151-601: The Indus script , also known as the Harappan script and the Indus Valley Script , is a corpus of symbols produced by the Indus Valley Civilisation . Most inscriptions containing these symbols are extremely short, making it difficult to judge whether or not they constituted a writing system used to record a Harappan language , any of which are yet to be identified. Despite many attempts,
302-668: A UNESCO effort tasked to conserve the site at Mohenjo-daro. Other international efforts at Mohenjo-daro and Harappa have included the German Aachen Research Project Mohenjo-daro , the Italian Mission to Mohenjo-daro , and the US Harappa Archaeological Research Project (HARP) founded by George F. Dales . Following a chance flash flood which exposed a portion of an archaeological site at
453-643: A "relatively uniform" material culture in terms of pottery styles, ornaments, and stamp seals with Indus script , leading into the transition to the Mature Harappan phase. According to Giosan et al. (2012), the slow southward migration of the monsoons across Asia initially allowed the Indus Valley villages to develop by taming the floods of the Indus and its tributaries. Flood-supported farming led to large agricultural surpluses, which in turn supported
604-431: A 2004 article, Steve Farmer, Richard Sproat , and Michael Witzel presented a number of arguments stating that the Indus script is nonlinguistic. The main ones are the extreme brevity of the inscriptions, the existence of too many rare signs (which increase over the 700-year period of the Mature Harappan civilisation), and the lack of the random-looking sign repetition that is typical of language. Asko Parpola , reviewing
755-653: A Finnish team in the 1960s–80s that, like Knorozov's Soviet team, worked towards investigating the inscriptions using computer analysis. Parpola similarly concluded that the Indus script and Harappan language "most likely belonged to the Dravidian family". A comprehensive description of Parpola's work up to 1994 is given in his book Deciphering the Indus Script . Supporting this work, the archaeologist Walter Fairservis argued that Indus script text on seals could be read as names, titles, or occupations, and suggested that
906-465: A continuity in cultural development but a change in population. According to Lukacs and Hemphill, while there is a strong continuity between the neolithic and chalcolithic (Copper Age) cultures of Mehrgarh, dental evidence shows that the chalcolithic population did not descend from the neolithic population of Mehrgarh, which "suggests moderate levels of gene flow." Mascarenhas et al. (2015) note that "new, possibly West Asian, body types are reported from
1057-566: A derivation from the Indus script. Researchers have also compared the Indus valley script with the Proto-Elamite script used in Elam , an ancient Pre-Iranian civilisation that was contemporaneous with the Indus Valley civilisation. Their respective scripts were contemporary to each other, and both were largely pictographic. About 35 Proto-Elamite signs may possibly be comparable to Indus signs. Writing in 1932, G. R. Hunter argued, against
1208-430: A grey skin at birth, which becomes slate blue later. Albinoids are present in some populations. River buffaloes have longer faces, smaller girths, and bigger limbs than swamp buffaloes. Their dorsal ridges extend further back and taper off more gradually. Their horns grow downward and backward, then curve upward in a spiral. Swamp buffaloes are heavy-bodied and stockily built, with a short body and large belly. The forehead
1359-524: A highly uniform and well-planned grid pattern, suggesting they were planned by a central authority; extraordinary uniformity of Harappan artefacts as evident in pottery, seals, weights and bricks; presence of public facilities and monumental architecture; heterogeneity in the mortuary symbolism and in grave goods (items included in burials). These are some major theories: Harappans evolved some new techniques in metallurgy and produced copper, bronze , lead, and tin . A touchstone bearing gold streaks
1510-571: A hundred excavated, there are five major urban centres: Mohenjo-daro in the lower Indus Valley (declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980 as " Archaeological Ruins at Moenjodaro "), Harappa in the western Punjab region , Ganeriwala in the Cholistan Desert , Dholavira in western Gujarat (declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2021 as " Dholavira: A Harappan City "), and Rakhigarhi in Haryana . The Harappan language
1661-547: A joint discussion. By 1924, Marshall had become convinced of the significance of the finds, and on 24 September 1924, made a tentative but conspicuous public intimation in the Illustrated London News : "Not often has it been given to archaeologists, as it was given to Schliemann at Tiryns and Mycenae , or to Stein in the deserts of Turkestan , to light upon the remains of a long forgotten civilisation. It looks, however, at this moment, as if we were on
