Mehrgarh… The Lost Civilisation [Part 4 of 4]

MEHRGARH

 THE DRIFT TOWARD MAIN

INDUS VALLEY CIVILISATION

by Mahmood Mahmood

One amazing bit of info about this town is that in 7000 BC it had a population of 25000 people, which was the number of people living in the entire Egypt in 7000BC. [8]

Mehrgarh… The Lost Civilisation [Part 3 of 4]

Mehrgarh figurines

LINK BETWEEN OUR PAST AND PRESENT

by Mahmood Mahmood

There are indications that bones were used in making tools for farming, textile, and there is good amount of evidence on use of cotton even in that period. The skeletons found at the site indicated that the height of people of that era was larger than that of the later periods. The architecture of the area at that time was well developed. Rice was the staple food for those people and there were also indications of trade activities.

Most of the ruins at Mehrgarh are buried under alluvium deposits, though some structures could be seen eroding on the surface. Currently, the excavated remains at the site comprise a complex of large compartmental mud-brick structures. Function of these subdivided units, built of hand-formed plano-convex mud bricks, is still not clear but it is thought that many were used probably for storage, rather than residential purposes. A couple of mounds also contain formal cemeteries, parts of which have been excavated.

Though Mehrgarh was abandoned at the time of the emergence of the literate urbanized phase of the Indus civilization [6] around Moenjodaro, Harappa etc., the development illustrates its synchronization with the civilization's subsistence patterns, as well as its craft and trade. It also shows that the sequence of civilization was not broken and the flow of civilization kept moving into the Indus Civilization. The similarity of Indus Civilization to Mehrgarh in many respects shows the linkages and relationships among the Mehrgarh and later periods, but the important thing is that between the Mehrgarh and Indus civilization in Punjab and Sind side respectively, Suleman Range and Kirthar Range separate the Baluchistan Plateau and the other geographical areas.

Though the idea to consider them as one geographical unit appears to be premature at this time, yet the geography and terrain of the area are contributory factors in the development of the patterns of civilization. Another fact which needs serious consideration is that in Suleman and Kirthar Range there are some historical passes which are still used by the people to cross the range to move from one side to other sides. The most famous in the Suleman range is the route between Kandahar and India from times immemorial and it was the same route adopted by Babur, the Founder of Mughal dynasty in India in 1520’s.There are still some minor passages between Baluchistan and Punjab scattered over the long area of Suleman Range. In Rajanpur district near Atari there is a passage which locals still use to go towards the other side of the mountains.

The habitation of Mehrgarh has been divided into seven periods, the first being the Pre-Pottery (aceramic) Neolithic period that dates to circa 7000 B.C. or even earlier. The site was abandoned between 2000 and 2500 B.C. during a period of contact with the Indus Civilization and then reused as a burial ground for some time after 2000 BC.

Perhaps the most important feature of Mehrgarh is the fact that one can witness its gradual development from an early village society to a regional centre that covered an area of 200 hectares at its height. In the course of this development, a huge platform that may reflect some form of authority was constructed at the site. Mehrgarh was also a centre of manufacture for various figurines and pottery that were distributed to surrounding regions.

The Mehrgarh periods are technically divided for the ease and understanding of the cultural and civilization’s way of development with reference to the site under study. Usually they are not linked to the overall way of the development of the other areas; the terms are localized and technical one. This is the reason the alluvial levels at Mehrgarh describe the different levels of the different phases of the Mehrgarh civilization showing a long period of habitation.

The presence of bison (wild ox) in Mehrgarh and resembling terracotta artifacts in the Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa bears great similarities. This indicates the possible transfer of technological and symbolic knowhow from Mehrgarh to later Indus civilization. This bison and its related cart are still used in the areas of Sindh and Punjab for transportation at local level. The bison carts terracotta toys were also found in other Indus civilization sites. The gypsies still make these Indus like bison carts and in childhood, I used to buy them when the gypsies came in our area to sell these toys and bison of shapes just like found in Mehrgarh and other Indus valley sites.

