Harappan Civilisation (Indus Valley; Harappa; Mohenjo Daro)

[EnolaGaia]

This (first-ever) DNA analysis from a Harappan site indicates the mysterious Indus Valley people were genetically linked to South Asians ...

Mysterious Indus Valley People Gave Rise to Modern-Day South Asians

Who were the ancient people from the mysterious Harappan Civilization?

Ancient DNA evidence reveals that the people of the mysterious and complex Indus Valley Civilization are genetically linked to modern South Asians today.

The same gene sequences, drawn from a single individual who died nearly 5,000 years ago and was buried in a cemetery near Rakhigarhi, India, also suggest that the Indus Valley developed farming independently, without major migrations from neighboring farming regions. It's the first time an individual from the ancient Indus Valley Civilization has yielded any DNA information whatsoever, enabling researchers to link this civilization both to its neighbors and to modern humans. ...

FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/south-asians-descend-from-harappan-civilization.html

 

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Archaeology shock: Scientists left baffled over lost ancient city Mohenjo Daro in Pakistan

Source: Daily Express online
Date: 2 December, 2019

ARCHAEOLOGISTS are still no closer to understanding who occupied the ancient city of Mohenjo Daro in modern-day Pakistan during the third millennium B.C.

Researchers first visited the site in 1911 and various excavations were carried out in the 1920s through to 1931. Subsequent digs took place in 1950 and 1964, which provided fascinating glimpses into the ideology and beliefs of the city’s inhabitants. The well-planned street grid and an elaborate drainage system suggest that the occupants were skilled urban planners, for whom the control of water was of utmost importance.

https://www-express-co-uk.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.express.co.uk/news/world/1211817/ancient-history-news-archaeology-lost-city-mohenjo-daro-indus-civilisation-pakistan/amp?amp_js_v=a2&amp_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQCKAE=#referrer=https://www.google.com&amp_tf=From %1$s&ampshare=https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1211817/ancient-history-news-archaeology-lost-city-mohenjo-daro-indus-civilisation-pakistan

 

[EnolaGaia]

Can't find any previous mention of this and hope it's the appropriate thread.
...

Now moved to the thread addressing Indus Valley civilization(s).

 

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Now moved to the thread addressing Indus Valley civilization(s).

Fascinating, especially as reading through all of this thread, have learned so much more.

Although unsure if this adds anything and assuming it's reliably factual, found this video of further interest,

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanit...ngs/ancient-india/v/indus-valley-civilization

 

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Came across this article and wondered if maybe of interest:

Beyond Harappa: The ‘Other’ Cultures (3000 BCE - 900 BCE)

Source: livehistoryindia-com
Date: 22 February, 2020

In the midst of a patchwork of small farms growing wheat, mustard and sugarcane, in turns, you will find one of the most talked-about excavation sites of the subcontinent in recent times. In 2018, archaeologists excavating at Sanauli, about 70 km from Delhi, in Western Uttar Pradesh, dug up a necropolis or cemetery with burials of what seemed to be a clan of warriors – sword-wielding men and women, who were buried with their weapons, wore helmets, ornate armour and even rode chariots.

Nothing like this had been found before, and what was really astonishing was the time period in which this clan lived. According to Carbon-14 dating, this necropolis went back to around 2200 BCE, making the warriors of Sanauli contemporaries of the Harappans, who were residing further west.

This was significant because it was unprecedented.

This discovery set the proverbial cat among the pigeons as it questioned many earlier points of view. It also raised a storm, with some sections equating this evidence of warriors with the period of the epic Mahabharata. That aside, what was significant was the fact that Sanauli opened up another chapter in the tantalising tale of the many settlements (or ‘cultures’, as described by archaeologists) that co-existed with the Harappan world across the Indian subcontinent.

https://www-livehistoryindia-com.cd...3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&amp_tf=From%20%251%24s

 

[EnolaGaia]

Using nonlinear dynamics (chaos) modeling, a researcher has found evidence correlating the rise and fall of the Harappan / Indus Valley civilization with two major shifts in long-term monsoon weather patterns.

