How Did This Ancient Civilization Avoid War for 2,000 Years?

Above are some examples of the kinds of beads made in the Indus Valley. They were carved from stones, crystals and gems — and they were polished to a fine luster.

Every Harappan city that we’ve excavated has an area that’s packed with shops where artisans and engineers crafted goods for trade. We’ve even found scraps of cotton, which suggests that the Harappans may have been very early cultivators of this crop that later became the foundation of many textile industries in the region.

The archeology of different sites in Pakistan always fascinates me. These ruins tell a lot about what we were, and how did we start our life as Homo sapiens. Mysterious as always such sites are, the one of the Indus Valley baffles the archeologists as well as the anthropologists particularly because of the Indus script which to date has not been properly deciphered by the scientists of our civilized world.
Consequently, the missing links offer a lot many avenue to the writers, researchers, and related scientists to surmise, to opine, and or to give their expert opinions and analytical findings as to how that great civilization prospered, how did it sustain itself for two millennia without engaging into any sort of war.
In previous posts that I uploaded on this subject (See the links to previous posts in the main body of the text put up by Annalee Newitz), the very interesting, very intriguing aspects of Harappans’ life as to how they survived without fighting any war, without expanding their territories they just confined themselves mainly to their trading.
Then there is another aspect which was highlighted by the world famous magazine Science which told us the Indus Valley Civilsation is not a boring subject and as said by Andrew Lalwler in the said magazine “Once we look into the amazing life style these Indus people had, we see these most progressive, and relatively advanced trade savvy people of the Indus emerging on the scene”.

The Harappan civilization dominated the Indus River valley beginning about five thousand years ago, many of its massive cities sprawling at the edges of rivers that still flow through Pakistan and India today. But its culture remains a mystery. Why did it leave behind no representations of great leaders, nor of warfare?

Archaeologists have long wondered whether the Harappan civilization could actually have thrived for roughly 2,000 years without any major wars or leadership cults. Obviously people had conflicts, sometimes with deadly results — graves reveal ample skull injuries caused by blows to the head. But there is no evidence that any Harappan city was ever burned, besieged by an army, or taken over by force from within.
Sifting through the archaeological layers of these cities, scientists find no layers of ash that would suggest the city had been burned down, and no signs of mass destruction. There are no enormous caches of weapons, and not even any art representing warfare.
That would make the Harappan civilization an historical outlier in any era. But it’s especially noteworthy at a time when neighboring civilizations in Mesopotamia were erecting massive war monuments, and using cuneiform writing on clay tablets to chronicle how their leaders slaughtered and enslaved thousands.

THE HARAPPAN PEOPLE

The Indus River flows out of the Himalayas, bringing fresh water to the warm, dry valley where the ancient city of Harappa first began to grow. The Harappan civilization is the namesake of this city, located between two rivers, whose arts, written language, and science spread to several other large, riverside cities in the area.

Mohenjo-Daro was the largest of these cities with a population of roughly 80,000 people. Archaeologists have recently analyzed the teeth of people buried in Mohenjo-Daro’s graveyards, searching for telltale chemical traces that reveal where these people drank water as children. They discovered that many had grown up drinking water from elsewhere in the region, meaning that a lot of the city’s inhabitants were migrants who had come to the city as adults.

Art from Harappan cities also attests to a very mixed population, with statues showing people who sport a wide variety of clothing and hair styles. So the Harappans appear to have been a very diverse lot. Some traveled far from their cities, probably by boat across the Persian Gulf, to trade with other great civilizations in the region during the 2000s BCE. There was at least one Harappan trade outpost in Mesopotamia, in the city of Eshnunna, which today lies about 30 km northeast of Baghdad.

People from other Mesopotamian cities like Ur owned distinctively Harappan luxury goods such as beads and tiny carved bones.
Harappans appear to have been traders who welcomed people to their cities from pretty much anywhere. But that doesn’t mean they were disorganized or anarchic.

STANDARD MEASURES AND WRITING

By studying the layers of built environments in Harappa, archaeologists have pieced together a fragmentary history of the civilization’s rise. Harappa began as a village, probably about 6,000 years ago. There’s evidence of agriculture and very early pottery throughout the 3000s BCE.

