Diese Rätselhafte Zivilisation ist älter als die Sumerer und Ägypter - die Harappan-Kultur

With great symbols representing majesty and power, mythical gods and pharaohs and great technological inventions that have changed the world, we are used to seeing Egypt and Sumer as the oldest and most advanced civilizations in history. However, recent scientific studies indicate that there is a mysterious old civilization between Pakistan and India before these two incredible cultures. Indeed, researchers believe that this civilization, known as Harappan or Industal civilization, is about 8,000 years old, which means that it is even older than the great Sumerians. Its most famous city, Mohenjo-daro, is a clear example of a well-established and highly developed urban center, which includes sewage systems, streets, well-organized houses, agriculture and artwork. Despite all the information that researchers already have about this culture, the Harappan civilization remains one of the most mysterious in history. Their writing has not yet been deciphered, their city planning and irrigation systems were even more advanced than those of most cities in modern India, and civilization suddenly disappeared for reasons that have not yet been fully clarified. How did the Harappan civilization achieve such a degree of cultural and technological development? What was their secret? Did someone help them? Or were they the descendants of an even older high culture? And what is the secret behind their sudden disappearance? Before we begin, we would be happy if you give this video a like and also subscribe to our channel by clicking on the notification bell so that you can receive more videos like this. In a study published in Zeitschrift Dorn, researchers from the Archaeological Society of India and the IIT Kharagpur examined various tests based on radio carbon, which were carried out on various fragments of ceramic pieces and bones of pets from a settlement in Birana, a village 225 km away, northwest of New Delhi. The researchers found that this settlement is at least 8,000 years old. In this sense, the Harappan civilization, to which this village belonged, would exceed the ancient Egyptian and Sumerian civilizations by at least 1,000 years. This completely changes our perception of the urban settlements of antiquity in this region. On the other hand, this study also contributed to determining the various stages that the Harappan civilization went through until it reached its peak around 3000 BC, as well as its subsequent decline and disappearance. Professor Anindya Sarkar from the Department of Geology and Geophysics at the IIT Kharagpur pointed out the relevance of this discovery. Our study dates back to the 8th century BC and will have great impacts on the development of human settlements on the Indian subcontinent. Additional studies show that this mysterious Harappan civilization had more than 5 million inhabitants at its peak, an outstanding number at that time. Consider the Sumerian civilization for comparison, which was estimated to have 1.5 million inhabitants. The first time a trace of this lost civilization was found was the discovery of the lost city of Harappa in 1921. The name of the civilization, which we now call Harappa, comes from this city. Since then, more than 1,052 cities and settlements have been found. One of them is the city of Mohenjo-daro. This city is located near the Indus River and is a true jewel of city planning from antiquity and quickly became the most famous city of the Harappans. Although the ruins of Mohenjo-daro were first found in 1911 by a group of archaeologists, professional archaeological excavations were carried out in the 1920s to 1930s by Sir John Marshall, General Director of the Archaeological Survey of India. At first, the archaeologists did not know what to call the city. But after their excavations uncovered many strange skeletons scattered in streets and houses, they finally called it Mohenjo-daro, which means hill of the dead. Despite its gloomy name, the city stands out as the first large urban center of the Indian subcontinent and its sophisticated city development is quite impressive. The people of this city did not only know about city planning, but also knew how to do agriculture, work with metals and express themselves in writing. The city itself was arranged in clusters and its houses had separate rooms for various activities, including a kitchen, a living room, a bedroom, terraces, bathrooms and drainage systems, similar to a modern household. This last aspect, the water control, is exactly one of the most important developments in the civilization of the Indus Valley. Today it is easy to believe that the population, which lived more than 4,000 years ago, used extremely rudimentary systems to use water and satisfy their various needs. For example, transporting water in buckets from the river to the houses or digging a hole in the ground to use it as a toilet. But this was not the case with the Harappan civilization. The houses had a water supply and sanitation system, whereas the bathrooms and toilets were well separated from the other rooms. The city also had more than 700 water wells and a sophisticated drainage system that enabled the water to circulate harmoniously through the city. In one part of the city, which is known as the Citadel, they built a 900 square meter building called the Great Bath, which they filled by pumping water from the Indus. Remember that the Romans only managed to build their famous baths around 70 BC. So the people in the Indus Valley were 2,500 years ahead of them. As it turned out, this subdued civilization had one of the first sanitary systems in the world. All this is remarkable if you consider that only in Mohenjo-daro between 20,000 and 40,000 people lived together. And Mohenjo-daro was not even the largest city in the Harappan civilization. That was the city of Rakigari, which was only discovered in 1969 and only 5% of the area has been excavated to this day. Who knows what secrets and mysteries we will discover about this lost civilization during the excavations. If Rakigari is the largest city, it could have served as a kind of capital of the Harappan civilization. And if so, imagine how technologically advanced it would be compared to Mohenjo-daro. Mohenjo-daro itself had a very sophisticated planning that combined a water supply system, buildings, markets, grain stores and warehouses, which were all in the most optimal place. This high level of planning would be impossible, because the Harappan civilization had a sophisticated system of weights and measures that they used for all their activities, which is