SECTION 10
#17327654740391812-621: A new viceroy of India, Lord Curzon , pushed through the Ancient Monuments Preservation Act 1904 , and appointed John Marshall to lead the ASI. Several years later, Hiranand Sastri , who had been assigned by Marshall to survey Harappa, reported it to be of non-Buddhist origin, and by implication more ancient. Expropriating Harappa for the ASI under the Act, Marshall directed ASI archaeologist Daya Ram Sahni to excavate
1963-621: A number of misunderstandings in Rao et al. , including a lack of discriminative power in their model, and argued that applying their model to known non-linguistic systems such as Mesopotamian deity symbols produced similar results to the Indus script. Rao et al. 's argument against Sproat's arguments and Sproat's reply were published in Computational Linguistics in December 2010. The June 2014 issue of Language carries
2114-573: A paper by Sproat that provides further evidence that the methodology of Rao et al. is flawed. Rao et al. 's rebuttal of Sproat's 2014 article and Sproat's response are published in the December 2015 issue of Language . The Indus symbols have been assigned the ISO 15924 code "Inds". Michael Everson submitted a completed proposal for encoding the script in Unicode's Supplementary Multilingual Plane in 1999, but this proposal has not been approved by
2265-476: A role in variation of CLA level and changes in gross composition of water buffalo milk. Water buffalo milk is processed into a large variety of dairy products , including: Water buffalo meat, sometimes called "carabeef", is often passed off as beef in certain regions, and is also a major source of export revenue for India. In many Asian regions, water buffalo meat is less preferred due to its toughness; however, recipes have evolved ( rendang , for example) where
2416-454: A similar conditional entropy to Old Tamil . These scholars have proposed readings of many signs; one such reading was legitimised when the Dravidian homophonous words for 'fish' and 'star', mīn , were hinted at through drawings of both the things together on Harappan seals. In a 2011 speech, Rajesh P. N. Rao said that Iravatham Mahadevan and Asko Parpola "have been making some headway on this particular problem", namely deciphering
2567-599: A site whose entire upper layer had been stripped in the interim. Although his original goal of demonstrating Harappa to be a lost Buddhist city mentioned in the seventh century CE travels of the Chinese visitor, Xuanzang , proved elusive, Cunningham did publish his findings in 1875. For the first time, he interpreted a Harappan stamp seal , with its unknown script, which he concluded to be of an origin foreign to India. Archaeological work in Harappa thereafter lagged until
2718-865: A small amount of milk. Water buffalo milk presents physicochemical features different from those of other ruminant species, such as a higher content of fatty acids and proteins . The physical and chemical parameters of swamp-type and river-type water buffalo milk differ. Water buffalo milk contains higher levels of total solids, crude protein , fat , calcium , and phosphorus , and slightly higher content of lactose compared with those of cow milk . The high level of total solids makes water buffalo milk ideal for processing into value-added dairy products such as cheese. The conjugated linoleic acid content in water buffalo milk ranged from 4.4 mg/g fat in September to 7.6 mg/g fat in June. Seasons and genetics may play
2869-539: A thick coating of mud. Both are well-adapted to a hot and humid climate with temperatures ranging from 0 °C (32 °F) in the winter to 30 °C (86 °F) and greater in the summer. Water availability is important in hot climates, since they need wallows, rivers, or splashing water to assist in thermoregulation . Some water buffalo breeds are adapted to saline seaside shores and saline sandy terrain . Water buffaloes thrive on many aquatic plants . During floods, they graze submerged, raising their heads above
3020-515: A tradition in archaeology, the civilisation is sometimes referred to as the Harappan, after its type site , Harappa , the first site to be excavated in the 1920s; this is notably true of usage employed by the Archaeological Survey of India after India's independence in 1947. The term "Ghaggar-Hakra" figures prominently in modern labels applied to the Indus civilisation on account of a good number of sites having been found along
3171-530: Is a piebald water buffalo featuring a unique black and white colouration that is favoured by the Toraja of Sulawesi . The swamp buffalo has 48 chromosomes , while the river buffalo has 50 chromosomes. The two types do not readily interbreed, but fertile offspring can occur. Water buffalo-cattle hybrids have not been observed to occur, but the embryos of such hybrids reach maturity in laboratory experiments, albeit at lower rates than non-hybrids. The rumen of
