This skeleton, of a man who probably was 35+/-10 years and 5′10″, was found in a settlement which flourished from 3700 – 1820 BCE; the people there had pottery and copper and cultivated barley as well as wheat. He was buried between 2500 – 2000 BCE — much before the decline of the Harappan civilization — and was a leper. In fact, this skeleton is the oldest example of leprosy in the world.

But he was not Harappan: he belonged to the Ahar-Banas culture. In the Mewar region of Rajasthan, hunter-gatherers developed farming communities in the middle of the fifth millennium BCE, independent of the Harappan culture. By around 2500 BCE, they became prosperous and had fortified settlements, roads, and lanes. Also, the earliest burned brick (4000 BCE) was found in Gilund at this site^[2].

By 2500 BCE, Ahars had trade relations with the Harappans to the north. They also had trade relations with their contemporaries in South and Central India and the skeleton confirms it. This skeleton was buried with vitrified ash from cow dung. So far the Southern Neolithic ash mounds found in South Deccan and North Dharwar were believed to be cattle settlements or the result of  cow dung disposal. Now we can speculate that they were the result of funeral activities of a shared tradition.

Besides this domestic connection, these people had international contacts as well. There are two strains of leprosy: an Asian one and an East African one. It is possible that the African one was transmitted to Asia around 40,000 BCE or vice versa at a much later date. The second one seems to have happened since lerosy depends on human contact and it must been transmitted over the trading network involving the Ahars, Harappans,people of Magan, Mesopotamians and Egyptians.

This skeleton fits well with  the Atharva Veda (Hymn 23, 24) making it the earliest historical reference to leprosy. The Ebers papyrus, dated to 1550 BCE has been interpreted to contain evidence of leprosy, but the earliest affected skeleton found in Egypt has been dated only to 400 – 250 BCE.

Another point is regarding the burial; after 2000 BCE, burial was uncommon except for some special cases like infants and spiritual people. Harappan skeletons were both cremated — there is evidence at Sanauli at least — and buried, but true burials are very few compared to expected numbers. Many archaeologists believe that cremation must have been widely practised by Harappans. Also, at Dholavira and other sites, dozens of graves turned out to be without any bones which implies symbolic burials.

It is believed that the burial at Balathal followed the Vedic tradition: lepers were buried alive in some parts of India. Also there is evidence that diseased bodies were sometimes not cremated.

(One of the skeletons from Balathal in samadhi posture)

The excavations reveal a large number of bull figurines indicating the Ahar people worshipped the bull ^[6]. At Marmi, a site near Chittorgarh, these figures have been found in abundance indicating it could be a regional shrine of the bull cult of this rural population. Discovery of cow-like figurines in Ojiyana, the first site found on the slope of a hill, has baffled archaeologists. Cow-worship was not a known Ahar practice. “There are no humps and we can see small teats,” B.R.Meena, superintendent, ASI Jaipur circle, who undertook the excavation, says, “These are certainly cows.” Other archaeologists suspect them to be bull calves but insist if further studies prove these to be cows, one could infer that the cow was a revered animal and the Hindu practice of treating the cow as a holy animal can thus be of pre-Aryan antiquity. [Were they cow worshippers?]

The large number of bull figurines found at Ahar and Gilund could indicate a bull cult^[6]. There is a debate over if the figurines represent bulls or cows, but these figurines were part of the second phase of the Ahar culture (2100 – 1800 BCE) or as late as 1600 BCE ^[7] and are the only clue to the religious beliefs of the Ahars^[8].

Another clue is the time frame of these skeletons. While the leper was dated to 2000 BCE, the skeletons in samadhi were from700 BCE^[9]. So while the leper burial was unusual, there is nothing unusual about burying a man in samadhi posture by the Early Historical Period.

While the bull figurines and the skeletons in samadhi were known earlier, this leper skeleton has added new information about this less known culture. Hopefully as more papers come out, we will get a clear picture on their religious beliefs, such as if this Vedic burial was an exception or a common practice.

