Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

4K years ago, Mohenjo-daro grew more equal over time

archaeologymag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 62 posts

Re: 4K years ago, Mohenjo-daro grew more equal over time

#51

Post by graemep »

bradleybuda wrote: post #15

This could also be a story of technological progress. A thought experiment - imagine you, an archaeologist, recovered the remains of our civilization, from roughly 1925 to 2025, but the only surviving artifact was televisions. You know that televisions are valuable - initially only wealthy families had them - so you used them as a proxy for riches and plotted the Gini coefficient using just the size, quality, resolut…

Artifacts of any sort, especially technological ones, are subject to such changes over time.

House size/living space is far more constant. It would make a good and proxy for riches in a contemporary society too.

Re: 4K years ago, Mohenjo-daro grew more equal over time

#52

Post by rramadass »

jnmandal wrote: post #12

A David Graeber inspired study!? In case you haven't heard of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything

This is actually a thought-provoking book and a must read. History as taught today is very much misunderstood/skewed/euro-centric and many times plain wrong. The wikipedia page itself gives the highlights and worth reading.

A very good example comes from India itself i.e. "The Paradox of Indian History" which is the dichotomy between Archeological Evidence (Indus Valley, Ashoka's inscriptions etc.) vs. Literary Evidence (Puranas, Itihasas etc.) Add to this the linguistic diversities, group/ethnic diversities and successive waves of invasions and displacements and it is enough to drive a Historian mad/happy depending upon how you look at it. The literary/linguistic evidence paints a picture of very advanced societies while the archeological evidence paints a distinctly different but again advanced societies.

Hence studies like the OP's submission are very much needed and welcome.

Re: 4K years ago, Mohenjo-daro grew more equal over time

#53

Post by rramadass »

pm90 wrote: post #31

> The study also raises broader questions about how early cities functioned. Archaeologists often link urban growth with centralized political power and rising social divisions. Mohenjo-daro points toward another model, one where collective governance and public investment shaped the city’s long-term stability. Fascinating. I hope that discoveries like this increase the interest of the public in investing in historic…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48378159

Re: 4K years ago, Mohenjo-daro grew more equal over time

#54

Post by rayiner »

lostlogin wrote: post #45
rayiner wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> A lot of anthropology unfortunately is bullshit. More so than every other field? We are in an era of quackery and whatever ones view, there seems to be something supporting it.

> More so than every other field?

Not every other field, but a lot of them. The entire field is fundamentally based on drawing conclusions from too small N. You don’t see anthropology papers that read like this: “We found a bunch of stuff all in the same dig site. What does it mean? We don’t know because it’s definitionally not a representative sample. Fund us to dig in 10 more sites across the country and maybe we’ll be able to say more.”

Re: 4K years ago, Mohenjo-daro grew more equal over time

#55

Post by dwa3592 »

rayiner wrote: post #30
dwa3592 wrote: post #6

It's a pleasant finding but not surprising. In all the excavations done over time in indus valley, they never found any weapons or any signs of war. I have this book with pretty cool illustrations if anyone wants a light read on this topic - https://www.amazon.com/dp/014345532X?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_... I am not related to the author in anyway. i heard about this book on a podcast and bought it.

I suspect that’s some noble savage mythologizing. Many Harrapan weapons have been found: https://www.allsubjectjournal.com/assets/archives/2015/vol2i...

mythologizing?

What is myth about not finding military grade weapons or shields or large fortifications or artifacts on glorification of war and killing, like they found in other civilizations??

Did you even read the paper you cited or was it just a cheap attempt to find a critique bc of your own personal beliefs? - most of the weapons are tools (agri, hunting etc) and the time period is 1900-1400 BC when the civilization was in its last stage.

granted IVC hasn't been excavated to the degree the other civilizations has been, but at this point no concrete evidence has been found of wars and bloodshed at the scale compared to other civilizations.

Re: 4K years ago, Mohenjo-daro grew more equal over time

#56

Post by specialist »

mcmoor wrote: post #27
komali2 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like really, think about it. These weights were very precise. And they had to be, because "weight" was basically equivalent to "money." So there had to be a standard, and that standard had to be enforced when the weights were produced. And the weights had to remain trustworthy as they were distributed elsewhere for use in the trade. Someone was obviously "in charge" lol I disagree. You seem to imply that the standa…

It's exactly the opposite. With languages/standards, both parties has incentives to have mutual understanding so they don't need anyone else to enforce symbol equality. But with these weights, or money in general, there's huge incentive to deceive each other, so someone has to enforce the equality. That someone can be the parties themselves, but if one party lack the ability, it necessitated the creation of third-par…

> huge incentive to deceive each other

Disagree.

