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An archaeological site dating back about 5,500 years and believed to be older than Mohenjodaro has been found in Sindh province. A team of 22 archaeologists found semi-precious and precious stones and utensils made of clay, copper and other metals during an excavation in Lakhian Jo Daro in Sukkur district on Thursday. “At present, we can say that it is older than Mohenjodaro”, Ghulam Mustafa Shar, the director of the Lakhian Jo Daro project, said. Shar said the remains of a “faience” or tin-glazed pottery factory had been found at the site. It is believed to be of the era...

From Indus Valley to coastal Tamil Nadu T.S. Subramanian Strong resemblances between graffiti symbols in Tamil Nadu and the Indus script Continuity of tradition: Megalithic pots with arrow-work graffiti found at Sembiankandiyur village in Nagapattinam district. CHENNAI: In recent excavations in Nagapattinam district in Tamil Nadu, megalithic pottery with graffiti symbols that have a strong resemblance to a sign in the Indus script have been found. Indus script expert Iravatham Mahadevan says that what is striking about the arrow-mark graffiti on the megalithic pottery found at Sembiyankandiyur and Melaperumpallam villages is that they are always incised twice and together, just...

Distributing water DR. T. V. PADMA How did the people of the Indus manage to water their cities? In Indus cities, each house or group of houses had a private well, made with wedge-shaped bricks that slotted together in a cylindrical shape strong enough to withstand the weight of water when the well was full. This is not a simple matter, and required calculation — otherwise a well could collapse once it was full of water. How did the Indus people keep wells and bathing facilities watertight? First, they used bricks that fitted together tightly. Second, they coated the outer...

‘Indus Valley civilization was more varied and wider’ Abhay Mishra New Delhi, March 5: Indus Valley civilization was much more varied and wider than historians believed till date,” said Professor of Archaeology and Heritage Management, Boston University, Mohammed Rafique Mughal on Monday. "Extensive exploration and excavation of sites in the upper Indus Valley and the lower Sindh have revealed a widespread cultural phenomena which existed at that time," said Mughal, delivering the Dr I H Qureshi Memorial Lecture, the Harappan civilization, at St Stephen's College. Claiming that field researches at Harappan sites—both in India and Pakistan —are leading to fresh...

Panaji, Feb 07: Renowned German Indologist and scientist of religion, Egbert Richter Ushanas today claimed that he has unravelled the mystery of Indus Valley scripts by decoding major seals and tablets found during various archaeological excavations. "Already 1,000-odd seals are decoded and of them, 300-odd are printed in monography -- the message of Indus seals and tablets," stated Richter, who has also decoded tablets from Easter Island in Pacific Ocean and disc of Phaistos on Island of Crete in Meditarrenean Sea. "All the seals are based on Vedas -- Rig Veda and Atharva Veda," Richter told a news agency here....

On the Presence of Non-Chinese at Anyang by Kim Hayes It has now become clear that finds of chariot remains, metal knives and axes of northern provenance, and bronze mirrors of western provenance in the tombs of Anyang indicate that the Shang had at least indirect contact with people who were familiar with these things. Who were these people? Where did they live? When did they arrive? Following the discovery of the Tarim Mummies, we now know that the population of the earliest attested cultures of what is present-day Xinjiang were of northwestern or western derivation. According to the craniometric...

The discovery of a Neolithic stone celt, a hand-held axe, with the Indus script on it at Sembian-Kandiyur in Tamil Nadu is, according to Iravatham Mahadevan, "a major discovery because for the first time a text in the Indus script has been found in the State on a datable artefact, which is a polished neolithic celt." He added: "This confirms that the Neolithic people of Tamil Nadu shared the same language family of the Harappan group, which can only be Dravidian. The discovery provides the first evidence that the Neolithic people of the Tamil country spoke a Dravidian language." Mr....

In ancient India, scholars used to pass on traditional knowledge orally down the generations. Later on, a written tradition also existed using a variety of writing media from granite slabs to copper plates, tree barks and most importantly palm leaves. The manuscripts chiefly written in three different scripts called the Tamil Brahmi, Vatteluttu and Drantha scripts are treasure troves holding answers to the age-old era. The National Mission for Manuscripts, the federal Ministry of Culture department together with the state's Development, Culture and Religious Endowment department have started a survey aimed at locating and documenting such historical manuscripts possessing literary,...

The earliest settlement in the subcontinent with evidence of agriculture and domestication at Mehrgarh — now in Pakistan — is about 9,000 years old. This coincides with the peak intensification of the monsoon, the study said... The Arabian Sea sediments and other geological studies show that the monsoon began to weaken about 5,000 years ago. The dry spell, lasting several hundred years, might have led people to abandon the Indus cities and move eastward into the Gangetic plain, which has been an area of higher rainfall than the northwestern part of the subcontinent... About 1,700 years ago, the monsoon began...

LONDON (Reuters) - Iran, at loggerheads with the West over its nuclear ambitions, has put tension to one side and lent a treasure trove of artefacts from Ancient Persia to a new exhibition at the British Museum. Organisers were concerned the exhibition may not happen at all after hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected the Islamic state's president in June. "We certainly were worried for a time that we wouldn't receive any objects," said curator John Curtis. "But happily that wasn't the case, and everybody decided to go ahead with the exhibition." "Forgotten Empire: the world of Ancient Persia," which opens...

...my friends like Asko Parpola, Professor Mahadevan, and the Russians Professors who have worked on this subject. They have all been working on the assumption that the language of the Indus people was Dravidian, that the people who build the Indus Civilization are Dravidian. But unfortunately I, as well as my friend Prof. B.B. Lal in India, have not been able to agree with this... On the other hand, I have been talking to Prof. Parpola that certainly this is an agglutinative language, there is no doubt. That has been accepted by all of us. Dravidian is an agglutinative language....

'Lost river' could rewrite history books February 19 2002 at 08:33AM Madras India, - The discovery of an ancient city on the seabed off India's western coast has scientists salivating at the prospect of a fundamental rewrite in the chronology of ancient human society. Preliminary tests have suggested the site in the Gulf of Cambay off Gujarat state could date as far back as 7 500 BC, several thousand years older than what were previously known to be the first significant urban settlements. The discovery was made purely by chance last year as oceanographers from the National Institute of ...

The winds of change are not always obvious. Analysts at the RAND Corporation lay out 10 international-security developments that aren't getting the attention they deserve in this month's issue of The Atlantic magazine: 1. The West Bank Wall 2. A Shrinking Russia 3. The Hindu-Muslim Divide 4. AIDS and African Armies 5. The Tehran-New Delhi Axis 6. Anti-Satellite Attack 7. Defense-Industry Goliaths 8. The Aircraft Carrier Shortage 9. The Indus Water Fight 10. Urban Warfare ...to which we add: 11. China's Race Into the Oil Market; and 12. Europe's looming pension crisis That's an even dozen via our blog post....

Decoding Indus Valley script TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ WEDNESDAY, JUNE 19, 2002 12:57:48 AM ] ALLAHABAD: Director, Robertson Medical Institute and Ayurveda Ratna Gopalji Agarwal on Tuesday said he had deciphered the much-elusive Indus script which, he claimed, would prove historic in the realm of world history and civilisation. In his latest discovery Mysteries of the world history unfolded, Agarwal told Times News Network that deciphering the Indus script would lead to genetic and radical changes in the current world history books. He said his discovery had brought to surface mysteries shrouding Indus archaeological finds. He said interpretation of all...