Indus Valley Civilization’s Collapse Explained • Hacker News Board

Re: Indus Valley Civilization’s Collapse Explained

#31

Post by yk » Mon, Jun 04, 2012, 5:21 AM UTC

hollerith wrote: post #29

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #25

Original article abstract: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/05/24/1112743109.abst... I wonder how sensitive our modern society is to similar agriculturally relevant factors.

Vastly less sensitive because humans have become vastly more skilled at getting what they want and need from the planet and the biosphere.

But we also depend on vastly higher yields. [1] IMHO it is not clear, that additional agriculture in currently cold areas could offset all losses in warmer areas. Additionally we are already not very good at the distribution of food on a global scale.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wheat_yields_in_developin...

Re: Indus Valley Civilization’s Collapse Explained

#32

Post by aarghh » Mon, Jun 04, 2012, 5:55 AM UTC

mmanfrin wrote: post #9

Has anyone got a recommendation for a book on this topic? Amazon is pulling up nothing.

Michel Danino's "Lost River: On the Trail Of The Saraswati" is a pretty good survey of this view of climate change and eastward migration. http://www.amazon.com/Lost-River-The-Trail-Sarasvati/dp/0143...

Edit: Edited for spelling

Re: Indus Valley Civilization’s Collapse Explained

#33

Post by brazzy » Mon, Jun 04, 2012, 7:54 AM UTC

othermaciej wrote: post #27

rd108 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a real controversy over whether the Harappan script is writing vs. "a kind of ornamentation"? Your comment smacks of condescension but I'm sure you can just provide citations. Your (wikipedia) article contains some arguments based on relative frequency of symbols, but is controverted by studies of modern pictographic languages with similar characteristic (e.g. Chinese.) http://www.sciencemag.org/content/324/…

It's not a mainstream position in linguistics that Sanskrit is a direct ancestor language of Latin. The overwhelmingly most popular theory is that both are ultimately descended from different branches of proto-European. Latin is from th centum branch and Sanskrit is from the satem branch (which includes Proto-Slavic as well). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centum-Satem_isogloss The blog you cite shows serious signs…

> crackpotterry

My new favorite word!

Re: Indus Valley Civilization’s Collapse Explained

#34

Post by atdt » Mon, Jun 04, 2012, 9:52 AM UTC

Dn_Ab wrote: post #21

othello wrote: post #4

"They had cities ordered into grids, with exquisite plumbing, which was not encountered again until the Romans" It's amazing how quite advanced technologies (for a civilization that thrived from 5000 to 3000 years ago) were mastered only to be lost later over the course of history. A mind-blowing example closer to us is the Antikythera mechanism [1]. Found in a Mediterranean wreck in 1900, the artifact was not analyz…

The Antikythera Mechanism used to be on the top of my list until I read about Gobekli Tepe. That place fills me with awe to near bursting. I plan to visit this year. The site is a bunch of concentric T shaped monoliths - kind of like Stone Henge. Except the stones are cut more cleanly, covered in beautiful animal reliefs and it is nearly 8000 years older than stone henge. Activity suggest its origins could reach as f…

> The massive sequence of stratification layers suggests several millennia of activity, perhaps reaching back to the Mesolithic.

Uninterrupted?

Re: Indus Valley Civilization’s Collapse Explained

#35

Post by tmbsundar » Mon, Jun 04, 2012, 9:53 AM UTC

tokenadult wrote: post #2

The interesting submitted article refers to "and as-yet undeciphered writing," but there is considerable controversy about whether or not the Indus Valley script http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_script is a writing system at all, rather than the kind of ornamentation from a pre-proto-writing stage known in several other sites of ancient civilizations. (As a reality check, we can remember that several regions of the…

Since these are all hypotheses, and no one has cracked the script yet for good, (at least where in all are in consent), I would suggest that these are looked from the Proto-Dravidian hypothesis as well. See the following links: http://www.hindu.com/mag/2007/02/04/stories/2007020400260500... The above is Iravadham Mahadevan's view.

The following two are Asko Parpola's contributions:

http://www.harappa.com/script/parpola0.html http://www.amazon.com/Deciphering-Indus-Script-Asko-Parpola/...

Re: Indus Valley Civilization’s Collapse Explained

#36

Post by einhverfr » Mon, Jun 04, 2012, 10:03 AM UTC

tokenadult wrote: post #2

The interesting submitted article refers to "and as-yet undeciphered writing," but there is considerable controversy about whether or not the Indus Valley script http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_script is a writing system at all, rather than the kind of ornamentation from a pre-proto-writing stage known in several other sites of ancient civilizations. (As a reality check, we can remember that several regions of the…

Part of the problem is determining what we mean by writing. Keep in mind we don't see any long inscriptions of the sort we see in early Sanscrit or Hittite. Only a few areas are attested including stamp seals, pottery and the like.

The Indus Valley script could have been, for example, a pictographic/ideographic labelling system without any real language-encoding function. But if I draw thee fish to indicate that you owe me three fish, is that writing? It's certainly encoded communications. I don't know that it is writing as we know it though.

