Xalapa is called the city of resting place by the archaeological community. From 2800 BC to 2600 BC, Xalapa was a prosperous economic center. In 2600 BC, Harappa entered a real urban period (called the Harappa period in history) and lasted until about 1900 BC. It was the largest and most powerful political and economic center in the Indus River Basin. one. From 2300 BC to 1900 BC, the population of cities in the Indus Valley increased greatly, and the decorations, utensils and manufacturing techniques became more and more diverse. In 1300 BC, due to the prosperity of trade and the expansion of human activities to the Ganges Plain and the Gujarat Province of West India today, the political and economic system of the Indus civilization was over-expanded, resulting in the Indus Disintegration and reorganization of civilization.
In the mid 1980s, we excavated Xalapa. In the first few excavations, my colleagues and I have seen the annual spring fairs several times here, but we didn’t realize what these fairs are for our research on ancient Indus civilization. In the Indus Valley of Pakistan, villagers go to larger towns to participate in festivals called “Sang” every year. There are musicians, performers, circuses to entertain the masses, as well as mobile merchants and vendors selling goods. In this one-day event, women will offer offerings to full-time pilgrims, and these pilgrims will pray to the Sufi prophet for the health of their children (especially their sons). At the end of the day’s activities, these sacred travellers and entourage of cheerful mortals will walk or ride a donkey cart to the next town along the ancient trade route in the area.
After traveling hundreds of kilometers, devout brigades from all over Pakistan will finally meet at the tombs of the saints on the hills of Balochistan. Here, they presented the prayers and alms collected along the way to the saint. In the coming year, when these pilgrims embark on the same route, they will carry the salt and holy soil obtained from the shrine, which symbolizes the saint’s care for the lucky mothers and their newborns.
After we started digging inside the southern gate of Harapa, which is next to the traditional market, our view of “Sang” has changed significantly. We took out the top layer of soil from the newly dug ditch and sieved it, and found some fragments of modern pottery, hundreds of newly made glass bracelets, some contemporary coins, lead balloons used for shooting balloons during festivals, and plastic Fragments of toys and iron toys, and a gold earring. However, underneath the surface, we found the handmade products of Gujarapa. Surprisingly, they are very similar to fragments of modern debris, including broken pottery, terracotta bracelets, clay marbles, toy carriages, and small Fragments of statues, as well as accidental inscriptions and weights most likely to be used in trading and taxation.
These relics buried deep in the soil show that there was a thriving market near here, and about 4,000 years ago, the activities of the market were the same as they are now. Our further research confirmed this view. At that time, the nearby villagers would always go to big towns on special market days or festivals, take part in celebrations, draw closer family or tribal relations, and buy (or barter) decorations, pottery and other special products. The raw materials from the mainland enter Harappa through the gates along the route taken by pilgrims and their followers today. The artisans in countless workshops in the city use these raw materials to make exquisite luxury goods for local upper-class people to buy or transport them to other places for export markets. People in the Indus Valley at that time, as they are now, used ornaments and jewelry to prove their wealth and status.
From our perspective, the daily habits of the region have continued from ancient times to the present, which is really shocking. As archaeologists, we have to try to find out whether this similarity stems from cultural choices or because the materials and technology available to the locals have not changed much over the past few thousand years.
The mystery of the Indus Valley civilization, Mesopotamian civilization, Egyptian civilization, and China’s Yellow River civilization are also called the four early civilizations. Our understanding of the Indus valley civilization India is minimal, because linguists have not yet cracked engraved on the seal unearthed, amulets and pottery Sahara
Pa text. We are constantly trying to understand how the disappeared Indus civilization organized society, where the political, economic, military, and ideological (religious) powers of this extremely vast urbanized country come from. To this end, my colleagues and I had to find clues from the various objects dug up, as well as the layout and architectural style of cities and settlements.
Harappa writing is not entirely useless. Although we cannot understand the symbols engraved by craftsmen and other people, and cannot directly know how certain people or tribes obtain and retain power, we can still get some results by studying their context.
