Indus Valley Civilisation also known as Harappan Civilisation occured on the banks of river Indus before Christ
Recently a friend of mine pointed me to an article from The Independent on The Indus Valley Civilization , that posed the question: Was th...
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Sculpture of Indus Valley Civilisation is considered to be a golden chapter as the beginning of Indian art and sculpture in 3000 B.C. it can be easily deciphered that the people of this civilizatio…
Recently a friend of mine pointed me to an article from The Independent on The Indus Valley Civilization, that posed the question: Was the Indus script really a script, or was it just a symbol system? Hidden within this question are several others: Were the Indus people capable of something as complex as a script? What language did they speak and/or write? and Who were they? First, some background. The Indus Valley Civilization was centered on the Indus river and grew and flourished between 3300 B.C.E and 1300 B.C.E. It's exact boundaries are not known, but the sites where the Indus script are found are spread all over Pakistan, Western India, with some additional sites in Oman, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan. It is considered by most scholars to be one of the major early "primary" states, i.e. it developed independently of influence from the outside. It was an urban civilization, with many large cities, with dense populations, neighborhoods, urban planning, and water and waste management. It also had many smaller towns and villages, mostly agricultural, some engaged in different specialized economic activities, such as coastal fishing villages, and sites with an almost industrial scale of shell bangle production. So who were the Indus Valley people? Was their script a script or a symbol system? A Steatite Seal with Indus Script and the Image of a Unicorn. The article starts off by first quoting a local tour guide saying he's not sure the people of Harappa are his ancestors, because they had such complex technology. Then the article goes on to create a completely false divide between scholars in the west, and scholars in India and Pakistan. According to the author, Andrew Buncombe: Many experts in south Asia and elsewhere believe that symbols and marks inscribed on seals and other artefacts 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. But other experts based in the West say 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. This ethnic/racial divide between people who claim it is a script and people who claim it isn't is total bull****. Pardon my French. There are plenty of scholars in the "west" who have written extensively about the Indus script as a script - not a symbol system. Examples among these are Asko Parpola - a Finnish professor of Indology at the University of Helsinki, and J. Mark Kenoyer - professor at the University of Wisconsin - Madison (and my academic advisor). A variety of people over the years have argued that the Indus script is really a symbol system, and not a real script. Their reasons for this usually stem from the lack of (preserved or discovered) long inscriptions. The vast majority of inscriptions come on Indus seals, with some on pottery, inscribed on shell and terracotta bangles etc. Wherever they are found, they tend to be just 6-10 letters or symbols long. This is the main reason why it has not yet been deciphered. As one of my professors put it, for the Indus Script, all we have is the white pages in the phone book. For those who do believe that these symbols are letters and not pictographs, it is argued that the seals, and other short inscriptions are the names of people and places, probably with honorifics. There may have been inscriptions or texts on paper, bark, papyrus, wood or cloth, all things that are not preserved today. We will probably never know if there were or not. And that is the real problem with the debate. The answer is we really don't know for sure. We can take the data that we have, and draw inferences and interpretations from it. We know these letters/symbols are standardized, that there are patterns in which ones repeat, and in what order, that they are found on objects that we would consider to most probably have belonged to individuals, and not groups. There is also an inscription, one that was inlaid in wood on a sign board near the gateway to the city of Dholavira. The signboard had fallen, the wood disintegrated over time, but the inlay lay as it had fallen, flat on the ground, buried for thousands of years. We can make an inference, a judgement, based on the context of the inscription, it's placement, location, size etc., that it probably said "Dholavira" or maybe "Welcome to Dholavira". Without decipherment we can't really know for sure. Aside from the short length of inscriptions, what has prevented any really conclusive and convincing decipherment of the Indus script is the fact that we don't know what languages people were speaking. Note the use of the plural: Languages. That's a huge problem, in a civilization as large and complex as the Indus Valley was, with sites spread across a huge area of mostly Pakistan and India, but also as I mentioned with sites showing presence in Afghanistan, Turkmenistan and Oman, we should not assume that everyone was speaking the same language. They probably were not. There were probably people from diverse backgrounds, speaking different languages, who came to trade, who may have used Indus styles of clothing, ornaments, and other markers of identity (or not), but still spoken different languages, perhaps their "mother-tongue" as well as whatever language was the lingua franca of the Indus Valley, the language people had in common. It is really only modern identity politics that makes the language question matter. Modern South