Sarasvati Civilization

[ramana]

http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090217/f...7945a.html

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Rethinking silk's origins</b>
Did the Indian subcontinent start spinning without Chinese know-how?

Philip Ball


<b>Ancient silk strands have been found in artefacts from Pakistan’s Indus valley. I. Good

New findings suggest that silk making was not an exclusively Chinese technological innovation, but instead arose independently on the Indian subcontinent.</b>

<b>Ornaments from the Indus valley in east Pakistan, where the Harappan culture flourished more than 4,000 years ago, seem to contain silk spun by silk moths native to the region. What's more, the silk seems to have been processed in a way previously thought to have been a closely guarded secret within China.</b>

There is hard and fast evidence for silk production in China back to around 2570 BC; <b>the newly discovered objects are believed to date from between 2450 BC and 2000 BC, making them similarly ancient.</b> There have been no previous finds of manufactured silk at sites outside China before about 1500 BC.

"This is the first evidence for silk anywhere out of China at such an early date," says Irene Good of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, one of the authors of the study. "It was a complete surprise."

<b>The objects come from two sites in the Indus valley: the city of Harappa itself, the hub of the Indus civilization, and Chanhu-daro in Sindh province, about 500 kilometres to the south.</b> They were collected from archaeological excavations in 1999 and 2000 conducted by the Harappa Archaeological Research Project (HARP), a US–Pakistan collaboration. Because of the sheer volume of artefacts amassed so far, they have only recently been studied in detail.

Good, working with HARP directors Richard Meadow of Harvard University and Jonathan Kenoyer of the University of Wisconsin in Madison,<b> used an electron microscope to look at the fine structure of silk strands found in necklaces and bangles.</b>

<b>The precise shape of the individual silk threads </b>— determined by the shape of the orifice through which they are extruded — <b>is characteristic of the species of silk moth that produced the strands.</b>

In a paper in the journal Archaeometry, the researchers show that the Harappa samples — two metal ornaments — <b>contain silk from species of Antheraea moths indigenous to south Asia</b> (I. L. Good, J. M. Kenoyer and R. H. Meadow Archaeometry doi:10.1111/j.1475-4754.2008.00454.x; 2009). The origin of the Chanhu-daro silk, threaded through soapstone beads, is less clear, but it may be from one of the same species. <b>Chinese silk comes from the domesticated silk moth Bombyx mori.</b>

<b>The Harappan silks seem to have been made by a process called reeling, in which the strands are collected on a bobbin rather than being twisted in short segments into a thread.</b> The researchers say that reeling was thought to have been part of a silk technology known only to China until the early centuries AD. Now it seems that knowledge was not so exclusive.

"Archaeology in early China is showing increasingly there were connections outside China," says Shelagh Vainker, a silk expert at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, UK. "It doesn't seem unreasonable." But she sees evidence for silk production in China "significantly earlier" than 2500–2000 BC, which would suggest China could still claim priority.



<b>"I believe that the people of the Indus civilization either harvested silkworm cocoons or traded with people who did, and that they knew a considerable amount about silk," says Good.</b> She does, however, acknowledge that some might find this challenging: "National pride is at stake with such a discovery as this."

<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

How is Tussar silk spun in traditional way in rural India? I wonder if the Harappan practices have continued in rural India.

[ramana]

X-post from BRF

<!--QuoteBegin-"Gerard"+-->QUOTE("Gerard")<!--QuoteEBegin-->'Indus Valley civilization was literate'

Indus script encodes language, reveals new study of ancient symbols

Scholars at odds over mysterious Indus script

<i>"Entropic Evidence for Linguistic Structure in the Indus Script." By Rajesh P. N. Rao, Nisha Yadav, Mayank N. Vahia, Hrishikesh Joglekar, R. Adhikari and Iravatham Mahadevan. Science, Vol. 324 Issue 5926, April 24, 2009. </i><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->


Gurus what say you?

[ramana]

One more from Wired Magazine:


http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/...cript.html


Note comments on Farmer et al>!