SECTION 20
#17327654740393322-614: Is a large bovid originating in the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia . Today, it is also kept in Italy, the Balkans, Australia, North America, South America and some African countries. Two extant types of water buffalo are recognized, based on morphological and behavioural criteria: the river buffalo of the Indian subcontinent and further west to the Balkans, Egypt and Italy; and
3473-490: Is a popular hunting location, where a steady population up to 4,000 individuals exists. Safari outfits are run from Darwin to Melville Island and other locations in the Top End, often with the use of bush pilots ; buffalo horns, which can measure up to a record of 3.1 m (10 ft) tip-to-tip, are prized hunting trophies. Water buffaloes were exported live to Indonesia until 2011, at a rate of about 3,000 per year. After
3624-408: Is flat, the eyes are prominent, the face is short, and the muzzle is wide. The neck is comparatively long, and the withers and croup are prominent. A dorsal ridge extends backward and ends abruptly just before the end of the chest. Their horns grow outward and curve in a semicircle, but always remain more or less on the plane of the forehead. The tail is short, reaching only to the hocks . Size of
3775-689: Is marked on an ivory scale found in Lothal in Gujarat, was approximately 1.704 mm, the smallest division ever recorded on a scale of the Bronze Age . Harappan engineers followed the decimal division of measurement for all practical purposes, including the measurement of mass as revealed by their hexahedron weights. Water buffalo Bos bubalis Linnaeus, 1758 The water buffalo ( Bubalus bubalis ), also called domestic water buffalo , Asian water buffalo and Asiatic water buffalo ,
3926-490: Is no conclusive evidence of palaces or temples. Some structures are thought to have been granaries. Found at one city is an enormous well-built bath (the " Great Bath "), which may have been a public bath. Although the citadels were walled, it is far from clear that these structures were defensive. Most city dwellers appear to have been traders or artisans, who lived with others pursuing the same occupation in well-defined neighbourhoods. Materials from distant regions were used in
4077-537: Is no escape from the fact that the horse played a central role in the Vedic and Iranian cultures". Additionally, the Indus script appears to lack evidence of affixes or inflectional endings, which Possehl has argued rules out an Indo-European language such as Sanskrit as the language of the Indus script. A less popular hypothesis suggests that the Indus script belongs to the Munda family of languages . This language family
4228-507: Is not directly attested, and its affiliations are uncertain, as the Indus script has remained undeciphered. A relationship with the Dravidian or Elamo-Dravidian language family is favoured by a section of scholars. The Indus civilisation is named after the Indus river system in whose alluvial plains the early sites of the civilisation were identified and excavated. Following
4379-494: Is over 400, which is considered too large a number for each character to be a phonogram , and so the script is generally believed to be logo-syllabic . The precise total number of signs is uncertain, as there is disagreement concerning whether particular signs are distinct or variants of the same sign. In the 1970s, the Indian epigrapher Iravatham Mahadevan published a corpus and concordance of Indus inscriptions listing 419 distinct signs in specific patterns. However, in 2015,
4530-624: Is said to have received water buffaloes around 600 AD. These were probably a present from the Khan of the Avars , a Turkic nomadic tribe that dwelt near the Danube River at the time. Sir H. Johnston knew of a herd of water buffaloes presented by a King of Naples to the Bey of Tunis in the mid-19th century that had resumed the feral state in northern Tunis . European water buffaloes are all of
4681-462: Is shown by their dockyards, granaries , warehouses, brick platforms, and protective walls. The massive walls of Indus cities most likely protected the Harappans from floods and may have dissuaded military conflicts. The purpose of the citadel remains debated. In sharp contrast to this civilisation's contemporaries, Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt , no large monumental structures were built. There
Indus script - Misplaced Pages Continue
4832-694: Is spoken largely in central and eastern India, and is related to some Southeast Asian languages. However, much like the Indo-Aryan language, the reconstructed vocabulary of early Munda does not reflect the Harappan culture, therefore, its candidacy for being the language of the Indus Civilisation is dim. An opposing hypothesis is that these symbols are nonlinguistic signs which symbolise families, clans, gods, and religious concepts, and are similar to components of coats of arms or totem poles . In