Through these studies, coupled with the recent analysis of the exquisite craftsmanship passed down to Harappa, we have gained a new understanding of the social power structure of the Indus civilization. Craftsmanship is an important manifestation of the Indus civilization, miners from deep underground for a long time the city waste Indus River
Market, the dug up a lot of decoration, trade and ceremonial artifacts. After careful inspection, scientists have reconstructed the manufacturing techniques of experienced craftsmen at the time, and found clues from their exquisite handicrafts, and outlined a more detailed outlook for this extinct civilization.
In 1986, George Dale of the University of California at Berkeley established the “Harapa Archaeological Research Project” research group. The project is an interdisciplinary long-term research, currently co-chaired by Richard Meadow of Harvard University and Rita Wright of New York University.
We conducted field surveys and laboratory studies to explore the earliest settlement in Xalapa and trace the evolution of the site where a large city emerged. Today, we have identified several development stages. The residents of the Indus River build their economic foundation by focusing on agriculture and animal husbandry, supplemented by fishing and hunting. Both civilians and upper-class people produce and trade commodities to earn additional income. These commodities include cotton, wool fabrics and handicrafts.
The earliest villages in Harapa existed between 3300 BC and 2800 BC (this period is called the Ravi period), that is, the Sumerians built their earliest Tongtian Tower and Elaborately decorated temples, the Egyptians used mud brick tombs to bury their rulers and a large number of treasures. Ancient
Indus national livestock cattle, wheat, barley, beans, sesame seeds, agricultural environment similar to the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East. Through trade networks, specialized craftsmanship was popularized in the early settlements, and the entire region shared a common religious symbol and craft style.
Small farming settlements of this period were also found on the north and south sides of Xalapa, but none of these small settlements developed into large towns. In Xalapa, archaeologists have found small beads and bracelets made of terracotta and stone. These are most likely to be worn by children or civilians (perhaps both); more exotic stone and shell decorations Product, it is very likely to be worn by the local upper class. After careful analysis and comparison with the raw materials from various places, archaeologists found that the raw materials used by the early craftsmen came from 300 kilometers to 800 kilometers away. The weaving prints on the small terracotta beads prove that there was fabric production at that time, and it may be wool fabric. This site also showed for the first time that people at that time would have scribbled abstract symbols on pottery. The latest research shows that some of these symbols have been retained in the official Indian alphabet in the future, almost the same as the Mesopotamian symbols of about 3,500 BC, and the Egyptian symbols of about 320 BC. The language symbols are as old. The latter two language symbols later developed into cuneiform and hieroglyphics respectively.
Further reading
Around 2000 BC, a long period of drought led to the decline of the Bronze Age in Egypt, Greece, and Mesopotamia. Now, paleoclimatologists have proposed that the mysterious Indus Valley civilization also experienced decline during the same period. Based on the isotope data obtained from the sediments of ancient lakes, researchers believe that the monsoon cycle, which has an important impact on all organisms in South Asia, has ceased for nearly two centuries. A paleoclimatologist Amadixit and his colleagues at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom showed that the reconstruction of the drought period showed that in the soil sediments from 2200 BC to 2000 BC, oxygen 1 The relative content of 8 is increased. This shows that during that period of drought, sediments were greatly reduced. In addition, research data also showed that the summer monsoon stopped for nearly 200 years. Anil, director of the Wadiah Himalayan Geological Institute in Dehradun, India? Guputa said: “This research fills the gaps in the archaeological community’s record of ancient droughts, but it leaves a bigger question: What triggered the climate change 4,200 years ago? We did not find the same The North Atlantic and solar activities have undergone significant changes during the period.” The
researchers pointed out that the conclusion that the civilization of the Indus Valley ended due to lack of monsoon activity has taught mankind a lesson about how ancient societies were forced to deal with climate change. However, in the near future, mankind will also have to deal with man-made climate mutations.
