--- In cybalist@..., george knysh <gknysh@...> wrote:
> *****GK: What exactly is the fuss about? "horse bones"
> are available thousands of years earlier in the
> Eurasian steppes, and not just horse bones but
> evidence of the animals' domestication...*****
VA: The fuss about horse bones is due to the opposition between two
schools of thought amongst Vedicists/ Indologists/Historians of
ancient India on the precise nature of the Indus Valley civilization
and its precise relationship to the Vedic people.
Earlier, it was believed that the Aryans invaded and destroyed the
IVC, and spread IA languages in India.
However, no archaeological evidence of invasions has shown up
although approx 98 sites of the civilization have been excavated.
What is more, the whole region shows a cultural continuity for
several centuries even beyond 1900 BCE, when the IVC is supposed to
have collapsed.
Genetic evidence has failed to show any migration of people into
India between 3500 - 800 BC.
And the entire Vedic literature is silent on the matter, and gives
the impression that the people were quite 'rooted' in the land in
which they composed the hymns. And this land coincideds quite well
with the geographical area covered by the IVC.
But the advent of IA languages has to be explained. This was
explained with the help of the elite dominance model. It was
postulated that the Aryans were powered with horses and horse drawn
chariot, and therefore even small numbers of IA speakers overwhelmed
IVC residents, established themselves as an elite layer, and
gradually spread IA languages in India via acculturation. Because
their numbers were small, they did not leave a genetic imprint.
There is no proof for such a scenario of any sorts, and so upholders
of this elite domination and related models depend on the supposed
absence of the horse in IVC area. Since IVC residents did not know
horse, they were easily overwhelmed by this 'Vedic tank', according
to this mode of argumentation.
Intrusion of horse into India through the Aryans becomes the primary
mechanism to explain or 'prove' the elite dominance hypothesis.
Now when horse bones do crop up here and there several centuries
before the supposed advent of Aryans, the Invasionist/Elite Dominance
scholars try to dismiss such finds via denials, or explain it away
(e.g. Witzel says in EJVS 7.3 that it must been brought occassionally
to IVC from Central Asia for amusement of the inhabitants there !!!).
Even terracotta figurines of horses are dismissed as representations
of onagers, and the fact that there is no trail of horse bones from
Central Asia to India (from the perspective of archaeology) is
dismissed, or such a trail is fabricated in the most tendentious
manner (R. S. Sharma's book "Looking for the Aryans" which is praised
by Mallory is one such example of such excercises).
Such a denial mode is now laughed away by Indian archaeologists,
whose digging day after day at various IVC sites, has now created
substantial evidence that the horse did exist in the IVC as a
domesticated form.
In fact, the so called 'Aryan' features like the fire altar, swords,
spoked wheels....are ALL now attested in IVC. The chariot is said to
be depicted in a potsherd from Banawali, but other than that, there
is NO evidence right down to 280 BCE. Of course, it is foolish to
assume that the Aryans could have driven their chariots through the
Kyber. The RV chariots are ALL made of woods which are distinctly
Indian.
Hope this helps,
Vishal