Asia has hundreds of languages, and most people speak more than one. Battles for identity are fought over language today, and the supposed "Aryan Invasion" that brought Indo-European languages to the subcontinent is an ancient sort of incarnation of the concept that people with a different language and identity came to India and took over. The Aryan Invasion Theory has been thoroughly debunked, but the modern implications of who the Indus Valley people were, are still at issue. The people of modern Pakistan (and India) should be able to claim that the inhabitants of these amazing sites, with all their amazing technological achievements, are their direct ancestors. That this heritage is their heritage, and not somebody else's . So when someone comes along claiming that the Indus Valley script isn't a script, or that it was used to write a Dravidian-family language instead of an Indo-European one, or some other lost language, it is an insult to the people of modern India and Pakistan. Because the inscriptions are so short, and because they were most likely using the script to write in more than one language, (the same way the roman script - that I'm using now can be used to write French and Spanish and Italian, among others) we can't really say for sure. The argument that their civilization was complex, and therefore they must have had writing, is sort of a fallacy, though I can see why people would use it. There is no reason necessarily that a complex society must have had a complex writing system. It just so happens that, as far as we can tell, the Indus script has all the features of a writing system, and not a pictographic or symbol system. The same debate was waged about Egyptian hieroglyphics until the Rosetta Stone was discovered, which allowed the decipherment of hieroglyphics as a script, and not a bunch of symbols (bird, wheat, pot, man, fish, are all letters representing sounds like an alphabet, not symbolic representations of birds, wheat, pots, men, or fish). So the truth is, we can't really be sure. The Indus script displays all the features of a writing system, (Steven Farmer is really, really wrong about this), but we won't know for sure until it's deciphered, and we can't decipher it until we know what languages they were writing, and which language was being written in a particular inscription. We probably can't know most of those things, unless we find longer inscriptions, or the Indus Valley equivalent of the Rosetta Stone. Parpola (the Finnish Indologist) and Iravatham Mahadevan (an Indian epigraphist) have both argued that the script was used to write a Dravidian language. Neither of them have yet come up with a conclusive decipherment, but even if they (or someone else) someday is able to prove that the Indus Script was used to write a Dravidian language, this does not mean that the people of the Indus Valley are not the ancestors of modern Pakistan and India, who speak Indo-European languages. Language and identity are one thing, and genetics another. A good example of this is the diversity of languages that was spoken in France before the standardization of Modern French. The people are the same, but over a number of generations they stopped speaking the languages they used to speak, and started speaking standard French. People may have spoken a Dravidian language (or another language which is lost today), but that doesn't change the fact that there is strong genetic continuity between the people of the Indus Valley Civilization and the modern inhabitants of Pakistan and Northwestern India. Disclaimer: I'm not a specialist in Indus Valley archaeology. But I am an archaeologist and I have read a lot about this topic. This is my commentary on the subject, not an academic paper -- I'm not citing every statement I make. I probably should, but I don't have time. If you're really interested you can go track down publications by J. Mark Kenoyer, Gregory Possehl, Rita Wright, and many more. For more information check out Harappa.com. EDIT: Recently The Hindu newspaper published an interview with Asko Parpola. This is some of what he had to say: The Hindu: There is some criticism that the Indus script is not a writing system. Parpola: I do not agree [with that]. All those features of the Indus script which have been mentioned as proof for its not being a writing system, characterise also the Egyptian hieroglyphic script during its first 600 years of existence. For detailed counterarguments, see my papers at the website www.harappa.com. The Hindu: If it is a writing system, what reasons do you adduce for it? Parpola: The script is highly standardised; the signs are as a rule written in regular lines; there are hundreds of sign sequences which recur in the same order, often at many different sites; the preserved texts are mostly seal stones, and seals in other cultures usually have writing recording the name or title of the seal owner; and the Indus people were acquainted with cuneiform writing through their trade contacts with Mesopotamia. So there!!
What is not to love about this ornate treasure?Onyx derives its name from the Greek word 'onux' which means 'fingernail'. According to Roman mythology, Cupid chopped the fingernails of his mother Venus when she was asleep. When they fell into the sacred Indus river, they transformed into stone as they were believed to be divine.
Mohenjo-daro M 18 Source: Jagat Pati Joshi and Asko Parpola: Corpus of Indus seals and inscriptions. 1. Collections in India. (Annales Academiae Scientarum Fennicae, Sarja-Ser. B, Nide-Tom. 239 = Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of India, No. 86.) xxxii, 392 pp. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1987.
Recent investigations of seals from the ancient Indus Civilization suggest that the glyphs represent a full, as-yet-deciphered language.