Iterated prisoner's dilemma leads to cooperation.

Re: 4K years ago, Mohenjo-daro grew more equal over time

#57

Post by rayiner »

dwa3592 wrote: post #55
rayiner wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that’s some noble savage mythologizing. Many Harrapan weapons have been found: https://www.allsubjectjournal.com/assets/archives/2015/vol2i...

mythologizing? What is myth about not finding military grade weapons or shields or large fortifications or artifacts on glorification of war and killing, like they found in other civilizations?? Did you even read the paper you cited or was it just a cheap attempt to find a critique bc of your own personal beliefs? - most of the weapons are tools (agri, hunting etc) and the time period is 1900-1400 BC when the civiliz…

The mythologizing is in taking the absence of data—as you acknowledge, IVC hasn’t been excavated to the degree of other civilizations—and projecting onto that blank slate utopian ideas about a society free of warfare.

We know very little about the IVC. We haven’t decoded their writing, for example. So how can we draw conclusions in comparison to civilizations (like ancient Egypt) where we know about wars from their extensive written records of wars?

Re: 4K years ago, Mohenjo-daro grew more equal over time

#58

Post by __rito__ »

rramadass wrote: post #52
jnmandal wrote: post #12

A David Graeber inspired study!? In case you haven't heard of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything

This is actually a thought-provoking book and a must read. History as taught today is very much misunderstood/skewed/euro-centric and many times plain wrong. The wikipedia page itself gives the highlights and worth reading. A very good example comes from India itself i.e. "The Paradox of Indian History" which is the dichotomy between Archeological Evidence (Indus Valley, Ashoka's inscriptions etc.) vs. Literary Evide…

Something should be noted: equality didn't save them. They grew more equal, maybe. But that couldn't save them from barbaric hordes/drought/a combination of these or more.

They became extinct.

To an "educated", emotional mind guarded in a safe place, economic prosperity, the tenets of equality might show promise, but, they might ultimately be sans utility when seen from the lens of survival, thriving, etc.

Re: 4K years ago, Mohenjo-daro grew more equal over time

#59

Post by dwa3592 »

rayiner wrote: post #57
dwa3592 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

mythologizing? What is myth about not finding military grade weapons or shields or large fortifications or artifacts on glorification of war and killing, like they found in other civilizations?? Did you even read the paper you cited or was it just a cheap attempt to find a critique bc of your own personal beliefs? - most of the weapons are tools (agri, hunting etc) and the time period is 1900-1400 BC when the civiliz…

The mythologizing is in taking the absence of data—as you acknowledge, IVC hasn’t been excavated to the degree of other civilizations—and projecting onto that blank slate utopian ideas about a society free of warfare. We know very little about the IVC. We haven’t decoded their writing, for example. So how can we draw conclusions in comparison to civilizations (like ancient Egypt) where we know about wars from their e…

that's a good question and if you lead with that it would have been a genuine discussion but you had to slap the "savage mythologizing" in the comment and what did you base that upon? the excavation that has been done points to a direction, is it a really significant evidence, no but its not nothing and it points to the possibility that IVC was rather less barbaric than the other civilizations and this was prior to the study in TFA which is even more evidence in the similar direction!!! so it seems to me that you are raising suspicions based on strong bias that you have against this region rather than any genuine curiosity or scientific backing.

Re: 4K years ago, Mohenjo-daro grew more equal over time

#60

Post by mcmoor »

specialist wrote: post #56
mcmoor wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's exactly the opposite. With languages/standards, both parties has incentives to have mutual understanding so they don't need anyone else to enforce symbol equality. But with these weights, or money in general, there's huge incentive to deceive each other, so someone has to enforce the equality. That someone can be the parties themselves, but if one party lack the ability, it necessitated the creation of third-par…

> huge incentive to deceive each other Disagree. Iterated prisoner's dilemma leads to cooperation.

There's so many variants of prisoner's dilemma at this point which have their own winner I give up tracking. I've heard the most "realistic" one have titfortat as winner, but I've also heard that in certain population mixture, the one who defect more wins.
Post reply on HN