1. This post is based on [4]. Many thanks to Michel Danino for information and images of the samadhi skeletons and Harappan burials. Also thanks to Gwen Robbins, the primary author of [2, 4], for patiently answering many questions.

1. The Indus Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective by Gregory L. Possehl
2. A panel on the The Cultural Diversity of Northwestern South Asia at the time of the Indus Civilization convened by Prof. Gregory Possehl (University of Pennsylvania) and Prof. Vasant Shinde: Deccan College
3. Gwen Robbins, Veena Mushrif, V.N. Misra, R.K. Mohanty and V.S. Shinde, Human Skeletal Remains from Balathal: a Full Report and Inventory, Man and Environment, XXXII 2007, pp. 1-25.
4. Ancient Skeletal Evidence for Leprosy in India (2000 B.C.), Gwen Robbins et al.
5. Piecing the Ahar Puzzle by Rohit Parihar
6. Encyclopedia of Prehistory: South and Southwest Asia By Peter Neal Peregrine
7. Tribal roots of Hinduism By Shiv Kumar Tiwari
8. The Rise of Civilization in India and Pakistan by Bridget Allchin
9. The skeletons have also been dated all way back to 1800 BCE

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It is fashionable to remark that while early humans lived in harmony with nature, the modern man abuses it. Many believe that it is massive use of fossil fuels in the post-Industrialization era that triggered global climate change. But a new model says that climate change was triggered by the burning of forests for agriculture. Though the population was smaller, farming techniques were not optimized resulting in more land use per person for food production.

He said that early populations likely used a land-clearing method that involved burning forests, then planting crop seed among the dead stumps in the enriched soil. They would use a large plot until the yield began to decline, and then would burn off another area of forest for planting. They would continue this form of rotation farming, ever expanding the cleared areas as their populations grew. They possibly cleared five or more times more land than they actually farmed at any given time. It was only as populations grew much larger, and less land was available for farming or for laying fallow, that societies adopted more intensive farming techniques and slowly gained more food yield from less land[Agricultural Methods Of Early Civilizations May Have Altered Global Climate]

But if you put the blame entirely on the early farmer, that would be wrong. New studies show that even the hunter-gatherer managed to affect their environment, through the use of fire, translocation of animals and altering the marine ecosystem.

Rick has also found layers of sea otter bones thousands of years old in California’s Channel Islands. The layers above just had sea urchin remains. He thinks people killed the otters because they ate too many shellfish. Since otters also prey on sea urchins, the urchin population exploded. All those urchins ate up the kelp forests, creating what Rick calls an “urchin barren.” [For Early Man, It Wasn't Easier Being Green : NPR]

But the key to remember is that, the ancient man had no choice and most of the damage was unintentional. Also there was no one to tell them the Inconvenient Truth.

“The take-home point to some extent is that humans do things to make their life easier,” Hames says. “It was really hard to make a living back then, so you know, you took advantage of the knowledge and skills you had in order to make the environment useful to you.” [For Early Man, It Wasn't Easier Being Green : NPR]

(Photograph by author)

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But this was not the case before; female worship was prevalent all around the world. Recently three such artifacts were found:  in Turkey, in Golan and in Scotland.

The one in Golan, dated to 500 CE, was of Aphrodite – the Greek goddess of love. (see pictures)

“Aphrodite was the goddess of love, but also the goddess of fertility and childbirth,” Segal says. “Pregnant woman hoping for a safe birth would sacrifice to her, as would young girls hoping for love. Mainly, flowers, rather than animals, would be sacrificed to Aphrodite. The figurines we found were made in a mold in rather large numbers. They would be offered to the goddess in a temple by supplicants, or kept above one’s bed,” Segal said. [Dig unearths ancient cult figurines of Aphrodite]

According to the person who led the dig, Christians outlawed the Aphrodite cult, but it still survived since women clung to it.

While the Aphrodite figurine is just 1500 years old, the one found in Turkey is ancient, dating to 16,000 years back.

