Truth be retold: On archaeology, Indian history and more
The Earth is the library of mankind. For centuries, an obsessive, inquisitive and courageous tribe has been trying to excavate the extensive hoard of knowledge hidden beneath its layers of soil and sand, oceans, forests, rivers and ruins—a tribe called archaeologists.
Their purpose is to exhume the debris of millennia, to understand the evolution of man, the rise and fall of civilisations and empires and, in the process, find a common thread between the past and present, and explain why we are as we are now.
Their discoveries keep changing previous beliefs about religion, architecture, governance, ecology, tools, science, wars, gender and politics. Finding a piece of stone, a jawbone or molar that existed thousands of millennia ago can be a marker of mankind’s peregrinations, answering the fundamental questions of creation.
Who are we really?
Where are we from?
How did we come to become what we are?
What next?
They are, at the core, disruptors whose new findings are causing seismic shocks in established circles.
● The Great Migration didn’t start from Africa, it was the reverse: proto-hominins, who lived in parts of Greece and Europe, moved to Africa first.
● Ancient Egyptian tombs may have been used to store radioactive nuclear waste.
● Arabia was a verdant expanse that supported all kinds of life 4,00,000 years ago.
The poor Indian politician, who didn’t see his ancestors change from apes to humans, was probably right; he couldn’t have, even if he had lived 3,00,000 years ago in Africa. Humans did not evolve in a linear way. The famous monkey-to-man illustration published by Time-Life in 1965, known as the ‘March of Progress’, did much to embed this perception for generations. Archaeologists have contradicted this theory by analysing bone fragments found recently in digging sites. These conjure up a Frankenstein’s monster: different body parts evolving in different timelines and dimensional scales.
Remains of Australopithecus sediba—it walked like a human—which lived around 98 million years ago in South Africa, had a human hand attached to an ape-like arm and an advanced ankle bone connected to a primitive heel. Pre-human hominids (hominids are modern humans, extinct human species and all our immediate ancestors), however, were not as primitive as we think: researchers reconstructed a 4,76,000-year-old log building in Zambia, built more than 2,00,000 years before the Homo sapiens appeared on earth.
FOLLOW THE TRAIL
A new mind-boggling discovery in Greece is challenging the African migration theory. A team led by Canadian archaeologist David Begun recently concluded that the fossils of an ape, which lived in Greece eight-nine million years ago, possibly belonged to a male from a new species. Its DNA analysis suggested that human ancestors may have evolved first in Europe before moving to Africa, and then divided into two migratory streams.
The result shatters the classical Darwinian theory; in 1871, he had suggested that all hominins are descended from a gene pool in Africa; or even Europe. To trace the Homo sapiens journey, scientists study two categories: Hominins and Hominids (modern humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans, plus all their immediate ancestors).
“This is a debate that has been ongoing for a long time. There are potentially a lot of places where the modern human could have developed from. There are believed to be at least 21 hominid species before Homo sapiens walked the earth. Whether they originated all out of Africa or in other corners of the world is a larger debate,” says Shriya Gautam, Founder and Director of Research at Speaking Archaeologically, an archaeological education group.
PREHISTORIC WARS ETCHED IN BONE
Home sapiens is probably the only species that settles debates often with violence. Man’s most primitive instinct to wage war was evident even then; archaeologists have plenty of evidence of brutality between humans and Neanderthals, who hunted big animals with clubs and spears. The longest war on earth lasted for 10,000 years between Neanderthals, who were physically powerful with larger brains and stronger arms, and the less stronger humans. Fossils of both species show signs of battle: traumas to the skull caused by clubs, parry fracture of the lower arm caused by warding off blows and spears plunged into chests. The warfare was prolonged, and through skirmishes, guerrilla-style raids and ambushes.
Our species kept losing for thousands of years because the enemy, which had superior strength and numbers, knew the terrain intimately. We don’t know how or why they were beaten in the end. Humans had built weapons with longer range like bows, spear-throwers and throwing clubs, which allowed them to massacre Neanderthals from far away.
Their new hunting and gathering techniques with such weapons encouraged population growth, which created larger tribes whose bigger numbers overpowered Neanderthals. Mysteries are the lifeblood of archaeology. Scientists are still trying to figure who the ‘Giants of Lovelock’—the massive 10-ft-tall skeletons discovered in and around Nevada caves in the last century—were.
By analysing their bone fragments using radiocarbon dating, it was found they lived between 2030 BC and 1218 BC. Native American legends speak about gigantic humans who inhabited the Lovelock area thousands of years ago: savage, redheaded, pale-skinned seafaring giants who attacked the local tribes. After years of war, they were cornered in a cave and massacred, according to indigenous lore.
