"vishalsagarwal" <vishalagarwal@...> wrote (Thu Apr 11, 2002 9:25 pm)
<<If you had read the paper I had cited, there would have been no need at all
to write all that. KHAN himself traces the evolution of Indus valley
civilization from the culture of Baluchi hihgland inhabitations.>>
Well, I have read some of it and I still feel the need. And I still don't
know what "civilization" means.
And there are important elements of early Indian cultures that can rationally
be seen as having diffused either from the Near East or the Far East. A
criticism of Khan is that either he did not know what they were or didn't
know their importance to those cultures.
<<The word 'Indus Civilization' is used because most of the sites that
were discovered were in the greater Indus basin. Harappan culture is
used as an alternative because Harappa was the first major site
identified as such. And now some want to use 'Indus-Saraswati
Civilization' as another name of the Mature Harappan culture.>>
Again, "civilization" seems to be some kind of a threshold, but I don't know
what it means. If you are saying it is a collection of cultures, that's one
thing. If you are saying it is marked by urbanization, that is another.
<<VA: Do not worry. World class experts have dwelt on this problem for
the Indian subcontinent as well. For the region of our interest, we
now have the excavated site of Mehrgarh (in Baluchistan) where the
strata go back to around 6500 BCE. You may want to read the following
archaeological report - Mehrgarh : field reports 1974-1985, from Neolithic
times to the Indus civilization / edited by Catherine Jarrige...>>
For an overview of many neolithic issues involving Mehrgarh, Harrapan, et
al., see R. H. Meadows, The origin and spread of agriculture and pastoralism
in northwestern South Asia, in: The Origin and Spread of Agriculture and
Pastoralism in Eurasia, ed. by D.R. Harris, Smithsonian 1998. There is also
a piece on the probable spread of rice cultivation to India by Glover and
Higham in the same book.
6500BC may be a pre-neolithic date, certainly pre-ceramic. The presence of an
actual food-producing economy may be connected to the cultivation of plants
that were not native to the area - implying that actual seeds (barley) were
imported along with the concept of plant domestication. Later crops that
were very important to Indian "civilization", e.g., cotton, give evidence of
perhaps being imported also. Ceramic technology, the use of the potter's
wheel and even perhaps the development of the marketplace may also have been
introduced. On the other hand, it might be noted that these elements appear
to have been adopted as early or earlier than they were in most of Europe.
<<VA: There were several INDEPENDENT Neolithic revolutions. In a recent
publication by the American Academy of Science, 8-9 such regions are
defined. There were 2 in China, and a few in Africa and the Americas.
The revolution did start first in the Near East, but it need not have
a genetic link to the start of farming etc. in other areas.>>
There is every indication that it did START first in the Near East, but that
a few areas converting to food production independently or at least with no
clear evidence of outside influence. Proof of such a fact is of course
difficult.
ON THE OTHER HAND, it should be REMEMBERED that there has no evidence of
plant or animal domestication (except for the dog) or pottery production in a
hundred previous centuries of modern human habitation. The very fact that
the Near East was the first in that 100,000 years and other centers followed
suit so soon afterwards raises some possibility that the technology itself,
if not specific species, was the result of the diffusion of practices and
know-how developed in the Near East.
India does not give the appearance of an independent center except in the
minds of paleolinguists who imagine that they know whether a word referred to
a wild or a domesticated plant 5000 years before the word ever appeared in
writing. Where I may be wrong is in the latest gene studies regarding the
domestication of the water buffalo, which may have been genetically altered
quite early and perhaps in the south of the Indian subcontinent.
<<And now, evidence is emerging that there was an independent Neolithic
revolution in peninsular India. A recent article in the magazine 'Science'
credited this area as the homeland of Dravidian langauges.>>
Actually, that article is a good example of a reporter with no understanding
of what neolithic technology was about. As far as peinsular India being the
"homeland" of Dravidian, what were the alternative "homelands"?
<<VA: In view of the references cited by me above, all these statements
are redundant.>>
I wish they were. As noted earlier on this list, redunancy can be
functional. My statements about the importance of neolithic influences in
evaluating how "indigenous" any culture might have been were not redundant,
but merely disregarded.
<<We need not bring in linguistics here at all, Archaeology seems to provide
sufficient evidence.>>
I'm not sure what evidence you are talking about, but there is evidence that
key elements in early Indian cultures were imported. Advanced cultures do
not fall out of the sky. It's the smart cultures that borrow and adapt the
improvements of others. No mass migrations are necessary. Even in the
western hemisphere, diffusion of key neolithic innovations often benefited
others more than the region that originated them.
<<VA: I do not really know where this OIT argument comes into the
picture now. But archaeologists studying India now clearly see a
continuity in the Indus area from Mehrgarh Neolithic revolution to
post Harappan cultures.>>
Well, if they did not see a continuity, that would take some explaining.
The discussions of "discontinuity" in Europe can come down to the subtle
difference in pottery styles that may point to nothing but a new man at the
potter's wheel. Except in rare cases, continuity is a matter of degree, and
most ancient cultures can point to a good deal of continuity with the
cultures that preceded them. That's true even in Greece.
<<This is not a reaction to the earlier tendency of positing invasions for
any cultural change - rather it extends across all schools of archaeology
pertaining to the Indian subcontinent.>>
Well, I'd tend to disagree. It does seem like a natural reaction to the old
invasion solution. One does not seem to see a lot of work being done with
comparative Sumerian elements, for example, or provenance testing. Most
everything that seems to come out is about indigenous origins.
<<Since linguists honor Professor Witzel so much, maybe you would like
to read HIM saying that the Indus civilization is indigenous.>>
I still don't know what you are defining "civilization" as, but -- again,
reduntantly -- there are important elements in early Indian cultures that
seem to have been imported from other places. I think Witzel should stick to
linguistics.
Steve Long