Joe Shearer
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I do not hold much knowledge in this regards, can't really comment. I have no connections to anyone, i am from Gilgit-Hunza and surroundings to be specific.
Note: i did not mean to give an impression that Indian civilization is a poor background or etc, etc. Indus civilization has it's own history and it might be interconnected somehow, has to be...Indians cannot claim Indus civilization as theirs, when it clearly isn't. Majority of the areas, in fact much more than majority of the areas fall in areas part of Pakistan today.
Interesting.
I believe that the people of Gilgit, Hunza and the Pamir Emirates were closer to the Pathans, and are genetically distinct from the mass of south Asia. But this is from memory, and needs verification.
As far as the Indus Civilisation is concerned, there is a distinct gap between that and the successor cultures and civilisations. Nobody can claim to be culturally an heir to this. But that does not give the people who now live there a right to say that they 'own' the culture. They merely own the ticketing rights. Just as the Archaeological Survey of India owns the ticketing rights to the Taj Mahal.
In the 1990s, a new wave of scientific evidence, coming partly from satellite photos, geological study, archeological digs, and other anthropological finds began to seriously discredit the old myth. Once the rubble of false assumptions was cleared away, a far more simple scientific picture of the origins of ancient north Indian civilization began to emerge.
Professor Colin Renfrew, professor of archeology at Cambridge University, in his
Archeology and Language: The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins, (1988) gives evidence for Indo-Europeans in India as early as 6,000 BC. He comments: As far as I can see there is nothing in the Hymns of the Rigveda which demonstrates that the Vedic-speaking population were intrusive to the area: this comes rather 6 Origins of Vedic Civilization from a historical assumption about the ‘coming’ of the Indo-Europeans.3
Professor Schaffer at Case Western University writes in “Migration, Philology and
South Asian Archaeology” that there was an indigenous development of civilization in India going back to at least 6000 BC. He proposes that the Harappan or Indus Valley urban culture (2600-1900 BC) centered around the Saraswati river described in the Rig Veda and states that the Indus Valley culture came to an end, not because of outside invaders, but due to environmental changes, most important of which was the drying up of the Saraswati river.
Schaffer holds that the movement of populations away from the Saraswati to the Ganges after the Saraswati dried up in about 1900 BC, is reflected in the change from the Saraswati-based literature of the Rig Veda to the Ganges-based literature of the Itihasa and Puranic texts. He also states that the Aryan invasion theory reflects a
colonial and Eurocentric perspective that is quite out of date.
He concludes: We reject most strongly the simplistic historical interpretations…that continue to be imposed on south Asian culture history…Surely, as south Asian studies approach the twenty-first century, it is time to describe emerging data objectively rather than perpetuate interpretations without regard to the data archaeologists have worked so hard to reveal.4 Anthropologist Brian Hemophilia of Vanderbilt University has been studying the human remains of the northern Indian subcontinent for years. He states categorically that his analysis shows no indication of population replacement or large-scale migration.5
Archaeologist Mark Kenoyer, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and co-director of the Harappa Archeological Research project, holds that the invasion theory is completely unsupported by archeological, linguistic, or literary evidence. He writes in an article on the Indus valley civilization:3 Colin Renfrew, Professor of Archeology at Cambridge University, in his famous work, Archeology and Language: The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins, (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1988) Renfrew also sees evidence that the Indo-Europeans were in Greece as early as 6,000 BC. 4 in Aryan and Non-Aryan in South Asia: Evidence, Interpretation and History, ed. by Bronkhorst and Deshpande, University of Michigan Press.5
See Jonnathan Mark Kenoyer, “Birth of a Civilization.” Archeology, January/February 1998, 54-61, p. 61. 7 Origins of Vedic Civilization If previous scholars were wrong about the origin of the Indus people, they also missed the boat when it came to explaining their downfall, which they attributed to an invasion by Indo-Aryan speaking Vedic tribes from the northwest.6
Archeological evidence simply does not support the thesis of an outside invasion.
Kenoyer argues, “it’s likely that the rivers dried up and shifted their courses, altering trade routes and undermining the economy.” Kenoyer holds that the Indus valley script can be traced to at least 3,300 BC—making it as old or older than the oldest Sumerian written records.
Archaeologist Kenneth Kennedy writes that no Aryan skeletons have been found in the Indus valley that differ from the skeletons of indigenous ethnic groups. All prehistoric human remains recovered from the Indian subcontinent are phenotypically identifiable as south Asians. Furthermore their biological continuity with living peoples of India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the border regions is well established across time and space.7
Scientific archeology, it is now safe to say, no longer gives the invasion theory a grain of credibility. It has lost its supporters among serious scientists. Also, as professor Renfrew argues, there is no internal evidence from the ancient Vedic literature that Vedic civilization originated outside India. The verses of the Rig
Veda, the most ancient songs of Vedic tradition, detail many aspects of daily life of the people.