The human instinct to inflict pain, and kill predates Cain. The madness hasn’t changed, only the methods have. Recently, archaeologists working in France found Stone Age remains of two women who were tortured and sacrificed in an Italian Mafia-style killing: the ligature binding their ankles to their necks would have resulted in self-strangulation—a practice known as incaprettamento; the kind of revenge the Italian Mafia reserves for traitors. The first woman would have died gasping for breath with the weight of the second woman pushing down on her neck, and preventing her from breathing, leading to cardiac arrest. The study says ‘‘homicidal ligature strangulation’’ was an important part of ceremonies at ritual sites in the late Stone Age.
There is speculation that these women were sacrificial victims. The second woman had ‘‘two pieces of grindstone placed horizontally on her back’’. Grindstones are associated with agriculture. Researchers found more such instances of similar ritualistic murders of men and children too. Human sacrifices were common in the ancient world; prehistoric skeletons of men, women and children bearing signs of ritual killing have been dug up all across the earth. There was honour in burial too: women warriors in Mongolia and Scandinavia were interred in formal burial mounds with their horses and armour.
Archaeology repeatedly proves that inequality and injustice has survived along with civilisation for millennia. In Pompeii, a city destroyed by a volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, earth detectives identified the ruins of a prison bakery where prisoners were locked up with donkeys and forced to grind grain to bake bread, which suggested an organised justice system that supported prison labour. Foreign slaves were imprisoned for even small crimes.
Excavators recently discovered a completely preserved fifth-century Mayan city built exclusively for the elite, demonstrating a strict distinction between the ruling classes and commoners. As wealth became hierarchical, powerful lords and rulers, Mayans and Egyptian kings and nobles were interred with their wives, servants and favourite animals like dogs and horses to accompany their masters into the afterlife.
INDIA’S AGE
There is strong racial bias in archaeology. Conscious or not, most funding goes to digs examining Caucasian DNA of people of European descent.
A new study showed that modern Japanese people descend from three ancestral groups, with the second being an unknown species. India too gets little funding for genomic research, despite its population of more than 1.4 billion, with more than 4,500 anthropologically well-defined populations, including castes, tribes and religious groups. “The story of India starts 2.6 million years ago. The history of India starts 2,700 years ago. For over 99 per cent of the human past in the Indian subcontinent all you have is archaeology,” says archaeologist and historian Kurush F Dalal.
For over a century, British colonialists pushed the fraudulent Aryan migration theory as a superior racial trope. Now, fresh evidence released in early March suggests that Indians, like other races, travelled out from Africa around 50,000 years ago and possess Iranian ancestry. The examination of DNA of people in 18 Indian states concluded that most of us are descended from ancient Iranian farmers, Eurasian steppe herders and South Asian hunter-gatherers; not Aryan invaders, who thundered across the Indus to decimate and conquer.
Gautam is circumspect. “More research into it will be able to prove things in better light. Using present-day DNA to determine what has happened in the past can be useful but we can’t rely on it 100 per cent,” she says. Dalal has another take. “Aryan is a linguistic term. There was never an Aryan invasion. There is zero evidence for this on the ground,” she says.
Last December, archaeologists established that human remains discovered in Rakhigarhi village, Haryana, are 8,000 years old. This debunks the Aryan invasion theory, which is supposed to have happened between 1,800 and 1,500 years ago. American archaeologist and Egyptologist Sarah Parcak is collaborating with the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to use remote sensing to map archaeological sites; a new science called ‘satellite archaeology’ and ‘satellite remote sensing’. Parcak says that over 90 per cent of Indian heritage is buried in the earth.
The Indian Culture Ministry will spend Rs 27,000 crore on reconstruction of historic sites; funding for archaeology has gone up by seven times. In January, archaeologists discovered remains of an 800-year-old human settlement in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s native village Vadnagar in Gujarat: The oldest living city within a fortification ever to be unearthed in India. In July 2023, in Benisagar, Jharkhand, archaeologists found a village with a strong Hindu ethos; continuously inhabited by humans from the 5th century AD to 16-17th century AD.
Benisagar was a thriving Hindu centre as its sculptural remains of temple complexes, images of Surya, Bhairava, Lakulisha, Agni and Kuber attest. A stone seal inscribed with Priyangu Dheyam Chatuvidya (Chaturvidya), indicated that a Vedic scholar named Priyangu lived in Benisagar. Dispelling current concepts of social morality, the frescoes of copulation in Benisagar also point at liberal sexual mores and sex education extant during that period.