Erek said that the figurine showed that the social status of women was very important 16,000 years ago. Erek noted that the oldest fired clay god or goddess figurines unearthed in Mesopotamia, Anatolia and Near East were made in 5,000 BC. He added that experts believed that the clay was used earliest in that period, however, the goddess figurine showed that this method was older than thought. [16,000 Year-Old Mother Goddess Figurine Unearthed]

Finally, a sandstone figurine, 5000 years old, was discovered in Scotland and it is supposed to Scotland’s earliest face.

The carving is flat with a round head on top of a lozenge-shaped body. The face has heavy brows, two dots for eyes and an oblong for a nose. It is thought other scratches on top of the skull could be hair. A pair of circles on the chest are being interpreted as representing breasts, and arms have been etched at either side. It is believed a regular pattern of crossed markings on the reverse could suggest the fabric of the woman’s clothing.[Scotland's 'earliest face' found]

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The earlier assumptions are now being questioned because the biblical narrative was not able to withstand examination by archaeological data.

According to the PBS documentary, the Hebrew Bible was formed during the Babylonian exile.

Israelites were reminded that they had broke the covenant with God and hence were incurring his wrath. Still this was not taken seriously till the time the Babylonians exiled the Caananites. It was during this exile that one of the scribes of that era, known as “P”, took all the previous revisions and created the present version of the Bible. The documentary suggests that the Abraham story was created then, by this scribe, to enforce the concept of the covenant. The scribe lived in Babylon and Abraham was placed in the nearby Ur; Abraham’s goal was to reach the promised land, so was the dream of the exiles. [Bible's Buried Secrets (2/2)]

Yahwism after the Exile experienced discontinuity of iconographic practices and matured as it consolidated its sacred literature.Stern (2001: 29) insists that “upon the return from exile, the Jews purified their worship. Jewish monotheism was at last consolidated.” This assumes that there were no iconographic representations of Yahweh after the Babylonian deportation. The archaeological and textual evidence supports pentateuchal Yahwism as the official, normative religion that was practiced by the majority, even though there are some iconographic representations from the Persian period that require more detailed discussion. The Persian period seems to be the time when the prohibition on representation of Yahweh was particularly widespread. Pentateuchal Yahwism thrived and became the norm that would be followed by the world’s major religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. [The Persian Period and the Origins of Israel: Beyond the "Myths"]

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After publishing the paper, Rao got a surprise. The question of which language family the script belongs to, it turns out, is a sensitive one: because of the Indus civilization’s age and significance, many contemporary groups in India would like to claim it as a direct ancestor. For instance, the Tamil-speaking Indians of the south would prefer to learn that the Indus script was a kind of proto-Dravidian, since Tamil is descended from proto-Dravidian. Hindi speakers in the north would rather it be an old form of Sanskrit, an ancestor of Hindi. Rao’s paper doesn’t conclude which language family the script belongs to, though it does note that the conditional entropy is similar to Old Tamil—causing some critics to summarily “accuse us of being Dravidian nationalists,” says Rao. “The ferocity of the accusations and attacks was completely unexpected.” [Can Computers Decipher a 5,000-Year-Old Language?]

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NIAS LITERARY, ARTS AND HERITAGE FORUM
Cordially invites you to a lecture entitled
Indus People and their script
By
Prof. Mayank Vahia
Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai
On Tuesday, 9th June, 2009, at 10.00 am
in
J R D Tata Auditorium,
National Institute of Advanced Studies,
Indian Institute of Science Campus,
Bangalore 560 012

Abstract

Indus Valley Civilisation was the first truly urban civilisation with  several cities with population of 20,000 people or more at its peak. It  flourished in the Western part of the Indian Subcontinent from around 7000  BC to 1900 BC with a peak period of 2500 BC to 1900 BC when it went into a  decline. The hallmark of this civilisation is the miniature seals on which  they produced truly magnificent art work and wrote in small cryptic notes.  Their writing has been enigmatic and since their first discovery some 130  years ago, it is still not clear if it is linguistic writing or not. Our  recent work has shown that not only is the writing similar to linguistic  writing but detailed structure of writing can be clearly seen. We will  discuss the issue of Indus writing in the context of the Civilisation and  our recent work.

