Michelle Sindha Thomas
Let me feel with unalloyed gladness that all the great glories of man are mine. – Rabindranath Tagore
PART TWO
IN THE BEGINNING | WEST ASIA 4000 BC-THE INDUS RIVER VALLEY 1750 BC
“Your story needs a beginning,” you say, unimpressed as usual, “Mama came out of nowhere.” I need a beginning, too, otherwise I can’t make sense of things.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and earth. – Genesis 1:1
The first humans, Adam and Eve, began to fill the earth with their children. They very quickly headed down a path of certain extinction, leading to divine intervention and the Great Flood, which spared many animals and just few humans, offering them a do-over. A patriarch, Noah, his three sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and their wives began to cultivate the land and fill it once again.
As for you, be fruitful and become many, and increase abundantly on the earth and multiply. – Genesis 9:7
A few hundred years after the Great Flood, a grandson of Ham arose as a violent leader: Nimrod, a hunter and warrior who took a stance against God, dominated his ancestral land and invaded the Shemitic territory, building cities and establishing the foundations of the Babylonian empire. He sought to transfer attachment to God into a dependence on his own power, threatening revenge on God for the flood and declaring himself a god, encouraging hero-worship and animism, sowing the seeds for polytheism. He gathered the clans and directed them to build a great brick tower in Babel, intended to ascend higher than any divinely appointed floodwaters. His followers complied and the tower rose quickly, and to an unprecedented height. Nimrod summoned the people towards himself as an idol and ruler, opposing God’s command to spread across the earth; this led to a divine intervention which confused the first human language, and the congregated people began to leave Babel, dispersing according to their new language groups.
So Jehovah scattered them from there over the entire face of the earth, and they gradually left off building the city. That is why it was named Babel [Confusion] because there Jehovah confused the language of all the earth, and Jehovah scattered them from there over the entire face of the earth. – Genesis 11:8, 9
The progenitors of the Arab, Assyrian, Chaldean, Elamite, Hebrew, Lydian, and Syrian peoples migrated towards the southwestern corner of Asia, extending across the Fertile Crescent and the Arabian Peninsula. The Elamites settled the land farthest east with some moving onwards as far as the Indus River Valley; elements of their language are still apparent in modern Brahui, spoken in Pakistan, regional languages from Nepal to Sri Lanka, and the Dravidian languages of South India, including Kannada, Telegu, Tamil, and Malayalam.
The Indus Valley civilization spanned nearly 400,000 square miles, from modern-day Afghanistan to Gujarat—an area comparable in size to the UK, Spain, and France combined and larger both in size and population than contemporaneous societies in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and China. Cities dotted the Indus River and the now-lost Saraswati River system. The rivers served as internal trade routes and reliably flooded twice a year, providing ideal conditions for agriculture to support local needs and a surplus that enabled trade at unparalleled scale. The society reached its peak around 2000 BC with a network of at least 1,500 cities, towns, and villages, hosting millions of residents. Cities were raised above the flood plains by means of man-made mounds, with separate, especially elevated walled citadels protecting warehouses and granaries from both floodwaters and potential attack. Excavations at Harappa and Mohenjodaro reveal dense neighborhoods of multi-story homes built along perpendicular streets that indicate strategic city-planning and promenades lined with trees for shade and benches for public seating. Cities were oriented to receive cooling Arabian Sea winds and contained networks of brick-lined wells and pools, reservoirs, and canal systems. While settlements were hundreds of miles away from each other, their design was characterized by consistency: Every brick in the region maintains a 1-2-4 ratio, aligning to precise architectural standards across the empire. City centers included large outdoor gathering spaces and indoor halls possibly used for darbar, learning, or worship. Private residences were spacious and exhibited ingenious technical innovation, each with a watertight bathing room and plumbing connected to a central drainage system.
The people seem to have lived peacefully, with no evidence of accumulated weapons or warfare. Metalsmiths produced sculptures, copper and bronze works in both elegant and utilitarian forms, tools, toys, and ornaments of gold and silver. Potters used foot-wheels to throw clay vessels, which were then covered with red slip, painted with abstract shapes and geometric renditions of flora and fauna, and, in an original technique, acid-etched to produce white markings. The people adorned themselves with sophisticated beadwork and ornaments of shell and terracotta, enjoying the arts and a measure of leisure.
In addition to the known populace of administrators, builders, artisans, and artists, farmers and shepherds cultivated herds of cattle, water buffalo, and camels, raising sheep, goats, and chickens, domesticating dogs and cats. The Indus people coexisted peacefully with nomadic hunters, gatherers, and herders, employing them to move goods between cities and trading farmed food and tools for honey, wax, silk, ivory and foraged plants. Advanced trade is evidenced by the ubiquitous presence of standardized cubical measuring weights and by thousands of seals found in archaeological sites across West Asia that identify goods and sellers from the Indus Valley. Mesopotamian records indicate that the Indus people traded in barley and wheat, spices including turmeric, ginger, cumin, and cinnamon, along with precious materials: lapis lazuli, bronze and jewelery of gold, silver, copper, ebony, ivory, tortoiseshell. They purveyed pets including cats, dogs, monkeys, and peacocks, building ships to transport livestock and timber thousands of miles away to foreign markets and commercial centers across the ancient world.
Around 1750 BC, either due to natural disaster which impacted the Saraswati River or northern conquest of their main sites, the surviving community migrated southwards: While current inhabitants of northern India have genetic resemblance to modern Central and West Asians, who were later arrivals to the subcontinent, the DNA of modern South Indians includes shared ancestry with the ancient Indus people, agriculturalists who, once displaced, must have eventually cultivated lush farmland in the south.
Further Reading:
A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India From the Stone Age to the 12th Century by Upinder Singh, 2009.
Elamite and Dravidian: A Reassessment by Fillip Pedron, 2023.
India’s Ancient Past by R.S. Sharma, 2004.
The Indus Civilization by Irfan Habib, 2015.
Indian Art by Vidya Dehejia, 1997.