It’s also during this time that we begin to see markings that look like writing on pottery. Over a period of just a couple of centuries, these crude marks evolved quickly into an alphabet that we still can’t decipher. Here you can see a typical example of Harappan writing, on a seal that would have been pressed into soft clay, and was probably used in trade.

Indeed, it seems that writing in Harappa followed soon after the invention of standard weights and measures for commerce. Archaeologists have unearthed hundreds of blocks in a variety of standard sizes that conform to the binary weight system favored in the Indus Valley.
This fits with most accounts of how writing emerges in civilizations. Often, it begins with people using numbers and math to determine who owns what, or who has bought what from whom. From there, it develops quickly into a full-blown system of symbols. Writing seems to be one of those technological innovations that evolves very rapidly once people start using it.
It’s next to impossible to build an urban civilization without standard measures and writing, but it’s rare that we have a chance to look back in history to glimpse a literate culture emerging from a pre-literate one. In the ruins of Harappa, we can track that transition taking place. And the more writing we see in a given layer, the more complicated and advanced the civilization had become.

ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES AND CIVIL ENGINEERING

Harappans didn’t just create standardized measures — they liked everything to be standardized, right down to the size of the bricks they used to build their homes. Bricks and boards, like weights, came in just a few standard sizes. Echoing this love of order, Harappans built their cities on fairly strict grids.

Above is a sketch of the city plan of Mohenjo-Daro, based on what we’ve been able to reconstruct from ruins. There are several wide promenades — large enough for two carts to drive side-by-side — that passed through the city, then out of the gates and into the farmlands beyond.
Though the idea of a street grid seems perfectly ordinary to city-dwellers today, it was unusual at the time. Most great cities in Mesopotamia, for example, had curving streets and a more organic-looking layout.
Sometimes archaeologists call the Harappan architectural style “nested” because they loved to build walls within walls. Every city was surrounded by a wall, but once inside, residents would find themselves walking past several more walled enclosures. We’re not entirely sure why the Harappans designed their cities this way, but it’s possible that these inner walls protected sacred areas or the estates of particularly high-status citizens.

I mentioned earlier that the Harappans left no monuments to their leaders, but their walls and city layouts make it clear that they were hardly egalitarians. Homes ranged from single rooms in dormitory-like buildings, possibly for slaves, to palatial estates with dozens of rooms and multiple outdoor courtyards. Harappans preferred two-story buildings, and semi-public courtyards were part of nearly every home.

ITS A PUBLIC BATH

You can see it above, along with the grand staircase that would have taken visitors down into its waters. The floor of the bath was built from specially-sized fired bricks, and it was surrounded by many passages and small rooms. Whether or not this particular bath was simply a public bathing site, or perhaps something more ceremonial, it was the largest version of a technology that was common throughout Harappan cities.
Because, you see, Harappans had plumbing. Every home had bathrooms, many had toilets, and drainage ditches throughout their cities carried waste beyond its walls. In fact, one way we know that the Harappans set up outposts in Mesopotamia is that their cities had such sophisticated, distinctive plumbing. Perhaps, instead of making war, the Harappans were devoting their money and energy to city infrastructure planning. Below, you can see an artist’s recreation of what a city’s plumbing would look like. Clay pipes ran alongside city streets, and past homes.

Harappans were also spending a lot of time perfecting the art of luxury goods. They made bangles, carved decorative bones, worked copper and other metals. Most of all, they crafted beads that must have been famous for thousands of kilometers, given that archaeologists have found them in far-flung Mesopotamian cities.
Above are some examples of the kinds of beads made in the Indus Valley. They were carved from stones, crystals and gems — and they were polished to a fine luster. Every Harappan city that we’ve excavated has an area that’s packed with shops where artisans and engineers crafted goods for trade. We’ve even found scraps of cotton, which suggests that the Harappans may have been very early cultivators of this crop that later became the foundation of many textile industries in the region.

WOMEN AND MEN

What little we know of Harappan social life comes from statues and graves. This figurine captures a woman in mid-stride, wearing the bangles so popular in Harappan shops. Her hair is styled in an elaborate twist, and the expression on her face hovers between amused and defiant. Some have called her a “dancer,” but she might just as easily be standing with arms akimbo.