There is no hint in this vast literature of a migration or of a history that lies in a homeland beyond the mountains of northern India. All evidence from archeology, anthropology, and Vedic literature indicate that Vedic civilization was indigenous to northern India. Geological data now explains the demise of the Indus and Saraswati valley civilizations in terms of climactic change, bringing an end to the outside invasion theory.
ANCIENT INDIAN HISTORY NEEDS REWRITING: DWARKA IS THE OLDEST CITY ON EARTH
V.S.Gopalakrishnan
It looks like it is high time standard ancient Indian history is rewritten. Even the ancient world history would need some revision. We have learnt Indian history basically from the rather oldish books by R.C.Majumdar, Vincent Smith and a few others. Today, we have new scientific findings due to new technologies such as remote sensing and satellite technology, along with new findings from sonar readings and carbon dating of submerged underwater man-made sites.
I am posting below six videos. Five of them were written and presented by Graham Hancock. They are part of BBC Archive. The time spent in seeing them will not be a waste. We get such new perspectives about our Indian history.
What are the new perspectives? We now come to know that the original Dwarka city was as old as 9500 BC, thus older than Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilisations by more than 5000 years. Dwarka becomes the oldest city in the world, and thus world history and Indian history need correction. The melting of the ice caps and the end of the ice age about 8000-10000 years ago caused sea water rise of nearly 400 feet which swallowed the old Dwarka city. This tallies with the account of Mahabharata as per which after Krishna died, Dwarka got submerged.
The second new perspective is about the Vedic age and its connection with the Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC). Remote sensing satellite images indicate the course of the dried up river Saraswathi, so many times referred to in the Vedas. If the river had dried up around 4000 BC, Vedas must be much older than that. The theory of forign Aryan invaders then becomes defunct. Ancient urban settlements on the banks of Saraswathi have been identified. Vedas pre-date the IVC and go back as far as 9000 BC. Vedas were known to the people of IVC.
I shall now present the very fascinating videos below.
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Video 1
This video is titled "Dwaraka, India: An Antediluvian Pre~12000BC Civilization XVIII-City Of Krishna-1"
This deals with melting ice caps, end of ice age and flooding of Dwarka. Two Indian marine archeologists are shown along with Graham Hancock. They tell us that from carbon dating of undersea sites and finds, Krishna's Dwarka was 9500 BC old during the submergence.
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Video 2
This is the next part. Dr.Glen Milne of Durham Univ. demonstrates sea level rise and disappearance of Dwarka. The excavations of Dhola Vira are shown. You can even see Sir Mortimer Wheeler talking to you. Prof B.B.Lal of ASI shows that Wheeler's theory of foreign invaders was defective.
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Video 3
This is Part 3. Dr.David Frawley, Vedic scholar, says that Vedas could be the scriptures of the IVC itself. Yogic seal of IVC shows linkage to Vedas. Dr.R.K.Gupta of Remote sensing Centre, Jodhpur, shows the path of the Saraswathi river. It flowed from the Himalayas and terminated into the Rann of Kutch. Dr.N.S.Rajaram, historian, says that Vedic Civilisation was predominantly pre-Harappan. Vedas begin after the ice-age deluge and could be 11000 years old.
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Video 4
This is Part 4. This is a detour, and reveals the undersea sites found off the coast at Poompuhar (near Mahabalipuram). It shows the old Tamil civilization swallowed up by the sea around 11000 BC. Hancock was not given permission to dive at Mahabalipuram. It shows the stupidity of the Indian Government. Yet foreigners seem to be the ones who mainly discover our civilisation!
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Video 5
This is Part 5. This is about the underwater discoveries from the flooded Kingdom of Dwarka.
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Video 6
This video shows the exploits of Dr.S.R.Rao of the ASI. He discovers an underwater metropolis near the present Dwarka.
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CONCLUSION:
History writers collect and collate facts. The basic work to provide the facts are done by reseachers like field archaelogists, marine archaelogists and others. The recent facts thrown up show that foreign invasion theory of Aryans is untrue and that the Vedas were indigenous and were as old as nearly 9000 BC. All the new insights given by the modern researchers should be sifted, collated and used to quickly rewrite our ancient history.Till that is done, our students would learn old and outdated notions only.
Please let's not waste time with the OOI school of Indian pre-history. It is based on the academic approach of 'Why not?' Possibly a powerful argument when a toddler asks her mother for one more piece of chocolate, not so good in academic discussions.
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He is doing it himself
