Did ancient mariners set sail from the Indus valley?(posted by M kelkar)

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Did ancient mariners set sail from the Indus valley?

 

* 26 June 1993

* From New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.

* DAVID KEYS

 

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Indus artefacts unearthed in Arabia

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Indus artefacts unearthed in Arabia

 

(see Graphic) Fragments of the world's oldest ocean-going boats have

been found on the coast of Oman, at Ras Al Junayz, 200 kilometres

southeast of Muscat on the Indian Ocean. Discovered by a team of

French and Italian archaeologists, the pieces appear to have come from

large reed vessels around 4300 years old, which might have crossed

more than 800 kilometres of ocean on trading voyages.

 

Along with the fragments, the archaeologists have unearthed dozens of

pieces of ancient Indian pottery and other objects which must have

been imported into Oman by sea.

 

The ships themselves, some perhaps 20 metres long, could have been

local vessels or they may have been built and sailed by seafarers from

the Indus Valley Civilisation, which flourished in what is now

Pakistan and northwest India. In its heyday towards the end of the

third millennium BC, the Indus valley was the home of one of the

world's three great early civilisations, ranking alongside Mesopotamia

and Egypt.

 

With the boat fragments were an Indus valley ivory comb, an Indus

valley copper trading seal, various Indian carnelian beads, and

quantities of broken pottery containers from the Indus valley which

were probably used for transporting butter or other foodstuffs. A

copper axe and a necklace of copper beads, both of possible Indus

valley origin, have been unearthed on the site.

 

So far, after six years of excavations, the archaeologists, led by

Serge Cleuziou of the National Centre for Scientific Research in

Paris, and Maurizio Tosi of the University of Naples, have found 300

boat fragments. All are lumps of bitumen, most of them with imprints

of reed bundles, ropes and mats. Many of the lumps are encrusted on

one side with barnacles, suggesting that they spent some time immersed

in seawater.

 

The pieces of boat and the imported Indus valley pottery and other

items were all found among the remains of a group of ancient houses

and buildings in which fishing families processed their catches and

made jewellery out of seashells. The bitumen fragments were stored

inside the houses, presumably as spare material for boat repair work.

 

The next step will be to discover where the boats were built. Chemical

investigations of the bitumen and botanical studies of the impressions

made by the reeds should soon enable archaeologists to pinpoint

precisely which ancient people built them.

From issue 1879 of New Scientist magazine, 26 June 1993, page 4