The archaeologists who studied the teeth of people in Harappan graves noticed an interesting pattern when it came to couples who had been buried side-by-side. Because teeth gave them clues about where people were from, they knew which skeletons were from native Harappan city-dwellers. And in many instances, they found Harappan women buried with migrant men.
Could this mean that Harappan people participated in a tradition where husbands came to live with the families of their wives? In nearby Mesopotamia, this practice was unknown — women became the property of their husbands, and thus went to live with their new owners.
Perhaps the Indus Valley style of marriage was one way that Harappan cities were able to attract so many immigrants. Or perhaps it was a sign that women in a city like Mohenjo-Daro wouldn’t have been relegated to the status of property.
We simply can’t ever know. Some scientists have suggested that women must have been respected as people among Harappans, because so many of the surviving statues from the Indus Valley cultures are of women. But that could be a red herring — after all, Catholic cultures in the middle ages were extremely patriarchal, though they produced some of the most beautiful and enduring portraits of the Virgin Mary. Representing women in art is not the same thing as representing them in city government.
All we really know is that Harappan women often married men who came from beyond the walls of their cities. And some of them probably liked to dance.

THE END OF INDUS VALLEY CITIES

Unlike other ancient civilizations in Egypt and China, the Harappan civilization has no obvious inheritors. When people began leaving Harappan cities in the late 1000s BCE, there is no obvious route that they took. Archaeologists studying the decline of this ancient civilization point to several factors that led to its death.
First, there was a rather brutal climate change that began in the early 1000s BCE. Monsoons came irregularly, and the once-fertile valley became parched. Add to this drought the fact that the cities had already been over-farming, and it’s likely that starvation began driving people away from Harappa. There is also ample evidence that people in the cities were suffering from tuberculosis and other infectious diseases. The one-two punch of famine and plague left the region depopulated.

The last Harappan city to be abandoned was its largest, Mohenjo-Daro. During the final centuries of its occupation, the city infrastructure began to fall apart and we see fewer examples of writing. There is also some evidence of warfare — probably on the scale of gang violence. One grave outside the city walls is full of bodies where the skulls have been smashed open. In previous centuries, head injuries from fighting were sometimes survivable — doctors often treated them with trepanation, or skull-drilling. But in the waning days of the city, people with skull injuries were dumped into mass graves.
Until we decipher the Indus writing system, it’s unlikely that we’ll ever know precisely what brought the Harappan people together into such technologically advanced cities — nor what drove them out. But the remains of their civilization have beckoned the curious for over a century now. And with each new archaeological dig, we learn more. Perhaps, at some point, we’ll even discover how the Harappans managed to escape the ravages of war for over 2,000 years.

source: http://wondersofpakistan.com/2014/06/28/how-did-this-ancient-civilization-avoid-war-for-2000-years/

Attacking and Defending Indus Civilization Language – Cultural Chauvinism or Rampant Racism

