Excerpts from Hidden Horizons (Frawley and Rajaram 2008)

[Guest guest]

Hidden Horizons 2008.pdf in the files section

" As published in Mathematics in the Archaeological and Historical Sciences, when

Kruskal, Dyen and Black applied statistical tests to the languages that make up

the Indo-European family, they found results that contradicted the most basic

assumption of linguists—that they form a language family. The most important

member is of course Sanskrit, but their analysis threw up a major contradiction:

Indian and Iranian languages failed the grouping test! This is a bombshell, for

according to Indo-European linguistics, Indo-Iranian is the lynchpin of the

whole discipline, but the one quantitative test that was applied to the

hypothesis discredited it.

Struck by this, Cavalli-Sforza highlighted that the Kruskal, Dyen and Black

study " ..found no similarity at all between Italic and Celtic languages, not

between Indian and Iranian ones… The non-identification of an Indo-Iranian group

by Dyen et al. is the major departure from the conclusions accepted by the

majority of traditional linguists. " In other words, much of what was regarded

as solid fact in linguistics remains highly questionable, if not outright wrong

(Frawley and Rajaram 2008, pp. 41-42). "

" Yet `fertile crescent' is itself a misnomer. Many regions of Asia possess much

more fertile lands and a greater potential for agriculture, while the Fertile

Crescent region is only the slightly wetter portion of what is essentially an

arid region. There is no reason to assume that these wetter Asiatic regions

could not develop agriculture and the evidence also supports it.

" AGRICUTLURE ACTUALLY FIRST APPEAERS IN GREATER India by 10,000 BCE (12,000 BP)

AND IS ONLY NOTED IN THE FERTILE CRESCENT MORE THAN A THOUSAND YEARS LATER. And

this is true even though little ground work has been done in Greater India

exploring possible early agricultural sites (which if coastal are likely to be

under water today).

Furthermore, during the crucial period just before the first signs of

agriculture can be proved, which was during the late Ice Age period some ten to

fifteen thousand years ago, the world was struck by the two cold periods—the

Older and the Younger Dryas—and even the tropics came under severe drought. At

that time the so-called Fertile Crescent would be actually short of water.

Greater India was then even more favourably placed for the transition from plant

gathering to the cultivation of domestic crops.

This means that agriculture probably arose first in Greater India and reached

India from there. In this regard, we should note that the famous humped or

Brahma bull (Bos Indicus), the mainstay of agriculture in India, is not

descended from West Asian Autochian cattle, which would make sense if India

gained its agriculture from the West, but from the wild Asiatic one known as the

Banteng (Bos Banteng), a close relative of the Indian bison or gaur. Studies

show that the European cattle (Autoch) and the India are separated by an

evolutionary distance of at least 600,000 years (Frawley and Rajaram 2008, pp.

47-48, emphasis in the original). "

" Fortunately, man-made objects including one of wood, have been recovered

allowing us to date it. Radiocarbon testing dated the wooden object to around

7500 BCE (9500 BP). Glenn Milne of the University of Durham, using inundation

maps and sea level curves estimates that the city (under Gulf of Khambat) may

have been submerged 10,000 or even 12,000 years ago. Considering that it is

vast and sophisticated, a long period of development must have preceded it

(Frawley and Rajaram 2008, p.59, second parenthesis added). "

Frawley, David and Rajaram, Navaratna S. (2008). Hidden horizons: unearthing

10000 years of Indian culture. Second reprint. Ahmedabad, India: Swaminarayan

Aksharpith. ISBN: 81-7526-31-8

 

M. Kelkar

[Guest guest]

Dear Mayuresh,

 

The recent 2008 work by Frawley and Rajaram regarding early agriculture in

Indian Subcontinent reminds me of G. L. Possehl 2002, The Indus Civilization: A

Contemporary Perspective, where Dr Possehl criticizes the exclusive point of

view on Near East as the cradle of farming:

 

" ...it has led to a kind of self-fulfilling prophesy. Convinced that Near East

was the early center, archaeologists have turned their attention to the

investigation of this region, at the expense of others. It is now possible to

mount a challenge to this archaeological dogma about the domestication of plants

and animals. The data come from Afghanistan and Mehrgarh on the Kachi Plain of

Pakistan " (Possehl 2002: 24).

 

Possehl points out that western borderlands of South Asia are a right place

where to have a research on early food production and domestication:

 

" The raw materials are there in the form of wild ancestors of early

domesticates. Moreover, this region has an abundance of archaeological remains

that have barely begun to be exploited. That there are thousands of unrecorded

sites is a probability " (Possehl 2002:24).

 

The current model is obviously inefficient:

 

" This would have had to be a rather steady process, always unidirectional, west

to east, from the culturally advanced Near East into 'primitive' South Asia.

Such a model is intellectually quite inefficient and filled with old-fashioned

notions about cultural 'supremacy' on the Near East and the unidirectional flow

of ideas out of this center to southern and Central Asia " (Possehl 2002: 28).