[Guest]

Ab Steve Farmer ka kya hoga, Kalia?

[ramana]

The U of Wa paper calling the Indus language to be voice based but unknown is interesting. If we allow that Indus script is local to India there must be a myriad Indian languages that could fit the pattern. One would search among the tribals who might be the closest to the Indus people. Or it might have been a pre-Brahmi script for proto-Sanskrit.

[dhu]

the illiterate harappan "hypothesis" is just these jokers' way of solving the frawley paradox. it's like cutting the gordian knot in an act of extreme gladiatorship (even iconoclasm). expect more tamashagiri as the ship goes asunder.

[ramana]

From Hindu, 4 August 2009

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Indian-led team seeks to unlock secrets of Indus script
Washington (PTI): <b>A team of researchers, led by an Indian, is using mathematics and computer science to piece together information about the still-unknown script of the Indus Valley civilization, dating back to 4,000 years</b>.

The study shows <b>distinct patterns in the symbols' placement in sequences and creates a statistical model for the unknown language.

"The statistical model provides insights into the underlying grammatical structure of the Indus script," said Rajesh Rao,</b> the lead author of the study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

He said such a model can be valuable for decipherment, "because any meaning ascribed to a symbol must make sense in the context of other symbols that precede or follow it."

Nobody has yet been able to deciphere the Indus script. <b>The symbols are found on tiny seals, tablets and amulets, left by people inhabiting the Indus Valley from about 2600 to 1900 B.C. Each artifact is inscribed with a sequence that is typically five to six symbols long, said a release by the University of Washington.</b>

According to calculations, "the order of symbols is meaningful; taking one symbol from a sequence found on an artifact and changing its position produces a new sequence that has a much lower probability of belonging to the hypothetical language."

"The finding that the Indus script may have been versatile enough to represent different subject matter in <b>West Asia </b>is provocative. :?: This finding is hard to reconcile with the claim that the script merely represents religious or political symbols," said Mr. Rao, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Washington.

<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Someone contact him and send him a link to this forum and page.

[Husky]

http://rajeev2004.blogspot.com/2009/09/eda...hows-sindu.html
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>edakkal caves in kerala shows sindu-sarasvati type sign</b>
sep 26th, 2009

you mean the 'aryan' tourists actually reached as far as kerala, no doubt to enjoy the legendary charms of kerala women :-), and they were given tourist visas locally (or was it missionary visas)?

<b>www.thehindu.com/2009/09/26/stories/2009092661621200.htm</b>

i have to head to the ancient edakkal caves one of these days, just as i keep promising myself i'll go to bhimbetka.
Posted by nizhal yoddha at 9/26/2009 06:14:00 AM 0 comments <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
What, what? Kerala beat me out? <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo--> Never mind, fellow Tamizhians. We've got them <i>horsies</i> in Tamizh Nadu. We're special tooo.
Excerpts and images from the old news (June 2007) that Dhu had posted earlier and which The Chindu took off in a hurry:

www.hinduonnet.com/fline/stories/20070629000206400.htm
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Rock galleries</b>

TEXTS: T.S. SUBRAMANIAN
PICTURES: K.T. GANDHIRAJAN AND P. MANIVANNAN

The discovery of rock art, dating back to 2000 B.C., in Tamil Nadu offers a peek into history.

[...]

<img src='http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v130/indiaforum/20070629000206402.jpg' border='0' alt='user posted image' />
Image caption: <i><b>THE CENTAUR-LIKE IMAGE in white ochre at Karikkiyur, the largest rock art site in South India.</b></i>

