emperors the local rulers received gifts such as chariots bronze weapons servants and animals The local
rulers received the title of lord (gong) Local rulers passed their positions to their sons their titles of lord
becoming hereditary And to control their areas better the lords made sub-lords of those who had
dominated the common people before they arrived A hierarchy of status and obligations emerged among
families and within families with older brothers ranking higher than younger brothers with rules of
succession as to which of the males would head his family If a married aristocrat became infatuated with
another woman rather than drive his wife from his home he could bring the other woman into the family
as a concubine where she would rank beneath his wife
Zhou emperors told those they had conquered that they the Zhou had ousted the ancestors of Shang
emperors from heaven and that heaven was occupied by their supreme god a god they called The Lord
on High who they said had commanded the downfall of the Shang emperors Like emperors in West
Asia Zhou emperors claimed that they ruled by divine right They claimed that they represented on earth
the Lord on High and that it was their duty to mediate with the Lord on High to perform appropriate
sacrifices and to maintain a proper relationship between heaven and their subjects They claimed that any
opposition to their rule was opposition to the will of heaven
It was from the Zhou emperors that local lords received the right to act as a priest to perform sacrifices
to have certain hymns sung and certain dances performed the right to propitiate the gods of local
mountains streams and of the soil and crops Meanwhile local aristocrats continued to keep track of their
ancestral heritage They married with religious rites and sanctions while common folk continued to have
no such marriages no surnames or recorded ancestors They merely lived together and were recognized as
a couple by their neighbors
Ancestor worship was also very important to the Shang It was thought that the success of crops and the
health and well being of people were based on the happiness of dead ancestors
The worship of various gods from the Shang period included gods of grain rain and agriculture -- one of
whom was believed to have had a virgin birth Among these gods was a god of the Yellow River who had
the body of a fish but the face of a man
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity five Research the social hierarchy religion political organization writing systems and
technological aspects of the societies listed on the SNAPSHOT Early Agricultural Societies Describe each aspect
of the society using specific evidence - in one or two clear sentences (SEE EXAMPLE of Olmec Society) Write
VERY neatly in ink Bring this chart with you on the FIRST DAY of school
it appears that a second major river system the Hakra once ran parallel to the Indus some distance to the
east The Hakra with teeming towns and fertile fields along its banks appears to have been a second axis
of this civilization Either the Sutlej which now feeds into the Indus or the Yamuna which now pours
into the Ganges may have been the main source of water for this long-gone system before undergoing a
change of course The consequences of the drying-up of this major waterway must have been immense-
the loss of huge amounts of arable land and the food that it produced the abandonment of cities and
villages and consequent migration of their populations shifts in the trade routes and desperate
competition for shrinking resources
As for the Indus itself the present-day course of the lower reaches of the river has shifted 100 miles
(161 kilometers) to the west since the arrival of the Greek conqueror Alexander the Great in the late
fourth century BCE and the deposit of massive volumes of silt has pushed the mouth of the river 50
miles (80 kilometers) farther south Such a shift of the river bed and buildup of alluvial deposits also may
have occurred in the third and second millennia BCE
A recent study concludes It is obvious that ecological stresses caused both climatically and
technically played an important role in the life and decay of the Indus civilization
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity four Read the article below about the early Chinese dynasties Using information from
the article write an 800 word essay that describes the influence of the environment religion and
gender on the formation of the government of ancient China Again do NOT look up additional
information use only what is provided Also do NOT quote from the articles paraphrase and
summarize only Turn in your essay to wwwturnitincom before the first day of school
The Shang and Zhou Dynasties By 5000 BCE agricultural communities had spread through much of what is now called China and there
were agricultural villages from the Wei River Valley eastward parallel with the great Yellow River
(Huang He) which flowed out of the Kunlun Mountains to the deciduous forest and loess soil region of
the North China Plain Where people were free of forest and had access to water they grew millet -- as
early as 5500 BCE -- while they continued to hunt deer and other game to fish and gather food And they
raised dogs pigs and chickens They built one-room homes dug into the earth with roofs of clay or
thatch pit homes grouped in villages They had spinning wheels and knitted and wove fibers And they
made pottery decorated with art
Flooding along the Yellow River was worse than it was along the Yangzi River to the south Along the
Yangzi River through the Hubei Basin and on the coastal plain to Hangzhou Bay farming had also
developed but people along the Yellow River had to work harder at flood control and irrigation and
perhaps this stimulated a greater effort at organization At any rate the North China Plain became the
largest area with a relatively dense population
Where people were producing more food than they needed to survive warriors had the incentive not only
to plunder but also to conquer And conquering kings arose on the North China Plain as they did in West
Asia The first dynasty of kings in the North China Plain has been described as belonging to the Xia
