Indus "Civilization"

"vishalsagarwal" <vishalagarwal@...> quoted KHAN, F. A. 1992 "Ancient
Cultural Contacts Acoss the Indus Valley"

The problem with Khan's and all the other indigenous origin theories, of
course, is that they start at dates that make it seem like history started
with "urbanization." Just look at the dates Khan quotes (3500-2900BC). And
notice we are still talking about "Indus civilization" 80 years after Gordon
Childe, but we don't really use the word any more in connection with even
Egypt or Mesopotamia, much less Europe.

The early cultures of the Indian sub-continent don't begin with urbanization.
The key to any indigenous or borrowed argument for any of these cultures has
been pushed back in time by the work done in the Near East and elsewhere.
There were FUNDAMENTAL changes brought about everywhere by the coming of
neolitization. It becomes a key demarkation archaeologically and in terms of
defining material cultures. As a rule, there are NO material remains before
neoliticization except for bones, stone tools and huts.

Was the Indian neolithic revolution native to India? I've seen no such
evidence (except for 7000 year spanning paleolinguistic "evidence" which no
one should take seriously). And if neolitization came from the Near East,
then in an important way, "civilization" came from the Near East.

As this relates to linguistics, the neolithic conversion is the best path we
have for cultural change because it shows a major revolution in human life
and culture. Those historical linguists who disregard it as such -- no
matter what they think of Renfrew personally or linguistically -- open the
door to any and all theories of non-documentable language change and
transmission. And we end up mired in discussions of the indigenous vs I-A
nature of "Indus civilization" which may be wholly irrelevant to actual
historical events.

If anyone seriously argues for IE languages still being unified at 3500BC,
they deserve what they get in "Out-of-India." If any archaeologists find a
clear demarcation between neolithic settlements and civilization, they
deserve what they get with the "indigenous Indus."

Steve Long

<<...Samuel Noah Kramer, to look for this place in the Indus Valley. He also
suggested the possibility of migration of the people during the Ubaid Period
(ca. 3500 to 2900 BC) from Mesopotamia to the Indus Valley, where they
initiated the development of civilization. But we know that the Indus
Civilization was already matured and flourishing about 2500 BC. There is no
evidence to suggest that urbanization in the Pak-Iranian borderlands and the
Indus Valley was the result of exterior influence....The evidence does
suggest that the Indus Civilization was an indigenous development and that it
arose out of the evolution of developed village cultures in Baluchistan and
the Indus Valley in a favorable environment. It emphasizes the
sub-continental roots and the consequent style which gives this civilization
its uniqueness. On the present evidence, the Indus Civilization cannot be
said to have originated through the direction or even stimulus diffusion from
Mesopotamia, even though the rise of civilization took place in
Mesoptamia earlier than in the Indus Valley.>>