The North-South political divide in India often rears its ugly head in archaeology. Excavations by the Tamil Nadu government has led Chief Minister MK Stalin to suggest that Indian history should be rewritten from the Dravidian point of view after finding 2,600-3,200-year-old objects in Keeladi. More money is needed to explore India’s vast subterranean heritage. The ASI’s ‘Adopt a Heritage 2.0’ programme is meant to safeguard the country’s diverse cultural heritage with corporate stakeholders opening their wallets for the upkeep of more than 3,600 monuments.
PEELING THE LAYERS
Archaeology is the search to confirm that a common worldwide human imagination has existed on earth for millennia. For example, that pyramids are not confined to Egypt but also exist in Latin America and Cambodia. A study that spanned 20 years found that Amazonites had a strong urban culture, as proved by a vast network of interconnected cities in the heart of the rainforest. Social customs and class distinctions have become less crude, but have remained the same.
Viking teeth showed that apart from tattoos, filed teeth and elongated skulls were signs of prestige. Researchers Matthias Toplak and Lukas Kerk think they might be members of a merchant guild. They told Newsweek magazine, “This theory also implies that larger, organised communities of merchants existed already in the Viking Age, before the existence of formalised guilds.”
A 5,000-year-old mummy of an obese Anatolian farmer, nicknamed the Iceman, bore 61 ritualistic tattoos made with either a piece of bone or a copper awl. The world’s oldest-known pearl-fishing city found in the UAE revealed a flourishing ocean trade in precious things. Roman artefacts being discovered in Coimbatore to England to China showed the power and reach of the 1,000-year-old Empire.
Many rulers were enlightened; at one time, the Persian Empire was one of the world’s oldest open societies. Unlike Iran’s Ayatollahs, Persian rulers welcomed outside craftsmen from Greece, Egypt, Turkey, Afghanistan and other distant lands to build their capital city, Persepolis. Archaeological evidence of imperial ambition is widely available; the Cholas took Sri Lanka and Indonesia, while Kashmiri rulers raided Afghanistan and Xinjiang in China. The Nanda Empire of 345 BC had conquered Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan while the Mauryan Empire ruled over Myanmar, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Iran, Tajikistan, Nepal, Bhutan and Pakistan in 322 BC.
The study of power is the study of humanity, as archaeology amply proves. The recent excavation of a Mayan pyramid in Guatemala showed charred royal remains like a greenstone mask, usually placed in royal tombs with the dead king. Using historical coordinates and carbon dating, the team concluded that the citizenry had taken out the bones of the former ruler and burned it in public, signifying the arrival of a new monarch, likely Papmalil, who took over the Mayan kingdom of K’anwitznal then.
LOST SCIENCES?
Mythology is often derived from foggy historical images.
In all ancient mythologies, fearsome weapons, in the form of thunderbolts and spears, can destroy mankind abound.
A recent study, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, suggests that nuclear waste has been found in Egyptian tombs that emit high radiation levels. The researchers think the ancient Egyptians were conversant with uranium-based technology.
Studying ancient Egyptian literature in texts from 2,300-2,100 BC has revealed references to transformative processes and substances that resemble uranium-based materials, suggesting a high-level of technological sophistication in ancient Egypt that has gone unnoticed so far.
Many superstitions arise from millennial prototypes, and it may be an error to dismiss ancient cultural symbols like the famous Chinese dragon as mythological nonsense. Excavators found a perfectly preserved fossil of an aquatic reptile resembling a ‘Chinese dragon’ with snake-like features and elongated neck in the Year of the Dragon. It belonged to a Dinocephalosaurus orientalis, a 240-million-year-old reptile that lived or died in the Triassic period in southern China. Meanwhile, excavators digging inside a lignite mine in Kutch, Gujarat have discovered the bones of one of the most mammoth snakes ever known, dubbed ‘Vasuki’, which was 49-ft-long.
FURY OF FAITH
Where and when does God come into all this? A poignant discovery of religion, if not ritualism, came to light in 2016 when excavators found the 40,000-year-old body of a two-three-year-old child buried in a Spanish cave near Madrid. Named the Loyoza Child, its body was surrounded by hearths where bones, antlers and a rhino skull had been burned in a ceremonial cremation.
Though evidence of organised religion doesn’t appear till the Middle Paleolithic Age—3,00,000 to 50,000 years ago when the Neanderthals were still around, and modern humans were yet to appear—proof of religion was found in detailed cave paintings by Paleolithic artists 50,000 years ago. Where there is religion, superstition cannot be far behind.
Fear of zombies and vampires rising from their graves are primal fears. Inside a late Neolithic or Early Bronze Age grave excavated in Germany, a large stone was found placed on a man’s legs, pinning him down. Similarly, a 400-year-old grave of a ‘child vampire’, with a padlocked foot to prevent it from rising and drinking human blood was excavated in Poland last year.
