DNA FROM ANCIENT BURIAL UNLOCKS THE MYSTERY OF 5,000 YEAR OLD LOST CULTURE.

The magic of DNA revealing an ancient culture is at it again. It's well known that North Africa and Eurasia have been home to many of our earliest civilisations, including Mesopotamia, Egypt's Old, Middle and New Kingdoms, Sumer, Baylon, and several notable Chinese dynasties. There have also been smaller, less well-known civilisations that have risen and fallen over the millenia. One of them is the Indus Valley Civilisation  (IVC). This civilisation, which is also known as the Harappan civilisation, was strung out along the basin of the Indus River, covering the area that is now Pakistan, Afghanistan and part of India. Archaeological expeditions in that are have found evidence of religious practices that date back to 5500 BCE, of farming villages from 4000 BCE, and of complete civilisation from 3000 BCE. 
Most of the excavations have happened in two places: the old city of Mohenjo-Daro and the city of Harappa. The evidence suggests that the cities were comparable, or even superior, to those in the areas mentioned above, with wells, bathrooms, and under-ground drainage. Even so, relatively little has been known about the people who lived there until recently, at least in part because historians hadn't worked out much of the Harappan language. Now, however, scientists have sequenced the genome of someone from the IVC for the first time, according to Smithsonian. They found a small amount of DNA from the remains of a woman in a 4,500 year old burial site, allowing them to accomplish the sequencing. That work, in combination with DNA analysis done from a wider swathe of the area, has also given researchers some new questions about the beginnings of agriculture in the region in the ancient past. 
The sequenced genome was compared with others from South Asia, and suggests that the IVC is the genetic root of most modern Indians. DNA from both groups shows the same mix of Iranian DNA and that of certain South-east Asian hunter-gatherer societies, according to Harvard Medical School geneticist David Reich. The woman's DNA also had evidence of some things that surprised researchers, such as a lack of genetic relationship with the Steppe pastoralists whose genes are frequently present in modern South Asians, as well as among Europeans and other groups. This suggests that the entry of the Steppe genes into the South Asian gene pool occurred after the fall of the IVC. The DNA findings also suggest things about how the ancient culture of the Indo-European languages spread across the world. Because there are genes from Iranian farmers in many modern South Asians, some historians have come to believe that agriculture came to that region courtesy of the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East. The genes from the Harappan remains don't make much of a contribution to the lineage logical for that theory, which means that farming in that region may have begun from exchange of ideas or even arose spontaneously, as opposed to being the result of a mass migration from Iran.
In other words, the Harappan woman's DNA has given researchers a way to test the validity of some of what they think they have figured out about ancient life in South Asia. Despite the fact that the IVC covered a large area of land and the fact that their cities were large, well planned, and had good public infrastructure, the civilisation remained unknown to historians until 1921 when archaeological digs at Harappa started to uncover the city. They have uncovered considerable urban ruins; however the language of the people was largely made up of pictures and symbols making it difficult to work out and gain a deeper understanding of the culture. For example, historians still haven't been able to determine whether the cities in the area were independent, or part of a cohesive kingdom. 
The Encyclopedia of ancient History tells us that the IVC began its slow decline around 1800 BCE. Symptoms include writing beginning to fall out of use along with a standardised system of weights and measures that would be used for trade; without trade, its connection to the Near East would be lost. Over time, the cities began to be abandoned for reasons that aren't completely clear. The most popular theory is that it was due to changes in the climate. The Saraswati River began to dry up around 1900 BCE. Some experts say there was a massive flood in the area. Either option would have taken a terrible toll on the agriculture of the region and could have been behind people drifting away. Perhaps further analysis of the DNA of the ancient culture of the Harappan woman may help provide more clues about what actually happened to her people and her civilisation as well as a better understanding of the ancient origins and development of South Asian populations. 
--Challapalli Srinivas Chakravarthy, 18th September, 2019 (Wednesday)--.
---------------------------------------------------------------  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

VIEWS OF MANU AND KAUTILYA ON THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE.

The state performed its duty of protection of society and the individual through coercive enforcement of the standards of justice based on the concept of ' Dharma '. From the Vedic period onward, the perennial attitude of Indian culture had been justice and righteousness. Justice, in the Indian context, was a human expression of a wider universal principle of nature and if men were entirely true to nature, their actions would be spontaneously just. Men experienced Justice, in the sense of a distributive equity, as moral justice, social justice, and legal justice. Each of these forms of justice was viewed as a particularisation of the general principle of the universe seen as a total organism. Impartial administration of justice was always regarded as one of the main duties of the King and he was considered to be the fountain of justice. The ethical code of society and its cultural standards were inter-related. The cultural maturity and social amicability and even their det...
Read more

ARCHAEOLOGISTS DISCOVER TOMBS IN EGYPT DATING BACK 2,000 YEARS.

Egypt's antiquities ministry said on 14th August, 2017 (Tuesday) that archaeologists have discovered three tombs dating more than 2,000 years, from the Ptolemaic Period. The discovery was made in the Nile valley province of Minya south of Cairo, in an area known as al-kamin al-Sahrawi. The unearthed sarcophagi and clay fragments suggest that the area was a large necropolis from sometime between the 27th Dynasty and the Greco-Roman period. ---------------------------------------------------------------- 
Read more

ANCIENT INDIA'S LINKS TO TODAY.

You may not have heard of Shu-ilishu but he is a man of great significance. He reaches out to us from almost 4,300 years ago, through a small Akkadian cylinder seal now housed at the Louvre Museum in Paris. On the seal, you will find an image of him talking to two men. The inscription describes Shu-ilishu as the interpreter of the Meluhhan language. 'Meluha' was, in all probability, the term used by ancient Mesopotamians for the Indus Valley region, and the presence of an oficial 'interpreter' there indicates just how important the steady flow of good from the Indian sub-continent was.  Precious and vibrant lapis lazuli stones, carnelian beads, wood and even dogs would go across via old trade routes and ports like Lothal (in modern-day Gujarat) to Akkad, capital of the Akkadian Empire (03rd millennium BCE) and now in modern-day Iraq. There are also references to a settlement of Meluhhans in the city of Guabba in Sumer, in Mesopotamia.  The story of Shi-ilishu and ...
Read more