Breaking the Chains
Page 5
Because Hinduism can be defined as everything the people of the land of the Indus have done and believed, a brief account of human activity on the subcontinent in ancient times is called for. Humans were busy on the subcontinent throughout the Old Stone Age, Middle Stone Age, and New Stone Age. The oldest artefacts found on the subcontinent are quartzite pebble tools which appear to date to at least 1.7 million years ago. Acheulian hand-axes that date to about 500 000 years ago, have been found near Rawalpindi in northern Pakistan, and in Rajasthan, other Acheulian hand-axes that date to about 400 000 years ago have been found. Middle Stone Age sites, dated to about
30 000 years ago, are known from Sri Lanka. Hindu Kush caves yield evidence of occupation dating to between
15 000 and 10 000 BC - sheep and goats may have been domesticated in this area during this period. Rock paintings showing various subjects have been discovered in central India; this art may have developed from earlier Upper Palaeolithic traditions.
Understanding of early settlements on the Indo-Iranian borderlands (situated along the eastern edge of the Iranian Plateau) has been enhanced by excavations at Mehrgarh. From the Mehrgarh group of sites comes evidence of some six thousand years of occupation, which began in the 8th millennium BC. The earliest finds were unearthed from a 23-foot-deep mound which was discovered underneath massive alluvial deposits (Alluvial deposits are generated by flooding.). The finds allow researchers to imagine an agricultural settlement in which several types of craft were established. It is probable that trade was conducted across the Iranian Plateau - the use of sea shells, turquoise, lapis lazuli and other semiprecious stones, is suggestive of trading connections extending from the coast to as far away as central Asia. Sometime around 5500 BC a tectonic event deformed the local landscape and caused the flooding which deposited great quantities of silt on Mehrgarh and the surrounding countryside. After the flood things changed at Mehrgarh: there was an increase in the use of pottery, granary structures grew in number and capacity, new crafts appeared, and the settlement grew to accommodate an increased population. Mehrgarh did not exist in isolation. There is evidence elsewhere on the Indo-Iranian borderlands to suggest other sites of a comparable age.
The earliest settlements yet known in the northern area of the Indus are much later than Mehrgarh and date to the end of the 4th millennium BC. In peninsular India the earliest settlements date to about 2900 BC, and are associated with pastoralists who spread to many southern parts of peninsular India during the 2nd millennium BC. A group of sites in the hills to the south of the Ganges Valley give dates in the 2nd millennium BC. These sites are associated with circular huts made of timber posts and thatch - Koldihwa, one of the sites, might date to the 7th millennium BC.
Increasing numbers of settlements began to appear throughout the Indo-Iranian borderlands from about 5000 BC. These settlements are judged to have been village communities whose means of subsistence involved the cultivation of wheat and barley, and the keeping of sheep, goats, and cattle. Their technology was based on stone, copper, and bronze. From about the middle of the 4th millennium BC similar settlements began to appear more extensively in the Indus Valley, and over the next 500 years a process of convergence led to what has been named Early Indus or Early Harappan culture. It covered an immense area. The evidence indicates that the subsistence base of Early Harappan culture was pretty much the same as it had been at Mehrgarh two thousand years earlier.
Sir John Hubert Marshall, the archaeologist, began to uncover the Harappan civilisation in 1921. The find was under a series of mounds at a village (Harappa) in eastern Pakistan. A bigger site was discovered about 400 miles to the south-west of Harappa. This site was named Mohenjo-daro (mound of the dead). Work done at these two sites and elsewhere, revealed that the Harappan civilisation had been bigger than either ancient Egypt or ancient Mesopotamia. Incredibly, this vast civilisation remained undetected until 1920. Much of what is accepted about Harappan civilisation is conjectural. Nevertheless, current evidence indicates that the civilisation reached maturity about 2500 BC and came to an end about 1700 BC. It is assumed that the two most important cities, each more than 3 miles in circumference, were Harappa (on the Ravi River) and Mohenjo-daro (on the River Indus). The exact relationship between these two cities is unclear. It has been suggested that Harappa succeeded Mohenjo-daro, as the latter was devastated by great floods on more than one occasion. As well as the two major cities, the civilisation contained more than 100 towns and villages ranging over an area of 500 000 square miles. The Harappan civilisation is also known as the Indus Valley civilisation.