About the speaker

Prof. Mayank Vahia is an astronomer at the Tata Institute of Fundamental  Research, Mumbai. After having spent 3 decades in space astronomy  instrumentation, his recent interests in growth of astronomy in India has  taken him to study various aspects of India’s history and prehistory with  special emphasis on astronomy and intellectual growth of the Indian  civilisation.

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The research, which is published in the June 5 issue of the journal Science, suggests that tens of thousands of years ago, as human population density increased so did the transmission of ideas and skills. The result: the emergence of more and more clever innovations. [Party Animals: Early Human Culture Thrived in Crowds - Yahoo! News]

Using genetic estimates of population size in the past, the team went on to show that density was similar in sub-Saharan Africa, Europe and the Middle-East when modern behaviour first appeared in each of these regions. The paper also points to evidence that population density would have dropped for climatic reasons at the time when modern human behaviour temporarily disappeared in sub-Saharan Africa.[High Population Density Triggers Cultural Explosions]

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The author’s note at the end of the book has a section on known poisoners of the ancient world including the the most famous one — Mithridates VI of Pontus — who lived in the first century B.C.E. It is believed that he got his knowledge of poisons and antidotes from India, among other sources.

Mithridates VI who ruled the kingdom of Pontus from 119 to 63 B.C.E, was a contemporary of Julius Caesar, but he troubled Rome to no end. Between 89 B.C.E and 63 B.C.E, three Mithridatic wars were fought between Roman legions and Mithridates VI.

Though he was a brave warrior, Mithridates feared one thing: death by poisoning. So a team of doctors – Scythian shamans – always accompanied him. He also took preventive care by consuming a small amount of poisons with his food to give him immunity. This in fact resembles the plan that Chanakya devised for Chandragupta Maurya.

Even before Chanakya, preventive measures for poisoning was known in India. According to Manusmriti, a king was to eat food mixed with antidotes against poison. The king was also required to wear gems which destroy poison^[1]. Both Charaka and Susruta had written about antidotes; one called Mahagandhahasti had sixty ingredients^[2].

According to Chanakya  those who are cruel, lazy and devoid of any affection for their relatives shall be recruited as poisoners. These poisoners were to spy on the indoor activities of officials by getting jobs, adopting a disguise or working as entertainers. But poisoners, probably those not working for the state, who harmed others were considered anti-social elements. Such poisoners were to be exiled^[3].

Chanakya also wrote about destroying an enemy army using poisons. A spy in the enemy camp, disguised as a wine seller, was allowed to poison the army. Chanakya discusses various strategies for this: first the poisoner was to distribute unadulterated wine, and when the army chiefs were drunk, given poisoned wine. Or cheap food could be sold to the aggressor with poison mixed or women could buy food from a merchant into a vessel which had poison, nag a bit about the high price and put the material back into the merchant’s ware^[3].

The king was to eat only freshly cooked food only after physicians and helpers had tested it for poisons. Chanakya gives a list of poisons and various effects and ways by which poisons could be identified in food. To prevent poisoning, entertainers were forbidden from using poisons in their shows. He noted that “a single assassin could achieve with weapons, fire or poison, more than a fully mobilized army.^[3]“

Mithridates was erudite and read many texts. Also Indian medicine was well known and admired in Rome and it is possible that Mithridates came to know these details from them^[2].

During those times people believed that there was a universal antidote — theriac — which could cure all poisons. To find this theriac, Mithridates experimented various concoctions;a painting by Robert Thorn shows Mithridates testing poisons on a prisoner. He finally came up with a mixture of fifty-four antidotes which was named mithridatium. The formula for this antidote was preserved by Pliny the Elder, Galen and Andromachus the Elder, the physician of Nero. Theriac was quite popular during even during the Middle ages till the 19th century, though it was not Mithridatic formula that was being used.

