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Pakistan's lost city of 40k people

bbc.com

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Re: Pakistan's lost city of 40k people

#41

Post by ganarajpr »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #40
quadrifoliate wrote: post #3

The article focuses a bit too much on the city and not enough on the civilization that it was a part of. I guess the fact that it's in the Lost Civilizations series is an indicator? Anyway, for those not in the know – the city at Mohenjodaro is part of the rather extensive Indus Valley/Harappan Civilization that was contemporary with the Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations (~3000BC onwards). The reasons for its d…

> The reasons for its decline aren't particularly well understood. another victim of the bronze age collapse that we can't explain fully.

I have heard that it was a victim of the 200 year famine that hit most parts of the world during 2000-1900 BCE timeframe. At the same time, the mega river that streamed through central India dried up completely adding insult to injury. This MAY be the cause of the collapse of civilization.

As far as I have seen, this is the best plausible explanation for the collapse - so far.

Re: Pakistan's lost city of 40k people

#42

Post by ganarajpr »

bergenty wrote: post #35
vishnugupta wrote: post #13

I got interested in Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC) while following a rabbit hole of trying to understand the population admixture of Indians. It is a truly fascinating civilisation. Here are some titbits that I found really interesting. At it peak it was a spread over a truly gigantic geographical space. However the city architectures followed nearly same blue print. Which points to the existence of some kind of cen…

Get the book by David Reich from 2018. He basically has solved the question of Indian genetic origins. In a nutshell, IVC is original inhabitants of India + Iranian pastoralists, today called dravidians. Aryans came in to this mix about 2000 years later.

That is no longer the view of even David Reich.

Lets not conflate what is a fact and what is a theory. Aryans came in 2000 years later is not a fact but a theory and there are multiple holes in that theory. So, lets not flaunt that dubious theory when its not even substantiated with proofs.

Re: Pakistan's lost city of 40k people

#43

Post by rsj_hn »

ganarajpr wrote: post #42
bergenty wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get the book by David Reich from 2018. He basically has solved the question of Indian genetic origins. In a nutshell, IVC is original inhabitants of India + Iranian pastoralists, today called dravidians. Aryans came in to this mix about 2000 years later.

That is no longer the view of even David Reich. Lets not conflate what is a fact and what is a theory. Aryans came in 2000 years later is not a fact but a theory and there are multiple holes in that theory. So, lets not flaunt that dubious theory when its not even substantiated with proofs.

That's interesting -- can you point me to a more up to date source where Reich reverses himself or significantly updates his views?

Re: Pakistan's lost city of 40k people

#44

Post by kristopolous »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #3

The article focuses a bit too much on the city and not enough on the civilization that it was a part of. I guess the fact that it's in the Lost Civilizations series is an indicator? Anyway, for those not in the know – the city at Mohenjodaro is part of the rather extensive Indus Valley/Harappan Civilization that was contemporary with the Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations (~3000BC onwards). The reasons for its d…

That's a lovely script. Really quite mysterious. Reminds me of graph theory and topology.

I wonder if you can do some kind of weird frequency distribution analysis to classify what the extent specimens may be referring to.

I mean given some old civilization, is there a guassian like distribution of say X% documents being financial, Y% religious and so on?

And if there is, can you somehow classify these samples into camps and then maybe get to some confidence interval that one pile is likely say, political statements such as laws.

If you can get say a commerce/accounting pile, your known plaintext is pretty constrained. There's probably some bookkeeping and itemization and maybe some mathematics. Especially if there's addition or subtraction on there. It may not look anything like how we do it: could be concentric circles or something wild but arithmetic is generally the same. X + Y >= (X or Y) - even in systems where they just use a term "many", some really basic rules will still hold

For the religion you have feasts, calendars, holy days, etc. Maybe there's domain specific characters given this approach

Re: Pakistan's lost city of 40k people

#45

Post by npsomaratna »

ivanhoe wrote: post #39

Is Mohenjo-daro really something that most of people never heard of? I admittedly forgot most of the details about it, but I remember it being mentioned in my history classes in the primary school (in 80s Yugoslavia)...

Yup, learned this at school too, along with the other ancient centers of civilization.

Re: Pakistan's lost city of 40k people

#48

Post by qikInNdOutReply »

kristopolous wrote: post #44
quadrifoliate wrote: post #3

The article focuses a bit too much on the city and not enough on the civilization that it was a part of. I guess the fact that it's in the Lost Civilizations series is an indicator? Anyway, for those not in the know – the city at Mohenjodaro is part of the rather extensive Indus Valley/Harappan Civilization that was contemporary with the Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations (~3000BC onwards). The reasons for its d…

That's a lovely script. Really quite mysterious. Reminds me of graph theory and topology. I wonder if you can do some kind of weird frequency distribution analysis to classify what the extent specimens may be referring to. I mean given some old civilization, is there a guassian like distribution of say X% documents being financial, Y% religious and so on? And if there is, can you somehow classify these samples into c…

The problem is with some cultures, we know that this approach does not work. There was.. is a tendency for example among pious muslims to burn all books except the quoran at the end of life, to express ones devotion.

So this approach would dig up only one book.

Now imagine a budhistic precursor, which shuns world possesions and clingyness to status, scribbling notes of debt on papyrus. And you simply get nothing, but mythologic temple inscriptions. Which only help you, if you can derive the follow up mythologies of the successor cultures. A connection you can only arrive after you know.

Re: Pakistan's lost city of 40k people

#50

Post by canadianfella »

qikInNdOutReply wrote: post #48
kristopolous wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a lovely script. Really quite mysterious. Reminds me of graph theory and topology. I wonder if you can do some kind of weird frequency distribution analysis to classify what the extent specimens may be referring to. I mean given some old civilization, is there a guassian like distribution of say X% documents being financial, Y% religious and so on? And if there is, can you somehow classify these samples into c…

The problem is with some cultures, we know that this approach does not work. There was.. is a tendency for example among pious muslims to burn all books except the quoran at the end of life, to express ones devotion. So this approach would dig up only one book. Now imagine a budhistic precursor, which shuns world possesions and clingyness to status, scribbling notes of debt on papyrus. And you simply get nothing, but…

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