[...]
Mavadaippu is the latest discovery by the team. It had discovered a prehistoric rock art site at Porivarai (2003), and ancient rock paintings at Salekkurai and Sundasingam (2005), near Karikkiyur, about 40 km from Kothagiri in the Nilgiris. In fact, the team was totally unprepared for what awaited it at Porivarai. It turned out to be the largest rock art site in South India with about 500 paintings in an area that is 53 m long and 15 m wide. <b>Experts say the rock paintings at both Mavadaippu and Karikkiyur could be dated to 2000 B.C. to 1500 B.C.</b> How did they stumble upon this treasure trove? The group was at Kothagiri to provide training in arts and crafts to tribal youth at the Don Bosco Community College when it visited Konavakarai, a tribal village, where a rock art site reportedly existed. But the villagers were not aware of its existence. Disappointed, the team returned to the college in Chennai. During a discussion on rock art that evening, an Irula tribal student from Karikkiyur said he had seen such paintings on a rock-shelter in a forest near his village. Chandrasekaran and Gandhirajan lost no time in making it to Karikkiyur. A 7-km trek through an elephant corridor led them to the rock-shelter, locally known as Porivarai.

The paintings in white ochre include a procession of bisons, monkeys clambering up a tree branch, a herd of deer grazing, human beings welcoming one another with outstretched arms, <b>a battle scene with men aiming at each other with bows and arrows, men on horseback engaged in battle,</b> a shoulder-clasping dance after a successful boar-hunt, a man with a mask, the depiction of sun and its rays, a spiral, a tiger fighting another animal, and a man and his dog sleeping.

<img src='http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v130/indiaforum/20070629000206406.jpg' border='0' alt='user posted image' />
Image caption: <i>THE MASTERPIECE OF Karikkiyur is a realistic depiction of bisons moving in a row, in red ochre. </i>

[...]

<img src='http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v130/indiaforum/20070629000206411.jpg' border='0' alt='user posted image' />
Image caption: <i><b>A battle scene at Karikkiyur, depicting men with bows and arrows and on horse back.</b>
</i><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Spoil-sport WitSSel wanted to call in to declare omnisciently that these must be donkeys instead "obviously", since "there are no horses". Sadly he had the wrong number.

[ramana]

Tharoor's Son writing in TIME.

Decoding Indus Script


Says Easter Island script has similar picture writing.

Its a pop article but need to look at what the original research turns p and tie it to the gene migration and see what to make of it all.

[ramana]

Kalai Venkat's review of Romila Thappar's book.
Its very long but informative.


http://www.indiastar.com/venkat1.html

[ramana]

Kalyanram garu, Take a look at this. Does it make sense?

http://www.goldenageproject.org.uk/325oldbooks.html


<img src='http://www.goldenageproject.org.uk/images/slides/worlds-oldest-books.jpg' border='0' alt='user posted image' />

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->A comparative list of signs from the Easter Island script and the Indus script, comparison made by de Devesy. From this it is likely that the scripts are related. The script, according to Heyeerdahl, was brought to the island from South America, South America was colonized from India both by the Pacific and the Atlantic routes, in the third and fourth millennia B.C., but most often via the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. <b>The columns with even numbers represent the Easter Island script, those with odd numbers represent the Indus Valley script.</b>

<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Guest]

UPA now admits Saraswati existed

pioneer.com

Rajesh Singh/Santanu Banerjee | New Delhi



Earlier, had refused to agree despite Govt agencies confirming existence of river



In a significant shift from its earlier stand that probes conducted so far showed no trace of the mythical river, the Union Government has recently admitted that scientists have discovered water channels indicating “beyond doubt” the existence of the “Vedic Saraswati.”



The Government’s fresh submission came in response to an unstarred question in Rajya Sabha on December 3 by Prakash Javadekar (BJP), who wanted to know whether satellite images had “established the underground track of Saraswati, and if so, why should the precious water resources not be exploited to meet growing demands.”



To this, the Union Water Resources Ministry quoted in writing the conclusion of a study jointly conducted by scientists of ISRO, Jodhpur and the Rajasthan Government’s Ground Water Department, published in the Journal of Indian Society of Remote Sensing. Besides other things, the authors had said that “clear signals of palaeo-channels on the satellite imagery in the form of a strong and powerful continuous drainage system in the North-West region and occurrence of archaeological sites of pre-Harappan, Harappan and post-Harappan ages beyond doubt indicate the existence of a mighty palaeo-drainage system of the Vedic Saraswati river in this region… The description and magnanimity of these channels also matches with the river Saraswati described in the Vedic literature.”