family - whose rule is thought to have begun around 2200 BCE But the first dynasty of which there is
historical evidence is that of the Shang family The Shang clan came out of the Wei River Valley just west
of the North China Plain By around 1500 BCE give or take a century or so the Shang unified people
along the North China Plain The military had chariots each with an aristocrat archer a driver and
sometimes also a man with a spear The Shang built an empire in much the same way as other conquerors
by leaving behind a garrison force to police local people by turning a local king into a subservient ally
free to manage local matters and by taxing the conquered
Around 1384 BCE the Shang moved their capital to Yin As a regular pastime the Shang emperors and
nobles hunted in organized game drives Emperors and aristocrats had splendid homes with walls of
pounded earth or earthen bricks while common people continued to live in their pit homes of earlier times
A Shang emperor was chief priest and he had an administrative bureaucracy with councilors lesser
priests and diviners As with other warring civilizations slaves were taken the slaves laboring at growing
crops And women in Shang civilization were subservient to men with aristocratic women enjoying a
greater freedom and equality than common women The role of the woman was to be gentle calm
respectful and to obey her husband Women were lower than men and were subjected to womenrsquos work
(tending to the children and needs of the husband) Men also married multiple times and women were
used as concubines
During the Shang dynasty the civilization along the Yellow River had canals for irrigating crops
Communities had drains that ran water out of town They made beer from millet The stable government
allowed for extended trading and use of money in the form of cowry shells Shang merchants traded in
salt iron copper tin lead and antimony some of which had to be imported from far away As early as
the 1300 BCE a bronze casting industry had developed This was later than the rise of bronze casting in
Europe and West Asia but it was the most advanced in the world
It was around 1300 BCE that the first known writing appeared in Shang civilization because the
government officials needed to have questions answered that would allow them to better govern This
writing was for divination done on plate-like portions of the bones of cattle or deer on seashells and
turtle shells and perhaps on wood By applying a pointed heated rod to a bone or shell the item cracked
and to which written symbol the crack traveled gave answers for various questions what the weather was
going to be like would there be flood would a harvest succeed or fail when might be the best time for
hunting or fishing there were also personal questions about illness or whether one should make a journey
Shang Violence and Splendor
To the east north and south of Shang civilization were those the Shang saw as barbarians including the
farming people along the Yangzi River Shang emperors sent out armies to repulse invaders and the
Shang emperors went beyond their domains to plunder and to capture foreign peoples needed for sacrifice
to their gods Uncovered tombs of emperors from the Shang period indicate that they could put into the
field as many as three to five thousand soldiers Found buried with the emperors were their personal
ornaments and spears with bronze blades and the remains of what had been bows and arrows Buried with
the emperors were also horses and chariots for transporting soldiers to battle And with the emperors in
death were their charioteers dogs servants and people in groups of ten -- people who had been
ceremonially beheaded with bronze axes
Zhou Empire Religion and Human Sacrifice
Shang rule was threatened by forces from outside and from within its empire To the west of Shang
civilization in the Wei River Valley lived a pastoral people called Zhou who led an alliance that included
other tribal peoples neighboring Shang civilization While the Shang emperor Zhouxin was occupied by
a war against tribal people to his southeast rebellions broke out among people that Shang monarchs
before him had conquered The Zhou and their allies saw the Shang emperors troubles as an opportunity
to move against him and in 1045 BCE they overpowered him at the battle of Mu-ye and had him
beheaded
A dynasty of Zhou emperors began ruling what had been Shang civilization They claimed that all lands
belonged to heaven that they were the sons of heaven and therefore that all lands and all people were
their subjects Seeing the lands they had conquered as too vast for one man to dominate the Zhou
emperors divided these lands into regions and assigned someone to rule each region in their name
choosing for this position a close family member a trusted member of their clan or the chief of a tribe
that had been allied with them against the Shang
Each local ruler had at his disposal all the lands around him He had his own militia And from the Zhou
emperors the local rulers received gifts such as chariots bronze weapons servants and animals The local
rulers received the title of lord (gong) Local rulers passed their positions to their sons their titles of lord
becoming hereditary And to control their areas better the lords made sub-lords of those who had
dominated the common people before they arrived A hierarchy of status and obligations emerged among
families and within families with older brothers ranking higher than younger brothers with rules of
succession as to which of the males would head his family If a married aristocrat became infatuated with
another woman rather than drive his wife from his home he could bring the other woman into the family
as a concubine where she would rank beneath his wife
Zhou emperors told those they had conquered that they the Zhou had ousted the ancestors of Shang
emperors from heaven and that heaven was occupied by their supreme god a god they called The Lord
on High who they said had commanded the downfall of the Shang emperors Like emperors in West
Asia Zhou emperors claimed that they ruled by divine right They claimed that they represented on earth