 

It was already established that in Near East the sequence of early food

production is something like this:

 

Pre Pottery Neolithic A (Khiamian) --- 8500/8300 to 8100 BC

Pre Pottery Neolithic A (Sultanian) --- 8300 to 7300 BC

Pre Pottery Neolithic B --- 7300 to 5800 BC

 

But Possehl suggests that animals and plants did not enter South Asian's western

limits by diffusion from these cultures, but that the territory of domestication

was wider than previously thought:

 

" Rather than ending in Zagros Mountains of Iraq/Iran, it spread all the way

across the Iranian Plateau to the Indus Valley. The early Holocene peoples

across this vast region, from the Mediterranean to the Indus, were engaged in

the development of food-producing practices at that time. This area can be seen

as a large interaction sphere in prehistoric times. This is the expanded nuclear

zone for Near Eastern, Iranian, Central and South Asian domestication " (Possehl

2002:28).

 

Regarding Mehrgarh's earliest period at c.7000 BC, Dr Possehl suggests that it

could be compared to Pre Pottery Neolithic B period, and that it is not expected

to be the earliest food producing site in South Asia, so there must have been

other earlier archaeological sites in the region that now wait to be found.

 

Best regards,

 

Carlos

 

 

 

, " mkelkar2003 " <mayureshkelkar wrote:

>

> Hidden Horizons 2008.pdf in the files section

> " As published in Mathematics in the Archaeological and Historical Sciences,

when Kruskal, Dyen and Black applied statistical tests to the languages that

make up the Indo-European family, they found results that contradicted the most

basic assumption of linguists—that they form a language family. The most

important member is of course Sanskrit, but their analysis threw up a major

contradiction: Indian and Iranian languages failed the grouping test! This is a

bombshell, for according to Indo-European linguistics, Indo-Iranian is the

lynchpin of the whole discipline, but the one quantitative test that was applied

to the hypothesis discredited it.

> Struck by this, Cavalli-Sforza highlighted that the Kruskal, Dyen and Black

study " ..found no similarity at all between Italic and Celtic languages, not

between Indian and Iranian ones… The non-identification of an Indo-Iranian group

by Dyen et al. is the major departure from the conclusions accepted by the

majority of traditional linguists. " In other words, much of what was regarded

as solid fact in linguistics remains highly questionable, if not outright wrong

(Frawley and Rajaram 2008, pp. 41-42). "

> " Yet `fertile crescent' is itself a misnomer. Many regions of Asia possess

much more fertile lands and a greater potential for agriculture, while the

Fertile Crescent region is only the slightly wetter portion of what is

essentially an arid region. There is no reason to assume that these wetter

Asiatic regions could not develop agriculture and the evidence also supports it.

> " AGRICUTLURE ACTUALLY FIRST APPEAERS IN GREATER India by 10,000 BCE (12,000

BP) AND IS ONLY NOTED IN THE FERTILE CRESCENT MORE THAN A THOUSAND YEARS LATER.

And this is true even though little ground work has been done in Greater India

exploring possible early agricultural sites (which if coastal are likely to be

under water today).

> Furthermore, during the crucial period just before the first signs of

agriculture can be proved, which was during the late Ice Age period some ten to

fifteen thousand years ago, the world was struck by the two cold periods—the

Older and the Younger Dryas—and even the tropics came under severe drought. At

that time the so-called Fertile Crescent would be actually short of water.

Greater India was then even more favourably placed for the transition from plant

gathering to the cultivation of domestic crops.

> This means that agriculture probably arose first in Greater India and reached

India from there. In this regard, we should note that the famous humped or

Brahma bull (Bos Indicus), the mainstay of agriculture in India, is not

descended from West Asian Autochian cattle, which would make sense if India

gained its agriculture from the West, but from the wild Asiatic one known as the

Banteng (Bos Banteng), a close relative of the Indian bison or gaur. Studies

show that the European cattle (Autoch) and the India are separated by an

evolutionary distance of at least 600,000 years (Frawley and Rajaram 2008, pp.

47-48, emphasis in the original). "

> " Fortunately, man-made objects including one of wood, have been recovered

allowing us to date it. Radiocarbon testing dated the wooden object to around

7500 BCE (9500 BP). Glenn Milne of the University of Durham, using inundation

maps and sea level curves estimates that the city (under Gulf of Khambat) may

have been submerged 10,000 or even 12,000 years ago. Considering that it is

vast and sophisticated, a long period of development must have preceded it

(Frawley and Rajaram 2008, p.59, second parenthesis added). "

> Frawley, David and Rajaram, Navaratna S. (2008). Hidden horizons: unearthing

10000 years of Indian culture. Second reprint. Ahmedabad, India: Swaminarayan

Aksharpith. ISBN: 81-7526-31-8

>

> M. Kelkar

>