written by Shayan Khan

Many experts in south Asia and elsewhere believe that symbols and marks inscribed on seals and other artifacts found here represent an as yet undeciphered language. Arguing it may be the predecessor of one of several contemporary south Asian argots, these experts say it is proof of a literate Indian society that existed more than 4,000 years ago.
However, recently experts based in the US have put forward another theory claiming that although the symbols may contain information, they are not a true language. They claim the judgement of their counterparts in south Asia may be swayed by regional nationalism.
The Indus civilisation in its heyday covered more than 500,000 square miles and lasted, during what experts term its “mature phase”, from 2,600 till 1900 BCE. The ruins, 100 miles south-west of the Pakistani city Lahore, the ruins were rediscovered in the early part of the 19th century.
The skills of its residents – at least in terms of making bricks that could endure centuries – were revealed by two British engineers, John and William Brunton, who were building the East Indian Railway Company line to connect Lahore and Karachi and needed ballast for their track. The engineers later wrote that locals told them of well-made bricks from an ancient ruined city that the villagers had made use of. With little concern for preserving the ruins, huge numbers of the Indus-era bricks were reduced to rubble and used to support the tracks heading west.
In the early 20th century, excavation of Harappa proceeded along with that of the other Indus city at Mohenjo-daro, in the south of Pakistan, and it was at that time many of the seals now on display in museums containing symbols and images of animals were discovered. And they have continued to beguile, fascinate and frustrate scientists, causing a running controversy that has played out on internet message boards, scientific papers and at academic conferences.
Asian experts believe that the Indus script may have been a forerunner of so-called Dravidian languages, such as Tamil, spoken today in southern India and Sri Lanka. In addition to technical clues, the continued existence of a Dravidian language in modern Pakistan – Brahvi, which is spoken by people in parts of Balochistan – supports this idea. Some enthusiastic nationalists have even claimed that the script may be an early Indo-European language and that remnants of it may even exist in Sanskrit, an ancient language that is the root of many present languages in north India, including Hindi. It has even been claimed the Indus script belonged to metalsmiths, and others believe it died out with the city of Harappa itself and gave rise to no successor.
Part of the problem for the experts is that, unlike for those who cracked the hieroglyphics of Egypt, there is no equivalent of the Rosetta stone, the slab of granite-like rock discovered in 1799 that contained Egyptian and Greek text. In the 1950s, academic interest in Mayan hieroglyphics intensified when experts began to study modern spoken Mayan, but for the Indus scholars there is no agreement on which, if any, modern language is the successor to their script.
In 2004, the debate was jolted into a war of words after three American scholars claimed the Indus symbols were not a language at all. In a paper provocatively subtitled “The Myth of a Literate Harappan Civilisation”, they said there was insufficient evidence that the symbols constituted a proper language. They pointed to various factors: that there was no single long piece of text; that there was disagreement over the number of actual symbols and that other well-organised societies had been illiterate. The symbols, they argued, may well contain information in the same way that an image of a knife and fork together might represent a roadside eatery but they were not a language that could record speech.
The theory ensued an uproar from the sub-continent, who denounced the theory as a racist indulgence. This led to counter-research and within a couple of years a team of Indian scientists ran computer programmes which led them to conclude the symbols almost certainly constitute a language. Central to their claims was the theory of “conditional entropy”, or the measure of randomness in any sequence. Because of linguistic rules – such as in English the letter Q is almost always followed by a U – in natural languages the degree of randomness is less than in artificial languages.
In a rebuttal the American team hit back denouncing Indian team’s conclusions and methodology.

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Climate change would lead to water scarcity which would lead to first nuclear war of 21st century

written by Shayan Khan

Pakistan and India are in a region of not only high population, but one of high population growth – a region where both economies rely heavily on rain fed crop land. With the two countries going to war three times in the last sixty years and found ever-ready to start a fourth one, availability of water to both nations is of utmost important for the stability of the entire region.

In recent weeks, the importance of availability of water was brushed aside with the overhyped claims that IPCC report was wrong to conclude that Himalayan Glaciers would disappear in few decades. Under the noise of “crying foul” the most important aspect of regular availability of water to the region now seems to be lost. Currently, the broad consensus is that the glaciers themselves are indeed retreating, although the rate of the recession may be debatable. However, there are other climate-influenced factors that affect river flows, such as changes in precipitation, snowfall and regional temperature.

“There has been too much focus on glaciers whereas there are other factors like precipitation and snowfall that affect the levels of waters in rivers downstream from the eastern Himalayas,” says Mats Eriksson, a senior hydrologist with the Nepal-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), which has carried out several studies on the glaciers in the Hindu Kush Himalayas.

The Himalayan water system can be divided into two, Eastern and Western, based on the sources for river flow resources. Eastern system feeds India, Bangladesh, while Western System feeds India and Pakistan.

Eastern Himalayas

Eastern Himalayas feed major rivers like the Ganges and the Bramhaputra, as well as their tributaries. These are vital lifelines for billions of people in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Tibet.

A recent study for the World Bank has shown that the volume of water resulting from glacial melt in Nepal makes up less than 5% of the flows of rivers leaving the country and contributing to the Ganges downstream.