the Lord on High and that it was their duty to mediate with the Lord on High to perform appropriate
sacrifices and to maintain a proper relationship between heaven and their subjects They claimed that any
opposition to their rule was opposition to the will of heaven
It was from the Zhou emperors that local lords received the right to act as a priest to perform sacrifices
to have certain hymns sung and certain dances performed the right to propitiate the gods of local
mountains streams and of the soil and crops Meanwhile local aristocrats continued to keep track of their
ancestral heritage They married with religious rites and sanctions while common folk continued to have
no such marriages no surnames or recorded ancestors They merely lived together and were recognized as
a couple by their neighbors
Ancestor worship was also very important to the Shang It was thought that the success of crops and the
health and well being of people were based on the happiness of dead ancestors
The worship of various gods from the Shang period included gods of grain rain and agriculture -- one of
whom was believed to have had a virgin birth Among these gods was a god of the Yellow River who had
the body of a fish but the face of a man
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity five Research the social hierarchy religion political organization writing systems and
technological aspects of the societies listed on the SNAPSHOT Early Agricultural Societies Describe each aspect
of the society using specific evidence - in one or two clear sentences (SEE EXAMPLE of Olmec Society) Write
VERY neatly in ink Bring this chart with you on the FIRST DAY of school
Around 1384 BCE the Shang moved their capital to Yin As a regular pastime the Shang emperors and
nobles hunted in organized game drives Emperors and aristocrats had splendid homes with walls of
pounded earth or earthen bricks while common people continued to live in their pit homes of earlier times
A Shang emperor was chief priest and he had an administrative bureaucracy with councilors lesser
priests and diviners As with other warring civilizations slaves were taken the slaves laboring at growing
crops And women in Shang civilization were subservient to men with aristocratic women enjoying a
greater freedom and equality than common women The role of the woman was to be gentle calm
respectful and to obey her husband Women were lower than men and were subjected to womenrsquos work
(tending to the children and needs of the husband) Men also married multiple times and women were
used as concubines
During the Shang dynasty the civilization along the Yellow River had canals for irrigating crops
Communities had drains that ran water out of town They made beer from millet The stable government
allowed for extended trading and use of money in the form of cowry shells Shang merchants traded in
salt iron copper tin lead and antimony some of which had to be imported from far away As early as
the 1300 BCE a bronze casting industry had developed This was later than the rise of bronze casting in
Europe and West Asia but it was the most advanced in the world
It was around 1300 BCE that the first known writing appeared in Shang civilization because the
government officials needed to have questions answered that would allow them to better govern This
writing was for divination done on plate-like portions of the bones of cattle or deer on seashells and
turtle shells and perhaps on wood By applying a pointed heated rod to a bone or shell the item cracked
and to which written symbol the crack traveled gave answers for various questions what the weather was
going to be like would there be flood would a harvest succeed or fail when might be the best time for
hunting or fishing there were also personal questions about illness or whether one should make a journey
Shang Violence and Splendor
To the east north and south of Shang civilization were those the Shang saw as barbarians including the
farming people along the Yangzi River Shang emperors sent out armies to repulse invaders and the
Shang emperors went beyond their domains to plunder and to capture foreign peoples needed for sacrifice
to their gods Uncovered tombs of emperors from the Shang period indicate that they could put into the
field as many as three to five thousand soldiers Found buried with the emperors were their personal
ornaments and spears with bronze blades and the remains of what had been bows and arrows Buried with
the emperors were also horses and chariots for transporting soldiers to battle And with the emperors in
death were their charioteers dogs servants and people in groups of ten -- people who had been
ceremonially beheaded with bronze axes
Zhou Empire Religion and Human Sacrifice
Shang rule was threatened by forces from outside and from within its empire To the west of Shang
civilization in the Wei River Valley lived a pastoral people called Zhou who led an alliance that included
other tribal peoples neighboring Shang civilization While the Shang emperor Zhouxin was occupied by
a war against tribal people to his southeast rebellions broke out among people that Shang monarchs
before him had conquered The Zhou and their allies saw the Shang emperors troubles as an opportunity
to move against him and in 1045 BCE they overpowered him at the battle of Mu-ye and had him
beheaded
A dynasty of Zhou emperors began ruling what had been Shang civilization They claimed that all lands
belonged to heaven that they were the sons of heaven and therefore that all lands and all people were
their subjects Seeing the lands they had conquered as too vast for one man to dominate the Zhou
emperors divided these lands into regions and assigned someone to rule each region in their name
choosing for this position a close family member a trusted member of their clan or the chief of a tribe
that had been allied with them against the Shang
Each local ruler had at his disposal all the lands around him He had his own militia And from the Zhou
emperors the local rulers received gifts such as chariots bronze weapons servants and animals The local