4983-624: Is the Bininj Kunwok word for buffalo, which are represented in rock art paintings at Djabidjbakalloi. The buffalo left behind after the failed British attempt at settlement became a threat to the local Aboriginal peoples , as they had no guns at that time. As the herds expanded across into Arnhem Land , some local people seized the chance to hunt the animals for their hides in the 1880s, as they did not belong to anyone, unlike sheep and cattle. The industry continues to provide employment opportunities and income for traditional owners . During
5134-579: Is the result of complex domestication processes involving more than one maternal lineage and a significant maternal gene flow from wild populations after the initial domestication events. Twenty-two breeds of the river buffalo are known, including the Murrah , NiliRavi , Surti , Carabao , Anatolian, Mediterranean , and Egyptian buffaloes. China has a huge variety of water buffalo genetic resources , with 16 local swamp buffalo breeds in various regions. Results of mitochondrial DNA analyses indicate that
5285-527: The Brahmi script has some connection with the Indus system. Raymond Allchin has somewhat cautiously supported the possibility of the Brahmi script being influenced by the Indus script. Another possibility for the continuity of the Indus tradition is in the megalithic graffiti symbols of southern and central India and Sri Lanka , which probably do not constitute a linguistic script but may have some overlap with
5436-728: The Daimabad culture of the Late Harappan period, in present-day Maharashtra . Numerous artefacts, particularly potsherds and tools, bearing markings inscribed into them have been found in Central India, South India, and Sri Lanka dating to the Megalithic Iron Age which followed the Late Harappan period. These markings include inscriptions in the Brahmi and Tamil-Brahmi scripts, but also include non-Brahmi graffiti symbols which co-existed contemporaneously with
5587-599: The Ghaggar-Hakra River in northwest India and eastern Pakistan. The terms "Indus-Sarasvati Civilisation" and "Sindhu-Saraswati Civilisation" have also been employed in the literature by supporters of Indigenous Aryanism , after a posited identification of the Ghaggar-Hakra with the river Sarasvati described in the early chapters of the Rigveda , a collection of hymns in archaic Sanskrit composed in
5738-795: The Meluhhas . The seal of a scribe employed by an Akkadian king shows the sacrifice of water buffaloes. Water buffaloes are especially suitable for tilling rice fields , and their milk is richer in fat and protein than that of dairy cattle . A large feral population became established in northern Australia in the late 19th century, and there are smaller feral herds in Papua New Guinea , Tunisia and northeastern Argentina . Feral herds are also present in New Britain , New Ireland , Irian Jaya , Colombia , Guyana , Suriname , Brazil, and Uruguay . Carl Linnaeus first described
5889-645: The Unicode Technical Committee . As of February 2022, the Script Encoding Initiative still lists the proposal among the list of scripts that are not yet officially encoded in the Unicode Standard (and ISO/IEC 10646 ). The Indus Script Font is a Private Use Areas (PUA) font representing the Indus script. The font was developed based on a corpus compiled by Indologist Asko Parpola in his book Deciphering
6040-766: The United Kingdom , Ireland , Germany , the Netherlands , Switzerland , and Hungary . Little exchange of breeding water buffaloes has occurred among countries, so each population has its own phenotypic features and performances. In Bulgaria, they were crossbred with the Indian Murrah breed, and in Romania, some were crossbred with Bulgarian Murrah. As of 2016, about 13,000 buffaloes were in Romania, down from 289,000 in 1989. Populations in Turkey are of
6191-545: The alluvial plain of the Indus River , which flows through the length of Pakistan, and along a system of perennial monsoon -fed rivers that once coursed in the vicinity of the Ghaggar-Hakra , a seasonal river in northwest India and eastern Pakistan. The term Harappan is sometimes applied to the Indus Civilisation after its type site Harappa , the first to be excavated early in the 20th century in what
Indus script - Misplaced Pages Continue
6342-862: The sheaves during the rice harvest. They provide power for oilseed mills, sugarcane presses, and devices for raising water. They are widely used as pack animals , and in India and Pakistan, for heavy haulage, also. In their invasions of Europe, the Turks used water buffaloes for hauling heavy battering rams. Their dung is used as a fertilizer , and as a fuel when dried. Around 26 million water buffaloes are slaughtered each year for meat worldwide. They contribute 72 million tonnes of milk and three million tonnes of meat annually to world food, much of it in areas that are prone to nutritional imbalances. In India, river buffaloes are kept mainly for milk production and for transport, whereas swamp buffaloes are kept mainly for work and