Re: Indus Valley Civilization’s Collapse Explained

#37

Post by einhverfr » Mon, Jun 04, 2012, 10:13 AM UTC

tokenadult wrote: post #18

rd108 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a real controversy over whether the Harappan script is writing vs. "a kind of ornamentation"? Your comment smacks of condescension but I'm sure you can just provide citations. Your (wikipedia) article contains some arguments based on relative frequency of symbols, but is controverted by studies of modern pictographic languages with similar characteristic (e.g. Chinese.) http://www.sciencemag.org/content/324/…

Is there a real controversy over whether the Harappan script is writing Yes. Again, this is a familiar issue to people who are familiar with linguistics, and one of the criticisms of the Rao et al. publication is that none of the authors are familiar with the methodology used in historical linguistics to solve comparable problems in other parts of the world. (I am able to read ancient Chinese and am intimately famili…

The Indus Valley script doesn't look like a mere form of ornamentation to me (knowing something about archaeology and historical linguistics). The problem though is that when we say "writing" we usually mean "encoding otherwise spoken language in durable form" and there is no real evidence that this is what the Indus Valley script does.

The problem is that there are plenty of kinds of markings that don't fall under either of these. Take for example Roman Numerals. You aren't encoding IX or VIIII as the word "nine" or equivalent in any language. Instead You are illustrating the number on a tally stick and the tally stick, rather than the spoken language, acts as the shared point of reference.

So I think one has to be careful about saying that these are the only two options. The script could have a communicative function and even a formally defined one (much like Roman Numerals do) without being writing in the sense of encoding spoken language in durable form.

Re: Indus Valley Civilization’s Collapse Explained

#38

Post by einhverfr » Mon, Jun 04, 2012, 10:22 AM UTC

othermaciej wrote: post #27

rd108 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a real controversy over whether the Harappan script is writing vs. "a kind of ornamentation"? Your comment smacks of condescension but I'm sure you can just provide citations. Your (wikipedia) article contains some arguments based on relative frequency of symbols, but is controverted by studies of modern pictographic languages with similar characteristic (e.g. Chinese.) http://www.sciencemag.org/content/324/…

It's not a mainstream position in linguistics that Sanskrit is a direct ancestor language of Latin. The overwhelmingly most popular theory is that both are ultimately descended from different branches of proto-European. Latin is from th centum branch and Sanskrit is from the satem branch (which includes Proto-Slavic as well). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centum-Satem_isogloss The blog you cite shows serious signs…

Agreed. Also note that the (Latin) Centum (pronounced Ken-tum) form has to be overall an older form than Satam due to the missing consonants and palatization noted in the latter.

The current thinking as far as I can tell is that Indo-Iranian (basically the ancestor of Sanscrit and Avestan) was the latest branch to break off of common Indo-European, though I think these models always oversimplify.

The most archaic attested Indo-European language is actually Hittite, possibly followed by Tocharian.

Re: Indus Valley Civilization’s Collapse Explained

#39

Post by einhverfr » Mon, Jun 04, 2012, 10:26 AM UTC

sunwooz wrote: post #8

tokenadult wrote: post #2

The interesting submitted article refers to "and as-yet undeciphered writing," but there is considerable controversy about whether or not the Indus Valley script http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_script is a writing system at all, rather than the kind of ornamentation from a pre-proto-writing stage known in several other sites of ancient civilizations. (As a reality check, we can remember that several regions of the…

Wasn't there a mathematical study that concluded that the Indus script has the structure of a language? I found an article on it http://grimoires.wordpress.com/2009/07/20/grim-writing-the-i...

"structure of a language" is a pretty vague claim. Arguably one could conclude that Roman Numerals have the structure of a language too, but I wouldn't conclude from such a claim that roman numerals encode spoken language in durable form. Rather they are communicative in function, but through an illustrative rather than spoken frame of reference (Roman Numerals illustrate positions on a tally stick).

Re: Indus Valley Civilization’s Collapse Explained

#40

Post by einhverfr » Mon, Jun 04, 2012, 10:36 AM UTC

zeteo wrote: post #23

The researchers have discovered some ancient changes in the hydrologic regime of rivers in north-west India. There's a big step from here to actually explaining civilizational collapse. Particularly, two factors argue against such a narrow explanation. First, the region was still agriculturally quite fertile after these changes in the monsoon pattern; the later Mahajanapadas did quite well in this area. Second, the c…

One of the most interesting books out there on civilization collapse is "The Collapse of Complex Civilizations" by Joseph Tainter.

His thesis is that the primary driver of civilization collapse is actually complexity, and that as societies face problems, such as ecological problems, or invasions from outside, usually, they solve these problems by adding social complexity. For example Rome tried to solve the problem of diminishing agricultural returns by binding farmers to their land.

As Prof. Tainter puts it, these societies run into trouble when they have to make large investments in order to maintain their current way of life.

If this pattern holds out, it may be that the more advanced a civilization is, the more vulnerable it is to collapse due to pressures of this sort. In other words, at some point, the complexity becomes self-defeating and civilization crumbles.