rulers received the title of lord (gong) Local rulers passed their positions to their sons their titles of lord
becoming hereditary And to control their areas better the lords made sub-lords of those who had
dominated the common people before they arrived A hierarchy of status and obligations emerged among
families and within families with older brothers ranking higher than younger brothers with rules of
succession as to which of the males would head his family If a married aristocrat became infatuated with
another woman rather than drive his wife from his home he could bring the other woman into the family
as a concubine where she would rank beneath his wife
Zhou emperors told those they had conquered that they the Zhou had ousted the ancestors of Shang
emperors from heaven and that heaven was occupied by their supreme god a god they called The Lord
on High who they said had commanded the downfall of the Shang emperors Like emperors in West
Asia Zhou emperors claimed that they ruled by divine right They claimed that they represented on earth
the Lord on High and that it was their duty to mediate with the Lord on High to perform appropriate
sacrifices and to maintain a proper relationship between heaven and their subjects They claimed that any
opposition to their rule was opposition to the will of heaven
It was from the Zhou emperors that local lords received the right to act as a priest to perform sacrifices
to have certain hymns sung and certain dances performed the right to propitiate the gods of local
mountains streams and of the soil and crops Meanwhile local aristocrats continued to keep track of their
ancestral heritage They married with religious rites and sanctions while common folk continued to have
no such marriages no surnames or recorded ancestors They merely lived together and were recognized as
a couple by their neighbors
Ancestor worship was also very important to the Shang It was thought that the success of crops and the
health and well being of people were based on the happiness of dead ancestors
The worship of various gods from the Shang period included gods of grain rain and agriculture -- one of
whom was believed to have had a virgin birth Among these gods was a god of the Yellow River who had
the body of a fish but the face of a man
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity five Research the social hierarchy religion political organization writing systems and
technological aspects of the societies listed on the SNAPSHOT Early Agricultural Societies Describe each aspect
of the society using specific evidence - in one or two clear sentences (SEE EXAMPLE of Olmec Society) Write
VERY neatly in ink Bring this chart with you on the FIRST DAY of school
A dynasty of Zhou emperors began ruling what had been Shang civilization They claimed that all lands
belonged to heaven that they were the sons of heaven and therefore that all lands and all people were
their subjects Seeing the lands they had conquered as too vast for one man to dominate the Zhou
emperors divided these lands into regions and assigned someone to rule each region in their name
choosing for this position a close family member a trusted member of their clan or the chief of a tribe
that had been allied with them against the Shang
Each local ruler had at his disposal all the lands around him He had his own militia And from the Zhou
emperors the local rulers received gifts such as chariots bronze weapons servants and animals The local
rulers received the title of lord (gong) Local rulers passed their positions to their sons their titles of lord
becoming hereditary And to control their areas better the lords made sub-lords of those who had
dominated the common people before they arrived A hierarchy of status and obligations emerged among
families and within families with older brothers ranking higher than younger brothers with rules of
succession as to which of the males would head his family If a married aristocrat became infatuated with
another woman rather than drive his wife from his home he could bring the other woman into the family
as a concubine where she would rank beneath his wife
Zhou emperors told those they had conquered that they the Zhou had ousted the ancestors of Shang
emperors from heaven and that heaven was occupied by their supreme god a god they called The Lord
on High who they said had commanded the downfall of the Shang emperors Like emperors in West
Asia Zhou emperors claimed that they ruled by divine right They claimed that they represented on earth
the Lord on High and that it was their duty to mediate with the Lord on High to perform appropriate
sacrifices and to maintain a proper relationship between heaven and their subjects They claimed that any
opposition to their rule was opposition to the will of heaven
It was from the Zhou emperors that local lords received the right to act as a priest to perform sacrifices
to have certain hymns sung and certain dances performed the right to propitiate the gods of local
mountains streams and of the soil and crops Meanwhile local aristocrats continued to keep track of their
ancestral heritage They married with religious rites and sanctions while common folk continued to have
no such marriages no surnames or recorded ancestors They merely lived together and were recognized as
a couple by their neighbors
Ancestor worship was also very important to the Shang It was thought that the success of crops and the
health and well being of people were based on the happiness of dead ancestors
The worship of various gods from the Shang period included gods of grain rain and agriculture -- one of
whom was believed to have had a virgin birth Among these gods was a god of the Yellow River who had
the body of a fish but the face of a man
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity five Research the social hierarchy religion political organization writing systems and
technological aspects of the societies listed on the SNAPSHOT Early Agricultural Societies Describe each aspect
of the society using specific evidence - in one or two clear sentences (SEE EXAMPLE of Olmec Society) Write
VERY neatly in ink Bring this chart with you on the FIRST DAY of school