6493-463: The swamp buffalo from Assam in the west through Southeast Asia to the Yangtze Valley of China in the east. The wild water buffalo ( Bubalus arnee ) most probably represents the ancestor of the domestic water buffalo. Results of a phylogenetic study indicate that the river-type water buffalo probably originated in western India and was domesticated about 6,300 years ago, whereas
6644-405: The textual corpus consists of seals, impressions of such seals, and graffiti markings inscribed on pottery. Seals and their impressions were typically small in size and portable, with most being just 2–3 centimetres in length on each side. No extant examples of the Indus script have been found on perishable organic materials like papyrus , paper, textiles, leaves, wood, or bark. Early examples of
6795-491: The water buffalo . Early Harappan communities turned to large urban centres by 2600 BCE, from where the mature Harappan phase started. The latest research shows that Indus Valley people migrated from villages to cities. The final stages of the Early Harappan period are characterised by the building of large walled settlements, the expansion of trade networks, and the increasing integration of regional communities into
6946-696: The "script" has not yet been deciphered. There is no known bilingual inscription to help decipher the script, which shows no significant changes over time. However, some of the syntax (if that is what it may be termed) varies depending upon location. The first publication of a seal with Harappan symbols dates to 1875, in a drawing by Alexander Cunningham . By 1992, an estimated 4,000 inscribed objects had been discovered, some as far afield as Mesopotamia due to existing Indus–Mesopotamia relations , with over 400 distinct signs represented across known inscriptions. Some scholars, such as G. R. Hunter, S. R. Rao , John Newberry, and Krishna Rao have argued that
7097-414: The 1950s, water buffaloes were hunted for their skins and meat, which was exported and used in the local trade. In the late 1970s, live exports were made to Cuba and continued later into other countries. Swamp buffaloes are now crossed with river buffaloes in artificial insemination programs, and are kept in many areas of Australia. Some of these crossbreeds are used for milk production. Melville Island
7248-566: The ASI attempted to "Indianise" archaeological work in keeping with the new nation's goals of national unity and historical continuity, in Pakistan the national imperative was the promotion of Islamic heritage, and consequently archaeological work on early sites was left to foreign archaeologists. After the partition, Mortimer Wheeler, the Director of ASI from 1944, oversaw the establishment of archaeological institutions in Pakistan, later joining
7399-775: The Anatolian buffalo breed. Between 1824 and 1849, swamp buffaloes were introduced into the Northern Territory , from Timor and Kisar and probably other islands in the Indonesian archipelago , to provide meat and hide. When the third attempt at settlement by the British on the Cobourg Peninsula was abandoned in 1849, the buffaloes were released. In the 1880s, a few river buffaloes were imported from India to Darwin for milk. Water buffalo have been
7550-536: The Caribbean, specifically in Trinidad and Tobago and Cuba. The husbandry system of water buffaloes depends on the purpose for which they are bred and maintained. Most of them are kept by people who work on small farms in family units. Their water buffaloes live in close association with them, and are often their greatest capital asset . The women and girls in India generally look after the milking buffaloes, while
7701-619: The Company any historical artifacts acquired during his travels. Masson, who had versed himself in the classics , especially in the military campaigns of Alexander the Great , chose for his wanderings some of the same towns that had featured in Alexander's campaigns, and whose archaeological sites had been noted by the campaign's chroniclers. Masson's major archaeological discovery in the Punjab
SECTION 50
#17327654740397852-991: The Early Harappan, Mature Harappan, and Late Harappan phases. Mehrgarh is a Neolithic (7000 BCE to c. 2500 BCE ) mountain site in the Balochistan province of Pakistan , which gave new insights on the emergence of the Indus Valley Civilisation. Mehrgarh is one of the earliest sites with evidence of farming and herding in South Asia . Mehrgarh was influenced by the Near Eastern Neolithic, with similarities between "domesticated wheat varieties, early phases of farming, pottery, other archaeological artefacts, some domesticated plants and herd animals." Jean-Francois Jarrige argues for an independent origin of Mehrgarh. Jarrige notes "the assumption that farming economy