The Paleolithic Period, around 2.5 million years ago, has the first evidence of religion among Homo sapiens. In the Upper Paleolithic Period—35,000 to 10,000 years ago—appeared fertility goddesses (Venus statuettes). The loss of ancient languages mean the first religion must remain nameless, though the excavation of 92,000-year-old human remains found in the Qafzeh Cave, Israel, may be the earliest proof of faith.
Archaeologists unearthed bones coloured with red ochre, accompanied by painted sea shells and flint artifacts; red ochre represents blood in religious rituals and reincarnation. The patterns of the earliest burial practices suggest a belief in life after death. Later findings show the existence of an ancestral skull cult 7,000 years ago in Palestine, where skulls with plaster moulds were kept in separate rooms.
Science is truly the philosophy of opposites. One part goes into space to discover other civilisations while another searches inside the earth for lost ones. In the end, both are the same. Unravelling the mysteries of life and death, and the oldest enigma that ever existed: Time.
A Brief History of Archaeology
6th century BC: The title of the world’s first archaeologist goes to the ancient Mesopotamian king, Nabonidus of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, who discovered and analysed the foundation deposit of the Akkadian Empire ruler Naram-Sin (2200 BC)
14th-15th century: Grave robbers from France, Britain and Denmark dug up ancient art objects to be sold as drawing room art showpieces. They travelled to the colonised Near-East and Egypt, where they looted pyramids and stole immense riches of the kings of ancient Egypt, Babylon and Persia from their tombs. This serendipitously led to the development of classical archaeology
Classical Archaeology: In the 1400s, Cyriacus of Ancona collected and copied books and documents about archaeological monuments in Greece and the Mediterranean for 25 years. In the 18th century, people started to become aware of ancient civilisations
Antiquarian studies: In the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, art collectors appear in England, France and Scandinavia, which promoted antiquarian studies among scientifically adventurous people. British and European colonialism in Asia, Africa, America and Australia made it possible for collectors to bring home antiquities of great historical value and study. European museums were suddenly stocked with objects, and knowledge about arcane ancient Eastern and Western cults spread
The Beginning of Scientific Archaeology: In 1814, a French customs official, Boucher de Perthes, discovered stone tools in the valley of the Somme in France, along with the fossils of prehistoric animals. In 1863, Sir Charles Lyell published the geological antiquity of man. In 1857, the fossil of prehistoric Stone Age man was discovered in a stone cave at Neanderthal in Germany. He was named the Neanderthal man. Archaeology was accepted as a science by the mid-19th century
The Birth of Modern Archaeology: Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species further encouraged the study of man’s antiquity and his evolution from an animal species from a remote time. Heinrich Schliemann conducted the first archaeological excavation in Greece to discover the city of Troy. Radiocarbon dating was invented in mid-20th century to reconstruct the unrecorded prehistory of man
The India story
18th Century: Systematic research into the sub-continent’s history was first undertaken by the Asiatic Society founded by the British Indologist Sir William Jones in 1784
Enter ASI: British Army engineer Alexander Cunningham realised the need for a permanent body, and founded the Archaeological Survey of India in 1861. Shortly after, the body was suspended due to lack of funds. It was revived in 1871, and Cunningham was appointed its first Director-General. In fact, almost two decades later, another fund crunch led to the suspension of the Director-General post until 1902
Age of Discovery: Fear of the ASI being shut down prevailed until the discovery of the Nigali Sagar, an archeological site in Nepal containing the remains of Asoka’s pillar. In 1896, another related discovery was made—the Lumbini pillar inscription
The Curzon era: The organisation truly came into its own from 1901 under the Director-Generalship of John Marshall, who encouraged epigraphical studies.
Under his leadership, the excavations of Taxila began in 1913 and lasted for 21 years. The Indus Valley Civilisation at Harappa and Mohenjodaro were duly discovered in 1921
Independent India: The National Museum was inaugurated in Delhi on August 15, 1949 to house excavated artefacts. Excavations of Indus Valley sites at Kalibangan, Lothal and Dholavira were made in 1968
Present Day: Today the ASI administers close to 4,000 monuments and sites. The latest discoveries have been at Rakhigarhi, an Indus Valley Civilisation site in Haryana
OLD TRADE, NEW TOOLS
GPS
It helps archaeologists locate and accurately map locations of sites across landscapes
Satellite imaging
Use of high-resolution satellites with thermal and infrared capabilities to pinpoint potential sites of interest in the earth
3D modelling
It helps archaeologists reconstruct site models for research and academic purposes. It comprises techniques such as Structure for Motion and Building Information Modelling, which ensure efficient and accurate representation
LiDAR
Light Detection and Ranging is the process of detecting distant objects and determining their position, velocity, volume or other characteristics by analysing pulsed laser light reflected from their surfaces