A leading educationist and currently chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University, Yash Pal, who had published in 1980 in his own words “a small paper on the existence of Saraswati river which attracted attention,” concurred with the view. “Surveys so far have brought out clearly the path the river had taken when in flow,” the national research professor told The Pioneer. He did a stint with ISRO (which has played a pivotal role in the probes so far) from 1973-1980 where he set up the Space Application Centre.



On whether the Union Government should assume a proactive role on the issue of reviving the river to tackle the water shortages, he said, “With advancement of technology more research should be conducted. The river was not lost yesterday; perhaps due to tectonic shifts it disappeared ten thousand years ago. We have to keep these issues in mind.”



All through its tenure until now, the UPA Government had denied the existence of the mystery river. Then Culture Minister Jaipal Reddy had told Parliament that excavations conducted so far at nine sites had not revealed any trace of the lost river Saraswati. He stated that the UPA Government had not extended the sanction for the project given by the NDA Government. Giving a progress report of the Saraswati River Heritage Project launched by the NDA Government, he had said that though the project report was prepared in September 2003 envisaging a cost of Rs 36.02 crore, it was later slashed to Rs 4.98 crore.



The Leftists, who commanded great influence over the first five years of the UPA regime, too, were dismissive of the evidences. Senior leaders even castigated probe agencies for ‘wasting’ time and money over the study of the mystery river. Three years ago, senior CPI(M) leader and Politburo member Sitaram Yechury slammed the ASI for its efforts.



A Parliamentary Standing Committee on Transport, Tourism and Culture, which he headed in 2006, said, “The ASI has deviated in its working and has failed in spearheading a scientific discipline of archaeology. A scientific institution like the ASI did not proceed correctly in this matter.”



These assertions had come despite mounting evidence of the river collected by central agencies such as Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), Geological Survey of India (GSI), Oil and Natural Gas Commission (ONGC), Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) and the Central Groundwater Authority (under the Water Resources Ministry). The Government had also failed to acknowledge expert opinion that the river’s revival could tackle the increasing water demands of more than 20 crore people in the North-West region of the country.



The first national impetus for research on Saraswati came during the NDA regime when the then Union Culture Minister Jagmohan in June 2002 announced excavations to trace the river’s course. He named a team of four experts - Baldeo Sahai of ISRO, Ahmedabad, archaeologist S Kalyan Raman, glaciologist Y K Puri and water consultant Madhav Chitle - for the task. But even earlier, States like Haryana had begun their study of the ‘underground river.’



Talking of the progress, SL Aggarwal, an official in Haryana Irrigation Department said, “Work on the 3.5 km stretch of river Saraswati between Jyotisar and Bibipur would be completed in one-and-a-half months and then we would be able to revive the ancient river and be able to use the water for irrigation purposes.” The Haryana Government recently sanctioned Rs 10.05 crore for the project of revival of the river, with the Oil and Natural Gas Commission carrying out geophysical and geoelectric surveys for drilling of wells in association with Kurukshetra University for exploratory purposes.



A non-government organisation (NGO), Saraswati Nadi Sodh Sansthan, has also been working for the revival of the ancient river through its entire track. Two seminars were held on this issue on October 22, 2008 and November 21, 2009 at Kurukshetra where representatives from ONGC, Geological Survey of India and Indian Space Research Organisation were invited.



Rajasthan too has been an active participant in the project. Some four decades ago the Archeological Survey of India (GSI) had conducted excavations at a village named Kalibanga in Srigananagar district of Rajasthan, unearthing a full- fledged township beneath a mound, locally called ‘Thed.’



The ASI researchers came to the conclusion that the sight belonged to the Harappan period. Subsequent studies revealed that this flourishing town was situated on the banks of the Saraswati which once flowed from this part of the Rajasthan desert.



About two decades ago, scientists at Central Arid Zone Research Institute (CAZRI) at Jodhpur launched a project to track down the traces. They concluded that the ancient channels were a dead river that could well be Saraswati. Interestingly, here, the ancient texts and the geographical history of the region were constant bases of reference of the studies.