Some specific details of the different periods of Mehrgarh are: [7]

MEHRGARH PERIOD - I

Mehrgarh Period-I started in 7000BC and goes up to 5500 BC. It was Neolithic and aceramic (i.e., without the use of pottery). The earliest farming in the area was developed by semi-nomadic people using plants such as wheat and barley and animals like sheep, goat and cattle. The settlement was established with simple mud buildings with four internal subdivisions. Numerous burials have been found, many with elaborate goods such as baskets, stone and bone tools, beads, bangles, pendants and occasionally animal sacrifices, with more goods left with burials of males.

Ornaments of sea shell, limestone, turquoise, lapis lazuli, sandstone and polished copper have been found, along with simple figurines of women and animals. A single ground stone axe was discovered in a burial, and several more were obtained from the surface. These ground stone axes are the earliest to come from a stratified context in South Asia.

MEHRGARH PERIOD - II AND PERIOD - III

Mehrgarh Period II: 5500 - 4800 BC and Mehrgarh Period-III: 4800 - 3500 BC were ceramic Neolithic (i.e., pottery was now in use) and later.

The bison chalcolithic: Much evidence of manufacturing activity has been found and more advanced techniques were used. Glazed faience beads were produced and terracotta figurines became more detailed. Figurines of females were decorated with paint and had diverse hairstyles and ornaments. Two flexed burials were found in period-II with a covering of red ochre on the body. The amount of burial goods decreased over time, becoming limited to ornaments and with more goods left with burials of females. The first button seals were produced from terracotta and bone and had geometric designs. Technologies included stone and copper drills, updraft kilns, large pit kilns and copper melting crucibles. There is further evidence of long-distance trade in period-II, important as an indication of this is the discovery of several beads of lapis lazuli originally from Badakshan.

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Mehrgarh, The Neolithic Period

FROM 7th Mill. BC

These houses were builyt by Mehgarh dwellers c. 8000 years BC

by C. Jarrige

    Here follows an account of Mehrgarh by pioneer French archeologist who explored the area from time to time, and was first to excavate the Mehrgarh site. Let us now see what does world’s top most researcher on Mehrgarh say about the archeological excavations at Mehrgarh — a breakthrough that bestows a totally singular position to Indus Valley Civilisation — the first civilized, urban settlement on face of this earth.

     In the fourth millennium and in the first half of the third, the Mehrgarh potters and those from other parts of Balochistan alike became known for producing very high quality ceramics which were either exported or copied in eastern Iran, southern Afghanistan, and even as far as present-day Tadjikistan, notably at the Sarazm site. These periods are also distinguished by the manufacture of human figurines of a high aesthetic quality, whose attributes seem to suggest references to an underlying mythology still unclear to us.

      Nausharo

    The Nausharo excavation, 6 km from Mehrgarh as the crow flies, revealed a dwelling-site contemporaneous and identical to the Mehrgarh, one between 3000 and 2500 BC and another, divided into three periods between 2500 and 1900 BC, characteristic of the urban civilization of the valley of the Indus, which is also referred to as the Harappan civilization, from the name of the eponymous site of Harappa. This excavation of Nausharo allows the Indus civilisation to be linked to the cultures which preceded it since the Neolithic and the ancient Chalcolithic times. The excavation of the Harappan layers led to the uncovering of a settlement which met the criteria of the urban civilization of the Indus, with discrete rectangular zones, and with the existence of baths and hydraulic features. The study of Harappan ceramics in Naushara has brought to light a clear stylistic evolution over time, thus contradicting the theories claiming that Harappan pottery had remained static for several centuries.

   Starting from a period of about 2100 BC, which corresponds to phase-IV of Nausharo, ceramics and other objects begin to appear in the Bolan basin which are comparable to those from sites in Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and the east of Iran. Some of these objects had been found previously, notably on the upper levels of the great civilization sites of the Indus, such as Mohenjo-daro and Chanhu-daro. It had been thought that these were in fact remains which indicated the arrival of invaders from the West and from the North-West. Thanks to the Nausharo dig and to the discovery of necropolises (the Mehrgarh VIII cemetery) and of various sites on the edge of Nausharo or Mehrgarh, it is now clear that the “exotic” objects belong to groups who have co-existed with the “Harappan” populations, evidently peaceably. It can even be asserted that all these objects are an indication of the development of very important trading activities whose agents between the Indus valley and Mesopotamia were groups who controlled the routes for inter-Iranian exchanges around 2000 BC.

