'Mythical'
cities or civilizations such as Troy, Minoan Crete, Angkor-Wat in
Indo-China, and others in the Americas have a peculiar tendency
of emerging from the mists of mythological obscurity to become historical
facts. One such civilization was probably in its heyday one of the
richest of all the lost civilizations, the Indus Valley Culture
of ancient India.
'The generally accepted view of India was that it was originally
occupied by a primitive people called Dravidians, and that some
time before 1500 to 1200 BC, blue-eyed Aryans descended from Afghanistan
and swept the Dravidians south, then establishing their own "Vedic'
culture - a culture whose greatest literary monuments are the Vedic
hymns.
In Harappa, in what is now Pakistan, huge mounds were known to conceal
the ruins of an ancient town, and in 1921, an Indian archeologist,
Daya Ram Sanhi, suggested that it might belong to a period before
the Maurya empire, which was founded at about the time of Alexander
the Great (born 356 BC) by Chandragupta. In fact, excavation at
Harappa revealed that it was two and a half thousand years earlier
than Chandragupta.
In
1922, excavations began at Mohenjo-Daro (which means 'hill of the
dead') in the Indus Valley, four hundred miles south-west of Harappa,
which revealed a rich civilization that no one had suspected. Incredibly,
Mohenjo-Daro proved to be as sophisticated as a later Greek or Roman
city, built on mud-brick platforms to protect it from floods, with
a grid-plan reminiscent of New York, and an impressive sewer system
- not to mention sit-down toilets. The size of the city indicated
that it held about 40,000 people. The large number of female statuettes
found there suggested that a female deity - probably the moon goddess
- was worshipped. Their seals proved they possessed some form of
writing.'[1]
The enigmatic 'Indus Valley script' has been
studied closely for over fifty years, but has so far resisted all
attempts to decipher it.
'In subsequent years, further excavations
along the 1800 miles of the Indus river valley revealed more than
150 sites, half a dozen of the cities. The whole area, from the
Arabian sea to the foothills of the Himalayas, was once the home
of a great civilization that rivaled Egypt or Greece.
![](Pix/harmap2.jpg)
To
the east of the Indus lies a vast desert, the Thar Desert. When
remains of towns were found in this desert there was some puzzlement
about how they had survived in such arid conditions. Then satellite
photography revealed the answer: the Thar Desert was once a fertile
plain, traversed by a great river; there were even unmistakable
signs of canals. Now only a small part of this river, the Ghaggar,
exists. Scholars concluded that the river that had now vanished
was the Sarasvati, mentioned in the Vedic hymns.
It seemed that in the heyday of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, this whole
plain was one of the richest places in the world. At a time when
ancient Britons were Bronze Age farmers, and the Greeks were a few
Mycenaean warrior tribes, one of the world's greatest civilizations
flourished in the land of the Indus and the Sarasvati.
It seems that some great catastrophe destroyed this civilization
some time after 1900 BC. Evidence shows that the earth buckled,
due to the pressure of the tectonic plate that has raised the Himalayas,
and the result was a series of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions
that literally caused the rivers to sink into the ground. The cost
in human life must have been appalling.'
![](Pix/destroy_sm.gif)
We'll
turn now to the 'literary monuments' which the Indus Valley civilization
left us, the Vedas.
'The Vedas are written in Sanskrit, a complex
language that Sir William Jones - in 1786 - demonstrated to be related
to Greek, Latin, German and Celtic (giving rise to the expression
'Indo-European languages'). And if the Vedas speak of the Sarasvati
River, then it would seem clear that they were written before about
2000 BC, and not later than 1500 BC, as scholars originally believed.
And if - as seems likely - Sanskrit was the language of the Aryans,
then it was also clear that they could not have invaded as late
as 1500 BC.
There are four major collections of Vedic hymns - the Rig-Veda,
the Sama-Veda, the Yajur-Veda and the Atharva-Veda, of which the
Rig-Veda is recognized as the oldest and most important.
In the 1980's, a Vedic scholar, David Frawley, observed that the
hymns of the Rig-Veda are full of an oceanic symbolism that seems
to argue that they sprang from the maritime culture - which certainly
contradicted the assumption that the Aryans came from somewhere
in central Europe. He also noted hymns that spoke of the 'ancestors'
as coming from across the sea, having been saved from the great
flood.
![](Pix/harpriest.jpg)
Harappa Priest
Studying the astronomical references in the
Vedic hymns, Frawley concluded that one reference to a summer solstice
in Virgo indicated a date of about 4000 BC, while a reference to
a summer solstice in Libra pointed to about 6000 BC. He also concluded
that the authors of the Vedas were familiar with the precession
of the equinoxes. These revolutionary ideas were set out in a book
called Gods, Sages and Kings (1991).
It will be noted that the Vedic Hymns showed a preoccupation with
the same stars and constellations that were central to the Egyptians.
Frawley points out that the Hindu Varuna, like the Egyptian Osiris
and the Greek Ouranos, are all symbolised by Orion, and that their
myths seem to refer to the vernal equinox in Orion around 6000 BC.
Frawley recognized that the notion of a maritime culture dating
back to before 6000 BC is highly controversial and likely to be
rejected out of hand. Yet ... Charles Hapgood would have found it
perfectly credible. So, of course, would that remarkable student
of Mayan culture Augustus le Plongeon, who suggested that colonists
from the Maya lands had sailed to Europe thousands of years before
Christ, and quoted the Ramayana to the effect that India and China
were invaded and conquered by warriors known as great navigators
and architects. John West and Graham Hancock would probably amend
Le Plongeon's argument, and suggest that South America, Egypt and
India became the home of survivors of some great catastrophe long
before 6000 BC.'
Colin Wilson, from whom the above quotations
are taken, goes on to argue that:
'... the astronomical evidence demonstrates
the the ancient Hindus shared the Egyptian obsession with star-gazing
and the precession of the equinoxes. In which case, the same arguments
apply to ancient India as to ancient Egypt. In Egypt we have the
suggestion that the dynastic civilization of the third millennium
may have been preceded by a far older civilization founded by the
survivors from a great flood, who planned the pyramids and built
the Sphinx in 10,500 BC. In India, it seems that the great civilization
of the Indus and the Sarasvati plain was preceded by forerunners
whose great achievement was the Rig-Veda. Frawley suggests that
the civilization of the 'forerunners' may date from 7000 BC.'[1]
Or earlier perhaps? If the pre-Dynastic survivors
of the flood were already an accomplished maritime culture, planning
the Pyramids and building the Sphinx at around 10,500 BC, it doesn't
seem unlikely that they were consciously seeding the spark of civilization
in other parts of the ruined world - in such places as the Indus
Valley in particular, but also in China and the amongst the earliest
Maya and Incas of the Americas.
Though The Indus Valley culture was probably one of the richest
and earliest cradles of civilization in the ancient world, it may
not have been the only one that thrived in the long, dark millennia
leading up to the third millennium BC, when civilization is traditionally
said to begin.
CONTINUE