This carved obelisk is made from Turquoise {CuAl6(PO4)4(OH)8·4H2O} mined in the Indus River Valley area of Pakistan. Lots of cool natural design and patterns in this specimen. An ideal addition to any home or workplace.
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Indus Valley civilization Indus valley civilisation The Indus Valley was a fertile, river civilization that between 3300 – 1900 BC. This period in history is marked by the advancements of the Harappan people in architecture, arts, and literacy. Pottery: Pottery served a dual purpose in Harappan Culture. It was used for functional and decorative purposes. They used fine clay with high backing temperature and also introduced “wheel-turned” pottery. When struck, Harappan pottery resonate a metallic sound. Painted jar Jar with red slip and black painted motifs including peacock, vegetation and the famous intersecting – circle designs such vessels were probably used as marriage gifts or for other ritual occasions. Painted Swirling Fish bowl A decorative Bowl with swirling fish motif arranged in two panels. Water plants fill in the empty spaces and a wavy line around the rim suggest that the whole scene is underwater. Storage Jar Storage Jars are wheel turned and molded, probably used to ship oil, grains, and preserved food to markets as far as the Oman highland. Some storage jars are not smooth, but engraved with prefixed scripts or graffiti. Jewelry: The Indus people were expert craftsmen. They made beads using various materials such as carnelian, agate, amethyst, turquoise, lapis lazuli, etc. They manufactured bangles out of shells, glazed faience, and terracotta. Also, carved ivory and shells were worked into ornaments, bowls, and ladles as decoration. Carnalian Beads long carnalian bi-conical beads were an important part of ornamentation and were were used to make neck pieces or waist belts. during the process from a nodule to a finished bead, it was heated several times to get the lustrous red colour.The red of thsi bead were considered sacred. Green bi-conical beads are called moss agate Toys: In the Indus Valley, toys often found itself drawing inspiration from real-world applications. Pottery skills were used to make miniaturized carts for children to play with and terra cotta was turned into little puppets. Bullock carts can still be found in parts of South Asia. Unicorn Depiction of unicorn in seals and figurines demonstrates the belief of the Indus people in this one- horned animal. This was an important symbol for the elites and traders. Whistle Teracotta whistle in the form of a bird. In the Indus Valley, toys often found itself drawing inspiration from real-world applications. Pottery skills were used to make miniaturized carts for children to play with and terra cotta was turned into little puppets. Bullock carts can still be found in parts of South Asia. Moveable-head bull A string attached to the head, hump and tail enables the head to move forward and backward and could have been a course of amusement for Harappan children. Bird cart Teracotta painted bird cart Bird puppet Birds were an important source of inspiration for the children. Puppets made in terracotta were found extensively. They were often decorated with colourful patterns and motifs Mother Goddess: Was the Mother Goddess a central deity of worship for fertility or a simple child’s toy? To this day, experts cannot ascertain the actual purpose of the Mother Goddess figure, but they can state that the Goddess played a significant role in Harappa daily life. Textile: Ajrak is a kind of resist printing on cotton using wooden blocks. The history of Ajrak can be traced back to the time of Indus River Civilization. From dyes found during archaeological excavations, it can be concluded that the Indus Valley people bleached white or colored garments with locally available dyes, such as indigo (blue), madder (red), turmeric (yellow), or onion/skin (brown).
An informational text article about the strange and mysterious collapse of six ancient civilizations including the Maya, Indus and Anasazi. The information is from history.com, the questions are mine. A great supplement, fill in, or substitute teaching plan anytime! MS Word doc for easy editing.
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Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, of the Bronze Age, depict an era that boasts of human development in architecture and city planning. A civilization that was hidden underground for many years was accidentally found, and excavations started. Both the cities are a part of the Indus Valley Civilization.
Usine de zinc à Waltrop (photo par moi-meme, mais je n'ai aucune intention de rivaliser avec les Becher!!)Le weekend impossible de rester enfermée chez moi !
Cause a stir this Halloween with our spooky and striking Rooey Bat Mesh Velvet Pencil dress! Starring her velvet pointed collar, shes a classic pencil shape that hugs the hips, and falls to approximately just below the knee. Super soft velvet, with mesh over her chest, back and her long sleeves. This mesh features our gorgeous bespoke print of little black velvet bats, crescent moons and stars. Her back fastens from hip to waist with a zip, and has a generous, sassy keyhole in the mesh, ending in a hook and eye at her neck. Imported from the UK by Collectif Approximate Total Length (size 10): 41 inches /104.14 cm. Fit Advice: Fit is true to size .