    Pirak

   Between 1800 and 1900 BC, the urban civilization of the Indus disappeared to survive, in derivative forms, only in the territory of present-day India. The excavation of Pirak, a settlement of about ten hectares inhabited between 1800 and 600 BC, reveals the beginning of a new age. Several miniatures of horsemen and horses and of two-humped camels – animals unknown in the Indus civilization – symbolize important changes in society. The emergence of horsemen at Pirak, just like the discovery of horse skeletons at the time in the Swat in the north of Pakistan, is to be considered in the context of the arrival of new populations belonging, perhaps, to the very first Indo-Aryan groups mixing with a local community with an increasingly diversified agricultural economy. It has been noted that in fact the cultivation of rice, which demands the use of irrigation techniques, became predominant.

   As for the structures where the interior walls are punctuated with rows of symmetrical marks, sometimes on four levels: these represent a style which was still found a few years ago in houses, particularly in Hindu areas, in this region. About 1200 BC, iron utensils and weapons would emerge.

  Since the end of the expedition in 2000 to the Neolithic part of the Mehrgarh site, fieldwork has been halted to allow for deeper analysis of date and to write up publications. In 2003 there was an expedition to study the material at Mehrgarh, and the dig was scheduled to resume in 2004.

Concluded.

Courtesy: Guimet.com

Mehrgarh, The Lost Civilisation [Part 2 of 4]

Female figurine from Mehrgarh excavation (6000-3000 BC)

INNOVATION: RIGHT FROM THE START

The artifacts from Mehrgarh are far more advanced and developed as compared to those obtained from excavations in Turkey and Middle East especially Jericho.

• The most unique discovery is the first known origin of the dental surgery and related medicinal activities exercised in Mehrgarh area. The discovery proves the great innovative mind and developmental level of those people about 9000 years ago.
  
• Mehrgarh was also a centre of manufacture for various figurines and pottery that were distributed to surrounding regions. These products are of a high quality given the circumstances and the time they were fabricated.
  
• No other civilisation in any other part of the world existed then; what to speak of a level of perfection in the art and craft elsewhere.

                        

by Mahmood Mahmood

The archaeological sequence at the site of Mehrgarh is over 11 meters deep, spanning the period between the seventh and third millennium BC. The site represents a classic archaeological tell site that is an artificial mound created by generations of superimposed mud brick structures. Its excavators have proposed the following chronology:

I-A: Aceramic Neolithlic c.6500-6000 BC Mound MR3 

            I-B: Ceramic Neolithic c.6000-5500 BC Mound MR3 

            II: c.5500-4500 BC Mound MR4 

            III: Early Chalcolithic c.4500-3500 BC Mound MR2

            IV-VII: Late Chalcolithic c.3500-2500 BC Mound MR1

The earliest Neolithic evidence for occupation at the site has been identified at mound MR3, but during the Neolithic-Chalcolithic period the focus shifted to mound MR4. The focus continued to shift between localities at the site but by 2600 BC it had relocated at the site of Nausharo, some six kilometers to the south. During this period the settlement was transformed from a cluster of small mud brick storage units with evidence of the on-going domestication of cattle and barley to a substantial Bronze Age village at the centre of its own distinctive craft zone.

The absence of early residential structures has been interpreted by some as further evidence of the site’s early occupation by mobile groups possibly travelling every season through the nearby pass.

Although Mehrgarh was abandoned by the time of the emergence of the literate urbanized phase of the Indus Civilization, its development illustrates the development of the civilization’s subsistence patterns as well as its craft and trade specialization. Following its abandonment it was covered by alluvial silts until it was exposed following a flash flood in the 1970s. The French Archaeological Mission to Pakistan excavated the site for thirteen years between 1974 and 1986, and they resumed their work in 1996. The most recent trenches have astonishingly well preserved remains of mud brick structures proving the urban streak of this civilization.