8003-570: The Farmer et al. thesis in 2005, stated that their arguments "can be easily controverted". He cited the presence of a large number of rare signs in Chinese and emphasised there was "little reason for sign repetition in short seal texts written in an early logo-syllabic script". Revisiting the question in a 2008 lecture, Parpola took on each of the 10 main arguments of Farmer et al. , presenting counterarguments for each. A 2009 paper published by Rajesh P. N. Rao , Iravatham Mahadevan and others in
8154-448: The Ghaggar-Hakra system might yield more sites than the Indus river basin. According to archaeologist Ratnagar, many Ghaggar-Hakra sites in India and Indus Valley sites in Pakistan are actually those of local cultures; some sites display contact with Harappan civilisation, but only a few are fully developed Harappan ones. As of 1977, about 90% of the Indus script seals and inscribed objects discovered were found at sites in Pakistan along
8305-502: The Harappan civilisation lasted from c. 2600 –1900 BCE. With the inclusion of the predecessor and successor cultures – Early Harappan and Late Harappan, respectively – the entire Indus Valley Civilisation may be taken to have lasted from the 33rd to the 14th centuries BCE. It is part of the Indus Valley Tradition, which also includes the pre-Harappan occupation of Mehrgarh, the earliest farming site of
8456-544: The Indian subcontinent. Others have compared the Indus script to roughly contemporary pictographic scripts from Mesopotamia and the Iranian plateau , particularly Sumerian proto-cuneiform and Elamite scripts. However, researchers now generally agree that the Indus script is not closely related to any other writing systems of the second and third millennia BCE, although some convergence or diffusion with Proto-Elamite conceivably may be found. A definite relationship between
8607-571: The Indus Civilization , London: Arthur Probsthain, 1931. The first modern accounts of the ruins of the Indus civilisation are those of Charles Masson , a deserter from the East India Company 's army. In 1829, Masson traveled through the princely state of Punjab, gathering useful intelligence for the Company in return for a promise of clemency. An aspect of this arrangement was the additional requirement to hand over to
8758-408: The Indus River Valley site of Mehrgarh and is dated to 7,000 YBP ." The Early Harappan Ravi Phase, named after the nearby Ravi River , lasted from c. 3300 BCE until 2800 BCE. It started when farmers from the mountains gradually moved between their mountain homes and the lowland river valleys, and is related to the Hakra Phase , identified in the Ghaggar-Hakra River Valley to
8909-403: The Indus Script , wrote that he had deciphered the script. While dismissing most such attempts at decipherment, John E. Mitchiner commented that "a more soundly-based but still greatly subjective and unconvincing attempt to discern an Indo-European basis in the script has been that of Rao". S. R. Rao perceived a number of similarities in shape and form between the late Harappan characters and
9060-435: The Indus Script . Amar Fayaz Buriro, a language engineer, and Shabir Kumbhar, a developer of fonts, were tasked by the National Fund for Mohenjo-daro to develop this font, and they presented it at an international conference on Mohenjo-daro and the Indus Valley Civilisation on 8 February 2017. The Indus Valley Civilization started to decline around 1800 BCE. This phase included the disappearance of writing. The script created by
9211-555: The Indus Valley Civilisation, in the Gomal River valley in northwestern Pakistan, at Manda, Jammu on the Beas River near Jammu , and at Alamgirpur on the Hindon River , only 28 km (17 mi) from Delhi. The southernmost site of the Indus Valley Civilisation is Daimabad in Maharashtra . Indus Valley sites have been found most often on rivers, but also on the ancient seacoast, for example, Balakot ( Kot Bala ), and on islands, for example, Dholavira . "Three other scholars whose names I cannot pass over in silence, are
SECTION 60
#17327654740399362-399: The Indus Valley Civilization perished along with it. The Vedic civilization, which ruled over North India for several centuries, did not use the Indus Script or have a writing system. India would actually have to wait almost a millennium to witness the resurgence of writing. Indus Valley Civilisation The Indus Valley Civilisation ( IVC ), also known as the Indus Civilisation ,
9513-411: The Indus Valley. Several periodisations are employed for the IVC. The most commonly used classifies the Indus Valley Civilisation into Early, Mature and Late Harappan Phase. An alternative approach by Shaffer divides the broader Indus Valley Tradition into four eras, the pre-Harappan "Early Food Producing Era", and the Regionalisation, Integration, and Localisation eras, which correspond roughly with
