"Late Indus Valley Civilization was overcome by violence
"The Late Indus Valley Civilization (Cemetery H cultural layer, usually attributed to the Indoeuropean invasions) was, unlike in previous periods, quite violent, new evidence highlights.
Sadly for our aspiring propagandist, and rather humorously for the rest of us, the cited article posted to the National Geographic website -- "Surprising Discoveries From the Indus Civilization" -- makes no such claim."The evidence from the bones also highlights the arrival of many non-local men, who apparently married local women."
What Maju seems to have done is take the two separate studies on which the article is based and conflated their findings into a conclusion that serves his peculiar form of bigotry. The first study -- "A new approach to tracking connections between the Indus Valley and Mesopotamia: initial results of strontium isotope analyses from Harappa and Ur" -- found, somewhat surprisingly, that a Harappan cemetery contained the remains of males that were not originally from that ancient city, yet they were buried in association with obviously local women. The second study -- "A peaceful realm? Trauma and social differentiation at Harappa" -- examined the incidence of violence through time at Harappa and found that, not only did it increase, but by the time of the "Late Harappan Transitional phase", 1900-1700 BCE, the rate of violent head trauma was the highest recorded in prehistoric South Asia.
As can be seen from the quote, above, Maju juxtaposes these two findings to support his forgone conclusion -- "Late Indus Valley Civilization overcome by violence" -- and does so playing his usual childish games with chronology. "Late Indus Valley" and "Cemetery H" are sometimes used synonymously to denote the terminal era of the IVC but the actual Cemetery H, at Harappa, dates from around 1700 BCE, after the Late Harappan Transitional phase, the one that witnessed such a high incidence of violence. Maju's statement about the "arrival of many non-local males" seems to suggest that they might have been the perpetrators of that violence but, as the National Geographic article clearly states, the cemetery in which these males were found was used from "roughly 2550 to 2030" BCE, squarely within what is often called the "Mature Harappan" era, the high point in that civilization's illustrious history. The males to which he slyly attributes this increase in violence flourished at least a hundred years before the period in which violence reached its maximum and at least three-hundred years before Cemetery H.
As an agregator of the work of others, I suppose Maju performs a reasonably valuable service but, given such shameless dishonesty as this, his commentaries and interpretations are worse than useless.
"As an agregator of the work of others, I suppose Maju performs a reasonably valuable service but, given such shameless dishonesty as this, his commentaries and interpretations are worse than useless".
ReplyDeleteI agree 100%. I see I was wrong earlier when In said he was letting me comment again. I posted a comment concerning the Vietnamese discovery covered in the same post as the Harappan stuff. He has deleted it. If you want to get him angry (and if he hasn't banned you from commenting also) make a comment at the post concerning the features of the Vietnamese people of the time refered to here:
http://news.anu.edu.au/2013/05/01/clues-to-southeast-asian-civilisation-unearthed/
The bit he will hate is this:
"The discovery tells us that the Con Co Ngua people are likely descendants of the original colonisers of Southeast Asia and Australia. In fact, putting flesh back on their bones would reveal people that looked a lot like modern day indigenous Australians and Melanesians".
The reason he banned me was because I isnsisted he was wrong about the Mongoloid phenotype in SE Asia. This discovery proves I have been correct all along. He'll hate you and no doubt ban you from commenting. Might be a bit of fun.
This is only marginally related to this topic, but further to your comments at Dienekes on the Garden of Eden syndrome I wonder if you read Collin Welling's blog linked in Dienekes' post re. mt-DNA U:
ReplyDeletehttp://distantconnections.wordpress.com/25-2/
His link is with regard to the spread of the Indo-European languages. You may disagree with much of it but I'm sure you will find much of interest. He is definitely not of the Garden of Eden school. He specifically states:
"A natural way of conceptualizing these early IE demic advances and their relation to modern populations (~1,500 AD), is by means of the wave model. That is to say, a model which loosely likens, ancient IE migrations spreading east and west of the PC steppes, to an expanding ripple. Adding to this analogy, regions of the Eurasian steppes which had been passed by an early IE 'wave' had a good chance of experiencing additional population replacements, or later ripples, especially from people heavy in R-M417. There are, however, unique regions along the path of these waves which were far more likely to retain the genetic markers of these EWSP".
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ReplyDeleteI suspect these were the "white devils" themselves so they could hardly kill themselves off. Indus valley has little to do with modern india and probably little to do with modern pakistan, either.
ReplyDeleteGenetics of India don't show a specific Indian influece, it's just a mix of east asian and more western influences.
The scenario that seems likeliest is as the climate took a turn for the worse indus civilization and anatolia and much of the middle east had a great exodus and this had a big effect on europe and India.
Dude, Why you stopped blogging?.
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