Mehrgarh is a Neolithic (7000-3200 BC) site on the Kachi plain of Balochistan, Pakistan, and one of the earliest sites with evidence of farming (wheat and barley) and herding (cattle, sheep and goats) in south Asia. The site is located on the principal route between what is now Afghanistan and the Indus Valley.

The earliest settled portion of Mehrgarh was in an area called MR.3, in the northeast corner of the 495-acre occupation. It is a small farming and pastoralist village dated between 7000-5500 BC, with mud brick houses and granaries. The early Mehrgarh residents used local copper ore, basket containers lined with bitumen, and an array of bone tools. They grew six-row barley, einkorn and emmer wheat, jujubes and dates.

Sheep, goats and cattle were herded at Mehrgarh beginning during this early period.

Later periods included craft activities like flint knapping, tanning, and bead production; also, a significant level of metal working. The site was occupied continuously until about 2600 BC, when it was abandoned.

Mehrgarh was discovered and excavations begun by a French team led by Jean-François Jarrige; the site was excavated continuously between 1974 and 1986.

Mehrgarh is the centre of the first known developed place of civilization in its advanced form as compared to the contemporary and the predecessor human settlements around the world. The town of Jericho, mentioned earlier, has not got the level of sophistication and developmental level attained as that in Mehrgarh. The symbolic artifacts retrieved from Mehrgarh are far more advanced and more developed as compared to the artifacts retrieved from Turkish sites and Middle Eastern sites especially Jericho.

The Mehrgarh site has the unique tradition of burying the dead with the pitchers being used as the supporting material along with the dead person’s body. This is the most unique cultural legacy of the Mehrgarh civilization for the area of Pakistan as I myself saw in late 1980’s in a village Kalyan near Lahore in district Kasur, that, while burying the dead person, about 8-10 pitchers of average size were placed over the dead body and thus the  burial process was completed.[3] This unique similarity to 8000 years old tradition is the direct proof of the deep rooted traditional affinity of the Pakistani area, which is quite in contrast to the   later Hindu and Magian periods when the dead were burnt and placed under the sun respectively. (These are still followed in the Hindu and Parsi community of the subcontinent).

It is interesting to note, however, that the male figurines have turbans — much like those worn by the inhabitants of Balochistan today. These turbans are not only found in Baluchistan, they are still worn in the rural areas of Punjab.

One of the most unique discoveries of the Mehrgarh civilisation is the first known origin of dental surgery and related medicinal activities in the area. This medicinal and different aspect of Mehrgarh shows the great innovative and developmental level of the people of the area about 9000 years ago. According to a report in the April 6, 2006 issue of Nature, Italian researchers working at a cemetery site in the Neolithic town of Mehrgarh discovered drill holes on at least eleven molars from people buried in the MR3 cemetery. Light microscopy showed the holes were conical, cylindrical or trapezoidal in shape. A few had concentric rings showing drill bit marks; and a few had some evidence for decay. No filling material was noted; but tooth wear on the drill marks indicate that each of these individuals continued to live on after the drilling was completed.

Dental caries (or cavities) are the result of sugars and starches in the food we eat. Hunter-gatherers, who rely on animal protein, do not generally have cavities; cavities associated with the use of roots and tubers, or starchy grains.[4]. Researchers point out that only four of the eleven teeth contained clear evidence of decay associated with drilling; however, the drilled teeth are restricted to molars in the back of both lower and upper jaws, and thus are not likely to have been done for decorative purposes. Flint drill bits are known from Mehrgarh, long associated with the bead industry there. The researchers conducted experiments and discovered that using a flint drill bit attached to a bow-drill, it required under a minute to produce similar holes in human enamel.
Picture on left, above: Drilled, maxillary left second molar from an adult male (MR3 90) from Neolithic Mehrgarh.