“That is, about 95% or more of the river flow is the result of rain and melting seasonal snow,” said report co-author Richard Armstrong, a glaciologist from the University of Colorado at Boulder, US.
If that is true, rivers downstream of the eastern Himalayas will hardly be affected, even if the glaciers recede or disappear. Additionally other contributing factors to the rivers’ flow, such as precipitation and snowfall will also change with the changing climate leading to rise or fall of rivers’ levels – and by how much and when – are the questions still waiting to be answered.
“We are seeing some changes in the monsoon,” Dr Eriksson said of the seasonal precipitation system that shapes the climate in this part of the region.

“Last year, for example, the monsoon arrived one month late in Nepal and then some places saw 80mm of water in a day during the delayed rainy season.

“But there has been no consistent measurement of precipitation and temperature and there is a lack of proper studies.”

Some scientists believe absorption of solar radiation by aerosols (dust particles and carbon soot) can heat the atmosphere and accelerate regional impacts of global warming, which in turn affect water resources.

William Lau, who heads the atmospheric sciences branch at Nasa’s Goddard Flight Center, carried out a study in India last year and found that, as a result of aerosols, regional temperature was rising much faster than expected. And that, he said, could influence the monsoon systems, resulting in less water availability in the region.

Dr Richard Armstrong on the other hand said that a warming climate could also mean a stronger monsoon bringing more precipitation that could increase stream flows.

“Having said that, it should be noted that future precipitation patterns predicted by climate models are highly variable and there is a very little regional agreement among the models,” he said.

Western Himalayas

High variability is also an issue with the flow of rivers in the western Himalayas that do not fall within the monsoon regime.

There is no clear-cut signal as there is a large variation between average annual flows,” said Arshad Muhammad Khan, a physicist who heads the Global Change Impact Studies Centre in Pakistan.
“For example, in the Indus River, the maximum flow is twice of that of the minimum.”

Unlike the Ganges, rivers like the Indus in the western part of the Himalayas are heavily dependent on glaciers, as this region does not get monsoon rains.

But even here, glacial status is not reported to be uniform.  Some scientists say increasing temperature has meant that glaciers don’t get enough snowfall during winter and therefore river flow during summer is dwindling.

“We have seen the decline in the flow of the Indus, Chenab and Jhelum rivers,” says Professor Mohammad Sultan Bhat of Kashmir University, who has conducted field studies with India’s flood and irrigation department.

“We have recorded a decrease of 40% in the flow of Jhelum’s tributary river… that is fed by the receding Kolahi glacier.”

But, Kenneth Hewitt, a glaciologist from Canada who has been doing field studies in Pakistan’s Karakoram mountains, told BBC News last October that he had seen at least half a dozen glaciers there advancing since he saw them five years ago.

With glaciers offering such complex pictures, combined with precipitation and temperature patterns becoming increasingly complicated, the region’s river systems that depend on all these factors cannot be simpler.

Water Sharing between India and Pakistan

Under the treaty signed in 1960, Pakistan and India share five tributaries of the Indus River, namely, Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas and Sutlej. The agreement grants Pakistan exclusive rights over waters from the Indus and its westward-flowing tributaries, the Jhelum and Chenab, while the Ravi, Beas and Sutlej rivers were allocated for India’s use.

However, if any one of the two finds itself short of the vital necessarily the transboundary water sharing between India and Pakistan will become an extremely difficult proposition. Unless both countries take preventive measures, the two might find each other at loggerheads and consequently arms pointed for access to this soon-to-be ultimate precious resource.

Water Dispute – the New Reason for Indo-Pak War

All three wars between the two brith-rivals have been over land disputes. However, if the changes in water availability continue, land would take the second priority, getting superseded by water. Even the anti-war liberals would find themselves out of choices and audience in such a scenario. Unless immediate measures are taken to mitigate the future water scarcity, the world might find two heavily armed, nuclear neighbour going at each other’s throats.

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Melting glaciers and reduced Himalayan snowfall could result in the first Global Warming war

Water is essential for life and this is nowhere more so understandable than the region of South Asia where the entire economies depend on river waters. A year which sees decline in river flow consequently results in decline in the overall crop output, resultantly in lower economic activity. This region heavily relies on glacier waters and tethers on edge with regard to the distribution of water between bordering countries, especially Pakistan and India. It is now a yearly routine when both countries accuse each other of stealing water – not literally – but by building dams on rivers which flow through the two countries, thereby denying the other of much needed water. However, this has not resulted into any significant incident, yet, as there has never been such a severe reduction in the amounts of water that a country’s agricultural system collapses. But these highly public verbal ultimatums might not be the final limits anymore, if the latest findings of scientists are correct.