still unknown to us today. What we know is that there was strict standardization in the construction industry, with bricks that corresponded to the size in a perfect ratio of 4 to 2 to 1. In addition, the people who lived in cities like Mohenjo-daro and Harappa were true masters of agriculture. Due to the age of civilization, experts continue to discuss whether these people developed agriculture and livestock independently or learned from other populations of the time. To complete the puzzle, some genetic studies show that the peasant population of the Indus was never closely related to their next peasant neighbors, who lived in today's Iran, and the experts were the first to consider the agriculture developed in the region more than 10,000 years ago. Today it is assumed that the spread of agriculture in different parts of the world was due to the export of this knowledge by some people. In fact, genetic studies carried out in Europe show that Stone Age farmers brought their knowledge to different parts of Europe when they moved through the area and mixed with different population groups. However, this did not happen with the population of the Indus Valley, as their genetics differ from those of the neighboring peoples who developed agriculture 8,000 BC. This means that the people in the Indus Valley apparently come from an earlier civilization that developed agriculture itself or perhaps learned from someone else. The question is then, who taught the people in the Indus these advanced techniques? Considering that the Indus Valley civilization is older than the Egyptian and Sumerian civilizations, it is worth asking, were it the people in the Indus Valley who passed this knowledge on to the ancient Egyptians and Sumerians? On the other hand, the development of a fully standardized system of sails, measures, tools and utensils of the Harappan civilization was used to develop international trade with populations that are as far away as those of the Arabian Gulf, Mesopotamia and South India, as evidenced by sails found in these areas. Experts assume that most of the inhabitants of the city were merchants and craftsmen who were familiar with the processing of metals such as copper, bronze, lead and tin and had great skills in the processing of ceramics and the production of bricks. In fact, they were so good that many of their creations were found in other remote cities in the region, probably due to trade. Despite this high level of planning and development, one of the aspects that attracted the most attention of the researchers was the fact that there were no palaces, temples and monuments in the cities of the Indus Valley, which could indicate a ceremonial practice. There are also no indications that there was a central authority, such as a king or queen, who regulated the activities in the cities. This is unusual for a Bronze Age civilization, as these cultures were very autocratic and relied on caste systems. Many studies indicate that Mohenjo-daro was a city with a municipal administration system, with a specific group of people who were elected to carry out certain government tasks. Each city probably had a kind of council, which in turn was subject to a more central council, which was responsible for the whole country. In view of the distance between all the different cities of the Harappan civilization, this government structure is very impressive. The government form of the Harappan civilization even caused the magazine UNESCO Courier to publish an entire article entitled The Indus Valley Civilization – Gradle of Democracy, in which the possibilities were theorized that democracy in the Indus Valley was invented thousands of years before the ancient Greeks. Another surprising thing is the lack of a large temple for worship. If we compare this with the Egyptian and Sumerian civilizations, which were full of temples that worshiped various deities, this makes the Harappan civilization quite unique. So far, the large bath seems to be the only building in the city that could be seen as a ceremonial monument. There are even indications that these religious or ceremonial events took place in the citadel, which also reinforces the assumption that these people probably worshipped water in some way. This feature is very different from the culture of ancient Egypt, which is full of temples, graves and other majestic monuments, as well as a deep worship of their god kings, which we know as pharaohs. On the other hand, archaeologists have found Indus seals and artificial figures that could be associated with some religious beliefs. A good example of this is a figure that was found during early excavations in Mohenjo-daro. This figure is known as the priest king. However, many experts believe that this figure does not represent a religious personality, as there is no solid evidence to support this assumption. Another famous artifact found in Mohenjo-daro is a female figure of only around 10 cm in bronze, which was called a dancing girl because of her special characteristics. In this figure, the girl holds her left leg and her left hand, apparently ready to follow the rhythm of a dance, which is probably of a ceremonial or religious nature. Her left arm is provided with 25 armbands, which apparently served to shape her limbs. This was a common practice in some cultures all over the world, as is the case today with the Kayans, a subgroup of the Kareni. Some experts believe that these figures and other objects from the culture of the Indus people could actually represent a multitude of religious beliefs and practices or a multitude of gods, just as they did in ancient Egypt. Despite all these elements, none of them provide concrete evidence that the Harappan civilization had a strict religious or esoteric practice, as this is only speculation and theory. In the end, there is something that most experts agree on. A large part of the secret behind the Harappan civilization can only be revealed when the biggest of their riddles is solved. Their writing. Although experts have already succeeded in unlocking a large part of the way of life of this culture and their urban planning methods, most of their secrets remain hidden behind the veil of their writing. Unlike the Egyptian hieroglyphs or the Mayan language, the Harappan writing can only be deciphered with great difficulty. The riddle behind the non-decipherable Harappan writing has confused scientists for so long that since 2004 there has been a money prize of 10,000 US dollars for anyone who can decipher a Harappan text with about 50 characters. No wonder no one succeeded. Since this culture is shrouded in so many secrets, the decryption of their