L. Bondioli (Museum L. Pigorini, Rome) & R. Macchiarelli (Univ. of Poitiers).

The dental techniques have only been discovered on about .3% of the population (11 teeth out of a total of 3880 examined from 225 individuals studied to date), hence it was a rare occurrence, and, appears to have been a short-lived experiment as well. Although the MR3 cemetery contains younger skeletal material (into the Chalcolithic), no evidence for tooth drilling has been found later than 6500 BC. [5]

Jarrige carried out extensive archaeological explorations and investigations under the French Archaeological Mission in Kachi area.
The mission has been doing exploratory work in Balochistan for nearly three-and-a-half decades. According to Jarrige, Mehrgarh and its associated sites provide irrevocable evidence of considerable cultural development in early antiquity as far back as 8,000 years.

The Bird shaped Figurines from Mehrgarh

Many beautiful ceramics were found at the site in Baluchistan, continues Jarrige, and were believed to be of the era as early as eighth millennium BC. The French archaeologist further said that the studies suggested the findings at Mehrgarh linked this area to the Indus civilization. 

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Origin of civilisation

FROM MEHRGARH TO MOENJODARO AND HARAPPA

The King Priest from the Indus Valley Civilisation

by Nayyar Hashmey

THE BEGINNING

 Samuel Huntington, (who died last year) in his treatise ‘Clash of Civilisations’ propounds a hypothesis of two different worlds, two civilisations opposing each other, and who, said he, sooner or later are going to clash against each other. Western civilization with its democratic institutions, liberalism and a respect of law is bound to come into conflict with Islamic civilisation. A civilisation based on tenets of Islam according to Huntington will be the next enemy of the West. Consequent to this hypothesis, a new charter for NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) which was principally constituted to fight out Communism, was chalked out. How far this concept is relevant in today’s world, is a debatable question. No wonder it’s being contested all over, but my present post is not about this clash of civilisations but civilisation itself.

‘Civilisation’ is derived from the word ‘civil’ which itself means development of humanity’s social life during different periods of history.  From the very start, man’s life as Homo sapiens, in the Old Stone Age, was more on an ‘animalistic’ pattern than human. No written language had he, living in caves, stone was the only element man knew; the element that played a deciding role in his existence, knowledge of fire and metals came much later.

Civilisation brought the stone man from a sate of savagery and ignorance to a higher one by education, moral standards and methods of good governance.


ANTHROPLOGY

Earliest human development started about 2 million years ago. Generally termed as the Old Stone Age, the Paleolithic period had the longest phase in human history.  Roughly coextensive with the Pleistocene Geological Era, its most outstanding feature was development of Homo sapiens (the man). The Pleistocene Geological Era is spread over 65-37 million years; the time our earth and its habitat started taking a shape suitable for early human life. A monumental withdrawal of seas from the major part of this planet took place, various volcanic forms came up and the Rockies emerged in Americas. Archaic life forms like animals, birds and plants developed. In such habitat the Paleolithic man generally lived as nomadic hunter and gatherer who sheltered in caves, used fire and fashioned stone tools.

The Old Stone Age was followed by Middle Paleolithic, associated with Neanderthal man (type of early man existing 100,000 to 40,000 years ago). The Middle Stone Age or Mesolithic Period Cultures included gradual domestication of plants and animals, formation of settled communities, use of the bow, development of delicate stone microliths and the pottery. After Mesolithic period came the Neolithic Period or the New Stone Age, which started with the retreat of the glaciers (ca. 10, 000 years ago). The time period and cultural contents of Neolithic Period varied according to different geographic locations on the earth. 


The earliest known Neolithic culture developed in SW Asia between 8,000 and 600 BC. People lived in settled villages, cultivated grains and domesticated animals, developed pottery and did weaving. From this phase evolved urbanization of the Bronze Age. In S.E. Asia, a distinct type of Neolithic culture cultivated rice, before 2000 BC. By now man had gained fair amount of knowledge on metals and some sort of industries too had developed. In the ancient region of W. Asia around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, on the plains rendered fertile by canals, settlements were found. These settlements probably date back to 5000 BC. Since these settlements were the earliest found, hence the area was termed ‘the cradle of civilization’.

Later in the southern part of the same region (Mesopotamia), urban settlements arose in city states like Erech, and Ur. Here Akkad emerged (ca.2300 BC) as the region’s first empire followed by Babylonia and Assyria.