Mithridates’ last day on earth took an ironic turn when he wanted to die by poisoning and failed. Mithridates’ army was defeated by Pompey in 65 B.C.E, but the king escaped with this two daughters to his castle near the Bosphorous. As the Roman soldiers were closing in, he shared a vial of poison with his daughters, who died immediately. But Mithridates, who was conditioned by poison was unaffected. Finally he fell on the sword of one of his bodyguards and committed suicide^[3].

1. Manusmriti translated by G. Buhler
2. Greek Fire, Poison Arrows and Scorpion Bombs by Adrienne Mayor (suggested by P.C. Doherty via e-mail)
3. Kautilya – The Arthashastra
4. University of California chronicle By University of California (1868-1952)

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Because Darwin’s Theory is a theory, it continues to be tested as new evidence is discovered. The Theory is not a fact. Gaps in the Theory exist for which there is no evidence. A theory is defined as a well-tested explanation that unifies a broad range of observations. Intelligent Design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin’s view. The reference book, Of Pandas and People, is available for students who might be interested in gaining an understanding of what Intelligent Design actually involves.[Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District]

Before 2004, the Rao et al. paper would not have gathered any attention. (Of course the Indus system is a language script! Why are you discussing it?) But that year, Steve Farmer managed to persuade two others — one of whom, Michael Witzel, is a well-respected authority in the field — to add their names to his thesis that it is not a language. The resulting manuscript was absurdly and unprofessionally bombastic in its language, while containing essentially nothing convincing. Regardless of the work of Rao et al, their hypothesis would have died a natural death — but Rao et al do have Farmer et al to thank for enabling them to publish their work, with its obvious conclusions, in a prestigious journal like Science. Farmer et al are so rattled that they promptly post an incoherent, shrill, content-free, ad hominem rant on Farmer’s website. Sproat even shows up on my previous post, leaving a chain of comments that reveal that he has neither understood, nor cares to understand, the argument. [More Indus thoughts and links]

1. Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul by Kenneth Miller
2. A Survey of Hinduism by Klaus K. Klostermaier
3. The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate by Edwin Bryant

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1. There is a huge gap between Mahabharata (3100 BCE, 2450 BCE, 1500 BCE) and the Mahajapadas. What happened there?
2. Who was the contemporary of Alexander of Macedonia? Chandragupta Maurya or the Guptas? Do Mahavira, Buddha and Adi Shankara belong to an earlier period?

At the International Conference on Indian History, Civilisation and Geopolitics 2009, Dr Subramanian Swamy gave the valdedictory speech on the need to defalsify Indian history. In this speech, Dr. Swamy stated that most dates  related to Indian history – Rigveda, Mahabharata, Buddha, Asoka –  are wrong. This happened because European historians identified Sandrocottus, mentioned by Megasthenes, as Chandragupta Maurya. This Sandrocottos was a contemporary of Alexander and from associated calculations, the date of Chandragupta Maurya’s coronation was found. Based on this point, Asoka’s corononation was calculated, so was the time of Buddha.

However, on the basis of these calculations we can say that Gupta Chandragupta was “Sandrocottus” c.327 B.C. His son, Samudragupta, was the great king who established a unified kingdom all over India, and obtained from the Cholas, Pandyas, and Cheras their recognition of him. He also had defeated Seleucus Nicator, while his father Chandragupta was king. On this calculation we can also place Prithu at 6777 B.C. and Lord Rama before that. Derivation of other dates without discussion may also be briefly mentioned here: Buddha’s Nirvana 1807 B.C., Maurya Chandragupta c. 1534 B.C., Harsha Vikramaditya (Parmar) c. 82 B.C.[Non-random-Thoughts: 'De-falsify Indian history' -- Dr Subramanian Swamy]

If Rama lived in 6777 BCE, he belonged to the Neolithic age and would have fought with axe heads and chisels. This Rama would be vastly different from the one portrayed in Ramayana, like King David. The Tel Dan Stele mentions David’s existence, but archaeology has found that he would have been not a king, but a petty warlord of a small chiefdom with few settlements. So did this Neolothic Rama’s exploits survive as a mnemohistory, like how David’s lives in the Torah?

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