Pakistan and India have long been embroiled in border and water disputs, but have so far managed to uphold a World Bank-mediated Indus Water Treaty (IWT) that provides mechanisms for resolving disputes over water sharing. But this treaty has been upheld for the main reason that no country faced a severe shortage of water in the past 60 years. And all this is about to change.
Based on scientific findings released last December, the snow cover in Himalayan Region is declining while temperature is rising. The findings were the results of a study conducted by senior scientist H. S. Negi and his colleagues, and were published in the ‘Journal of Earth System Sciences’, a bimonthly science publication in India.  The study was carried out on the Kashmir region of Himalayan range.

The findings were based on 20 years worth of climatic condition data, covering the periods 1988-89 and 2007-08, and was undertaken during the winter periods between November and April of 2004–05, 2005–06 and 2006–07, using multi-temporal sensor data.

“Snow cover monitoring was carried out to evaluate the region-wise accumulation and ablation pattern of snow cover in the Pir Panjal and Shamshawari ranges of Kashmir valley,” said Negi. “The study shows reduction in the areal extent of seasonal snow cover and rising trend of maximum temperature in three winters for the entire Kashmir valley.”

Negi and his team found that the total snowfall in the winter of 2004-05 was 1,082 centimetres across the valley, which declined to 968 centimetres during the period 2005-06 and reduced further to 961 centimetres between 2006 and 2007.

“February, the second month of maximum snowfall, showed rapid fluctuation, with 585 centimetres in 2004-05 compared to 207 centimetres in 2005-06 and 221 centimetres in 2006-07,” said the scientists, adding that the temperatures remained more than zero degree Celsius during winters, except for January-February 2004-05 and January 2006 against a normal sub-zero temperature.
Unlike the Eastern Himalayan rivers such as the Brahmaputra, which are mainly rain-fed, most of the water that goes to the Indus river comes from snowmelt, which includes glacial melt. Global warming-induced changes in climate patterns have adversely affected, among others, snowmelt runoff patterns.

“The Indus water system is the lifeline for Pakistan, as 75 to 80 percent of water flows to Pakistan as melt from the Himalayan glaciers. This glacier melt forms the backbone of irrigation network in Pakistan, with 90 percent of agricultural land being fed by the vastly spread irrigation network in Pakistan, one of the largest in the world,” said Dr Irshad Muhammad Khan, executive director of Global Change Impacts Studies Centre in Pakistan. Any disruption of water flow would cause a grave impact on agriculture produce in Pakistan, he said.

“Until now, the Indus Water Treaty has worked well, but the impact of climate change would test the sanctity of this treaty,” Dr Parvez Amir, a senior economist, warned.

Under the treaty signed in 1960, the two countries also share five tributaries of the Indus river, namely, Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas and Sutlej. The agreement grants Pakistan exclusive rights over waters from the Indus and its westward-flowing tributaries, the Jhelum and Chenab, while the Ravi, Beas and Sutlej rivers were allocated for India’s use.

“I think it is not only the matter of Indus water treaty between India and Pakistan but also the water-sharing treaties elsewhere in the world such as those in the Middle East that also face a severe threat in the form of climate change,” said Dr Amir.

According to Prof. Mohammad Sultan, who teaches Geography at Kashmir University, temperature in the region has shown disturbing trends over the last few decades. “From 1950 to 1975, the temperature had shown a cooling trend (0.2 below normal). But after 1975 there has been a warming trend (0.4 degree above normal), and it is continuing,” he said.

He said precipitation in the lower parts of Kashmir has declined by 1.2 centimetres in lower altitudes and 8 cm in higher altitudes beginning in 1975. “This disturbance is bound to impact the accessibility to water in the future,” he said.

Transboundary water sharing between India and Pakistan will become an “extremely difficult proposition as surface water would become a scarce commodity with the depletion of water reserves up in the mountains,” said Prof Sultan.

Unless both countries take preventive measures, the two might find each other at loggerheads and consequently arms pointed for access to this soon-to-be ultimate precious resource.

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