Till recently it was taken as universal truth, that the Indus Valley Civilisation emerged after the Mesopotamians—somewhere between 3000–1000 BC. However, elaborate archeological work by researchers like Jarrige, Cucina and Dani totally altered this picture. Their works revealed the startling fact that the IVC people started building their cities much earlier than the Sumerians and Mesopotamians. Their studies traced the origin of IVC to excavations in Mehrgarh, Balochistan to a period as far back as 9000 years BC. Following timeline shows the development of human settlements and the IVC in Mehrgarh, from where it becomes evident that IVC which started in Mehgarh is by far the oldest one in history.

The Cultural Time line

Mehrgarh Culture	8000–3300 BC
Late Harappan Culture	1700–1300 BC
Vedic Period	1500– 500  BC
Iron Age Kingdoms	1200–700  BC
Maha Janapadas	700–300   BC
Magadha Empire	684– 26   BC
Maurya Dynasty	321–184  BC
Middle Kingdoms	230 BC–1279AD
Satavahana Empire	230 BC–199AD
Kushan Empire	60–240    AD
Gupta Empire	240–550
Chola Empire	848–1279
Islamic Sultanates	1206–1596
Delhi Sultanate	1206–1526
Deccan Sultanates	1490–1596
Hoysala Empire	1040–1346
Vijayanagara Empire	1336–1565
Mughal Era	1526–1707
Maratha Empire	1674–1818
Colonial Era	1757–1947

 It should be recalled that before these studies, the first agricultural villages in these regions did not seem to date from any time earlier that 4000 BC. Their emergence was credited to colonies arriving from either the Iranian plateau or from southern central Asia. But today the work at Mehrgarh has enabled a complete re-evaluation of the archaeology of these regions and particularly of the antecedents to the large urban settlement of the Indus valley.

Mehrgarh’s archaeological area spans nearly 300 hectares, containing traces of successive settlements since the aceramic Neolithic period (the end of the 8th and the beginning of the 7^th millennium BC) until about 2600 BC, before the beginning of the second phase of Indus civilization. Evidence of nine levels of building, with nine corresponding levels of burial grounds, has been found in the Neolithic aceramic (without the use of pottery) sector (phase I). Houses of crude rectangular brick, some decorated with paintings on the external walls, were built to a roughly similar design. The agricultural economy was dependent on the cultivation of barley, but the staple meat diet was provided by hunting, even though the beginning of the domestication of goats was recorded at this time.

During this same period, livestock farming overtook hunting and not only was the Indic zebu (Bos indicus) domesticated, the farmed variety became more common than the wild. Palynological studies have shown that plant growth was less lush then, than what exists today. The excavation of nearly 360 tombs has enabled a detailed study of funerary effects, which provides a wealth of anthropological and social indicators.

The funerary effects include utilitarian objects, but also especially an abundance of ornaments of a quality which bears witness to the skill and energy of craftsmen using materials from relatively faraway regions, notably several seashells, lapis lazuli, turquoise, steatites and calcites. The dead were sometimes buried with tarred baskets at their feet. Amongst the layers at the end of phase I were found ornaments with copper beads, one of which still carried the trace of a cotton thread, the oldest known example of this fibre being used.

With the dawn of phase II-A, about 6000 years BC, the first pottery made from unrefined clay began to appear. The development of agricultural activity is clearly borne out by the presence of impressive collections of buildings containing crates and partitions, identifiable in many cases as being used for the storage of cereal crops. In the phase II-B, pottery becomes more refined. But it is not until a little after 5000 BC that geometric designs painted onto increasingly elegant receptacles begin to appear.

The ancient chalcolithic period (phase-III), between 5000 BC and the first half of the 4^th millennium, is distinguished by remarkable advances in crafts and ceramics in particular.

Ceramics made from fine-quality clay, mounted on a turntable, are lavishly adorned with pictures of wild beasts and birds. Also noteworthy is the production of beads of steatite, baked and then varnished with a green copper-oxide glaze. Metallurgy progressed, and remains have been found of studios where lapis lazuli and turquoise were worked.