writing could be the only key that would enable us to unravel their secrets. In the meantime, hundreds of symbols of the Harappan people have been found on a large number of artifacts of all kinds, including ceramics and metalwork. Most of these symbols show animals and human figures. Others believe that the symbols represent a series of seals that were used for commercial transactions. This is very different from what is usually seen in inscriptions of other ancient civilizations, which often have more than 100 characters. Nevertheless, some studies that compared the Harappan writing with other linguistic and non-linguistic symbol systems have found that the Harappan writing is very similar in a high percentage of cases to a written language. This similarity applies not only to writing systems that are based on subordinate codes such as DNA, but also to coordinated code systems such as computer programming languages. However, there are still many doubts about the Harappan writing, as it still poses great difficulties, even if it is decrypted by statistical systems that are executed by powerful computers. One of the main problems with this writing is that the messages are too short and only show a few examples within each sequence, which makes it difficult even for machines. On the other hand, the symbols that appear next to the images are different for each stamp, which lacks homogeneity and clarity, which further complicates a uniform interpretation of this writing. This means that up to this point, any interpretation can rather be seen as a guess than as a fact. Another factor that also speaks against the decoding of the Hindustan texts is the lack of a multilingual inscription, i.e. a text that is written in two or more known or unknown languages, which say exactly the same thing. The best example of this is the famous Rosetta Stone, the old inscription, whose text is written in two forms of Egyptian script and in ancient Greek script, which has contributed greatly to deciphering the language of ancient Egypt. Despite all the obstacles and problems, the work on the decryption of the Harappan script continues. Hopefully one day we will be able to decipher the script and discover the secrets that this civilization hides. What we know is that the civilization of the Indus Valley ended around 1700 BC. But what exactly happened is still a mystery. Were their cities left? Or were they attacked by intruders from other regions? Or did something else happen that we still cannot understand? Strangely, these questions remain unanswered, as experts still have to find evidence. To this day, most scientists are divided into two groups. Those who believe that the cities were left because of a great flood or drought of the Indus or the Gaga-Hakra River. And those who believe that their inhabitants were massacred by intruders. This very last theory contributed to the name of the city of Mohenjo-Daro. As we mentioned at the beginning of the video, Mohenjo-Daro means the hill of the dead. This refers to a series of human skeletons that were found in the ruins of the city when the excavations began in the 1920s. Apart from broken statues and structures, only about 40 human skeletons were found. What happened to the remaining 40,000 inhabitants that the city should have? Some experts consider it necessary to refute the theories about the end of the Harappan civilization by armed intruders, as there are several elements that do not fit into this story. First, there is no significant evidence that a large-scale invasion took place. For example, there are no traces of burnt fortresses, no destructions on the walls, no remains of weapons or armaments, and no large number of scattered skeletons of civilians and soldiers. This is quite mysterious if you consider that the invaders of the massacre theory were the old Aryans, a people that had settled in prehistoric times in present-day Iran and on the North Indian subcontinent. If there was a great battle, where are the skeletons of the fallen fighters and civilians? It is as if the earth had suddenly swallowed them. However, the theory of the massacre is still in many heads. When the first excavations in Mohenjo-daro began, the first thing that impressed the researchers was the discovery that these skeletons were found in strange positions. A certain number of skeletons were found in the suburb, a kind of residential district, in a seemingly unconventional burial ritual. But another group of skeletons was found with a strange posture. More precisely, as if they wanted to flee from something or someone. It is as if death had come from the inside of the city and not from the outside. On the other hand, the Vedic texts could give some clues as to what really happened in Mohenjo-daro. Some Vedic hymns indicate that Indra, the main god of these texts, destroyed the fortifications of the Dacian attack by setting them on fire. In this context, a Dacian represents every non-Aryan enemy, like the people in the Indus Valley. Although there are many strange theories, including a theory that indicates that a kind of advanced weapon was used to destroy the inhabitants of the Indus Valley, some researchers point out that the end of the Indus civilization most likely came in a natural way. Some experts believe that a flood or a severe drought could have been the cause that forced the people of the Indus to emigrate to other areas. However, the researchers also point out that this natural disaster lasted over time and that the inhabitants survived as much as possible and even converted a large part of their food, as evidenced by the food remains found in the area. The Harappan civilization, one of the most technologically advanced civilizations of the Bronze Age, is still shrouded in mystery and its discovery only led to more questions than answers. Although there is still a lot to discover, the most important thing is that we now know that this old civilization has left an important historical and cultural legacy. And if such an important civilization has been underground for thousands of years and we only discovered it 100 years ago, just imagine what other secrets and mysteries are still hidden underground. Which other chapters of the development of human civilization remain undiscovered and how advanced were people really back then? Tell us your opinion in the comment area and also share with us which other topics we should cover in our channel. If you liked the video, we are happy about a like. And if you want to see more videos like this, please subscribe to the channel and click on the notification bell so you don't miss our next upload. See you in the next video!