Analyses of images earlier taken by the American satellite Landsat in the 1970’s clearly showed the presence of underground water in a definitive pattern in the Jaisalmer region. As part of the project, then, underground water researchers were asked to dig bore wells at places from where this lost river used to flow. They selected Chandan Lathi near Jaisalmer for this purpose.



To the surprise of researchers, the water found after digging the bore wells at places on the course of the river was not only sweet but available in plenty. Encouraged by this discovery, they dug two dozen bore well in the area, from where the river used to flow, and in all of them they found sweet water.



A few years later Dr Vakankar, a noted historian, as part his Itihas Sanklan Yojna, visited this and other sites linked with the river. Together with another expert Moropant Pingle, he concluded that the Saraswati used to flow from this part of Rajasthan, Sirsa in Haryana, Bhatinda in Punjab and Srigangangar district in Rajasthan.



With the Government indicating a shift in its position, it remains to be seen whether the research work by central agencies that had come to a near halt, will now resume.

[ramana]

Reply to above article:



From Pioneer:

EDITS | Wednesday, January 27, 2010





ASI’s illogical denial



Ashok Mehta



This refers to Rajesh Singh’s article, “Saraswati flows on in ASI record” (January 10). Please excuse me for being blunt, but Mr Singh has been taken for a ride by the Archaeological Survey of India. He has heaped appreciation on the ASI for collecting evidence about the existence of the Saraswati River. However, if any organisation deserves credit, it is the Indian Space Research Organisation and not the ASI. It is only after ISRO first mapped the river through satellite images that researchers wrote two definitive articles — “New findings on the course of the River Saraswati” (published in Journal of ISRO Vol 32 No 1, 2004) and “Course of the Vedic river Saraswati as deciphered from latest satellite data” (published in Puratatva, the ASI bulletin, 2005-2006) — about the ancient river.



After having submitted an application under the RTI Act to get details of its discoveries about the river, lSRO supplied me with copies of the two articles mentioned above which confirmed the existence of the river right from the end of the ice age to about 2000 BC when the river disappeared due to the great drought which lasted for over 200 years.



Based on the information given to me by ISRO, I wrote an article titled, “When Saraswati turned real”, that was published in The Pioneer on May 7, 2008. I had mentioned in that article that in reply to my RTI application, the ASI had shown complete lack of knowledge about the Saraswati and had given vague responses. In fact, I had received a telephone call from one deputy director of ASI. He had told me that the ASI was not aware of the two articles on Saraswati referred to above. Further, in reply to my question whether the ASI had accepted the findings reported in the two articles, the latter said that it was not in a position to accept or reject any finding based on various research activities carried out by different scholars unless and until a ‘consensus’ is reached. :rotfl:



The existence of the Saraswati River is a fact. There is also no doubt about its course and about its disappearance in 2000 BC. Unfortunately, the ASI is not willing to accept this position.

[ramana]

Indus script enigma



Archaelogy Magazine.

"Unicorn" seals, like this one from Mohenjo-Daro in Pakistan, are among the most distinctive Indus artifacts. Though it has only eight symbols, the inscription is long by Indus standards. (Copyright J.M. Kenoyer, Courtesy Dept. of Archaeology and Museums, Govt. of Pakistan)

Insider: The Indus Enigma

Volume 63 Number 2, March/April 2010

by Samir S. Patel



The elusive true nature of an ancient script inspires passionate debate





This article could be used to build a model of the English language. It would be imperfect--the text is short and the content specialized--but it would probably show that this collection of simple symbols encodes a spoken language, even if an alien observer was unable to decipher it. Written language has rules, which can be revealed through mathematical analysis, that make it understandable and grant it almost infinite communicative power. The mathematical modeling of natural language, known as computational linguistics, is the latest battleground in one of the most contentious scholarly, and often not-so-scholarly, debates left to us by the ancient world: the nature of the Indus script, short series of symbols that appear on a variety of small artifacts from the sophisticated and wide-ranging Indus civilization in South Asia around 4,000 years ago. We don't know what the symbols mean--in fact, we don't know whether the "script" encodes language at all or is a kind of symbol system, like heraldry or signs in an airport.