How Climate Change Led to the Fall of an Ancient Civilization

A Rochester Institute of Technology researcher developed a mathematical method that shows climate change likely caused the rise and fall of an ancient civilization. In an article recently featured in the journal Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science, Nishant Malik, assistant professor in RIT’s School of Mathematical Sciences, outlined the new technique he developed and showed how shifting monsoon patterns led to the demise of the Indus Valley Civilization, a Bronze Age civilization contemporary to Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt. ...

There are several theories about why the Indus Valley Civilization declined—including invasion by nomadic Indo-Aryans and earthquakes—but climate change appears to be the most likely scenario. But until Malik applied his hybrid approach— rooted in dynamical systems but also draws on methods from the fields of machine learning and information theory—there was no mathematical proof. His analysis showed there was a major shift in monsoon patterns just before the dawn of this civilization and that the pattern reversed course right before it declined, indicating it was in fact climate change that caused the fall. ...

FULL STORY: https://scitechdaily.com/how-climate-change-led-to-the-fall-of-an-ancient-civilization/

 

[EnolaGaia]

Here are the bibliographic details and abstract for the published research article ...

Uncovering transitions in paleoclimate time series and the climate driven demise of an ancient civilization featured
Nishant Malik
Chaos 30, 083108 (2020)
https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0012059

ABSTRACT
We present a hybrid framework appropriate for identifying distinct dynamical regimes and transitions in a paleoclimate time series. Our framework combines three powerful techniques used independently of each other in time series analysis: a recurrence plot, manifold learning through Laplacian eigenmaps, and Fisher information metric. The resulting hybrid approach achieves a more automated classification and visualization of dynamical regimes and transitions, including in the presence of missing values, observational noise, and short time series. We illustrate the capabilities of the method through several pragmatic numerical examples. Furthermore, to demonstrate the practical usefulness of the method, we apply it to a recently published paleoclimate dataset: a speleothem oxygen isotope record from North India covering the past 5700 years. This record encodes the patterns of monsoon rainfall over the region and covers the critically important period during which the Indus Valley Civilization matured and declined. We identify a transition in monsoon dynamics, indicating a possible connection between climate change and the decline of the Indus Valley Civilization.

SOURCE: https://aip.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/5.0012059

 

[EnolaGaia]

This new Live Science article provides a summary overview of the Indus Valley civilization and what recent findings have added to our still-fragmentary knowledge about this culture. The article also includes a map illustrating the many sites now associated with the Indus Valley civilization.

What was the Indus Valley Civilization?
FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/what-was-the-indus-valley-civilization

 

[maximus otter]

Mysterious 'radioactive' skeletons 'suggest nuclear blast destroyed ancient city 3,700 years ago', bonkers theory claims

ONE of the world's earliest cities was destroyed 3,700 years ago in a nuclear war, an entrepreneur and conspiracy theorist has claimed.

First Class Space Agency CEO Billy Carson said the supposed existence of radioactive skeletons proved that a nuclear device was detonated.

Billy says skeletons at Pakistan’s Mohenjo-Daro archaeological dig contain abnormally high levels of radiationCredit: Nomu420

The unorthodox scientist also claimed that civilisation on Earth was kick-started by a race of alien "gods", and that humans were genetically modified by aliens to believe in deities.

Visitors walk through the UNESCO World Heritage archaeological site of Mohenjo-DaroCredit: AFP

He said: "The buildings [at the Mohenjo-Daro site] turned to glass, the sand turned to glass, and the bodies are still laying in the street right now today, holding hands, never been scavenged by animals.

"Dead bodies, still laying in the street, thousands of years later."

The conspiracy theorist said the Harappan society which populated the area was even more advanced than academics accept today.

He claimed: "There's bodies that are sitting on the edge of steps next to their own buildings that they lived in, and the building has turned to glass."

The space agency CEO said historical accounts recorded on tablets of the ancient Sumerian texts mentioned "an evil wind" that blew over the city, supporting his theory of a nuclear war.

It was his belief that an extraterrestrial race of giant humanoids - the "Annunaki" - landed in ancient Sumer with the goal to mine gold.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/28344843/radioactive-skeletons-nuclear-blast-ancient-city/

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