Undeciphered ancient texts are archaeology at its most mysterious and romantic, but the Indus is more than a maddening intellectual puzzle. Knowing the nature of the script and understanding its signs will change our view of the earliest civilizations, but it is also a matter of modern identity--many South Asians, from rickshaw drivers to politicians, have pet theories--and a source of equal measures of academic frustration, nationalistic fervor, and raw emotion. The last decade has seen cooperation among scholars, as well as new theories and discoveries. But it has also seen accusations of racism and scientific bias, name-calling, and even threats.



Samir S. Patel is a senior editor at ARCHAEOLOGY.

[ramana]

Looks like Uty of Chicago has an upcoming seminar on Indus and Mesopotamia.



Harappa region was called Meluhha by the Akkadians ie Mesopotamia. There are refs to ships from Meluhaa. So the seminar could be talking about that.



Meantime Dr Iravatham Mahadevan wrote



Meluhaa and Agastya



And a synopsis of the Sarasvati Civlization:



Intro to Sarasvati Civilization

[ramana]

Anybody know Russian?







Link:

http://rapidshare.com/files/392859486/Dr...a_djvu.rar



The book is written in 1997 and yet has lots of pictures about Indus civilization.



Dont know the text but is worth the pictures.

[ramana]

Parpola claims a Dravidian link to the Indus script!



Dravidian Solution to Indus Script Problem



Lecture at the Chennai Tamil Conference. PDF 35 pages long.



Can we have some tight analysis please. Thanks, ramana

[ramana]

Anyone read this author's book"



Jeyakumar Ramaswami



He has a different view of the Indus Valley Civilization.

[ravicv]

[quote name='ramana' date='04 August 2009 - 11:42 AM' timestamp='1249414452' post='100130']

From Hindu, 4 August 2009



<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Indian-led team seeks to unlock secrets of Indus script

Washington (PTI): <b>A team of researchers, led by an Indian, is using mathematics and computer science to piece together information about the still-unknown script of the Indus Valley civilization, dating back to 4,000 years</b>.



The study shows <b>distinct patterns in the symbols' placement in sequences and creates a statistical model for the unknown language.



"The statistical model provides insights into the underlying grammatical structure of the Indus script," said Rajesh Rao,</b> the lead author of the study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.



He said such a model can be valuable for decipherment, "because any meaning ascribed to a symbol must make sense in the context of other symbols that precede or follow it."



Nobody has yet been able to deciphere the Indus script. <b>The symbols are found on tiny seals, tablets and amulets, left by people inhabiting the Indus Valley from about 2600 to 1900 B.C. Each artifact is inscribed with a sequence that is typically five to six symbols long, said a release by the University of Washington.</b>



According to calculations, "the order of symbols is meaningful; taking one symbol from a sequence found on an artifact and changing its position produces a new sequence that has a much lower probability of belonging to the hypothetical language."



"The finding that the Indus script may have been versatile enough to represent different subject matter in <b>West Asia </b>is provocative. :?: This finding is hard to reconcile with the claim that the script merely represents religious or political symbols," said Mr. Rao, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Washington.



<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->



Someone contact him and send him a link to this forum and page.

[/quote]



Good on Rao and his team! They're placing some of Panini's concepts on structure, grammar and semantics within the context of 21st Century science.

[ravicv]

RE: UPA now admits Saraswati existed



Good! Now they have to admit that the earth revolves around the sun and not the "son" or SG! That will be a difficult task. Don't these people know that the Atharva Veda explicitly states that it was written on the banks of the Saraswati, which was the great river (often called a "Samudra" in some ancient texts) whose tributaries were the other two great rivers-the Sutlej and the Yamuna. Going by recent satellite data, it appears likely that the present day Rann of Kutch was the delta of the Saraswati river and referring to the Saraswat as a "mythological" or "fabled" river is tantamount to fraud and disinformation!