9664-573: The Indus river, while other sites accounts only for the remaining 10%. By 2002, over 1,000 Mature Harappan cities and settlements had been reported, of which just under a hundred had been excavated, mainly in the general region of the Indus and Ghaggar-Hakra rivers and their tributaries; however, there are only five major urban sites: Harappa , Mohenjo-daro , Dholavira , Ganeriwala and Rakhigarhi . As of 2008, about 616 sites have been reported in India, whereas 406 sites have been reported in Pakistan. Unlike India, in which after 1947,
9815-446: The Indus script and any other script remains unproven. Researchers have compared the Indus valley script to the Brahmi and Tamil-Brahmi scripts, suggesting that there may be similarities between them. These similarities were first suggested by early European scholars, such as the archaeologist John Marshall and the Assyriologist Stephen Langdon , with some, such as G. R. Hunter, proposing an indigenous origin of Brahmi with
9966-446: The Indus script have been found on pottery inscriptions and clay impressions of inscribed Harappan seals dating to around c. 2800–2600 BCE during the Early Harappan period , and emerging alongside administrative objects such as seals and standardised weights during the Kot Diji phase of this period. However, excavations at Harappa have demonstrated the development of some symbols from potter's marks and graffiti belonging to
10117-442: The Indus script recorded an early form of the Dravidian languages ( Proto-Dravidian ). Early proponents included the archaeologist Henry Heras , who suggested several readings of signs based on a proto-Dravidian assumption. Based on computer analysis, the Russian scholar Yuri Knorozov suggested that a Dravidian language is the most likely candidate for the underlying language of the script. The Finnish scholar Asko Parpola led
10268-419: The Indus script seals and inscribed objects discovered so far were found at sites in Pakistan along the Indus River and its tributaries, such as Mohenjo-daro and Harappa , while other sites located elsewhere account for the remaining 10%. Often, animals such as bulls, water buffaloes , elephants, rhinoceros, and the mythical " unicorn " accompanied the text on seals, possibly to help the illiterate identify
10419-403: The Indus script was generally read from right to left , though some exceptions wherein the script is written left to right or in a boustrophedon mode are also known. Although the script is undeciphered, the writing direction has been deduced from external evidence, such as instances of the symbols being compressed on the left side as if the writer is running out of space at the end of the row. In
10570-429: The Indus script, although he felt his effort had "attained the level of proof" with regards to demonstrating that the Indus script was a Dravidian written language. Perhaps the most influential proponent of the hypothesis that the Indus script records an early Indo-Aryan language is the Indian archaeologist Shikaripura Ranganatha Rao , who in his books, Lothal and the Indus Civilization (1973) and The Decipherment of
10721-453: The Indus script, but concluded that their proposed readings, although they make sense, are not yet proof. In his 2014 publication Dravidian Proof of the Indus Script via The Rig Veda: A Case Study , the epigraphist Iravatham Mahadevan identified a recurring sequence of four signs which he interpreted as an early Dravidian phrase translated as "Merchant of the City". Commenting on his 2014 publication, he stressed that he had not fully deciphered
10872-467: The Indus script, concluding that there was a commonness of culture between the Indus Valley Civilisation and the later Megalithic period. Similarly, Indian epigraphist Iravatham Mahadevan has argued that sequences of Megalithic graffiti symbols have been found in the same order as those on comparable Harappan inscriptions and that this is evidence that language used by the Iron Age people of south India
11023-485: The Indus symbol inventory. Linguists such as Iravatham Mahadevan , Kamil Zvelebil , and Asko Parpola have argued that the script had a relation to a Dravidian language . By 1977 at least 2,906 inscribed objects with legible inscriptions had been discovered, and by 1992 a total of approx. 4,000 inscribed objects had been found. Indus script symbols have primarily been found on stamp seals , pottery, bronze and copper plates , tools, and weapons. The majority of
11174-607: The Kot Diji related material". He sees these areas as "catalytic in producing the fusion from Hakra, Kot Dijian and Amri-Nal cultural elements that resulted in the gestalt we recognize as Early Harappan (Early Indus)." By 2600 BCE, the Early Harappan communities turned into large urban centres. Such urban centres include Harappa , Ganeriwala , Mohenjo-daro in modern-day Pakistan, and Dholavira , Kalibangan , Rakhigarhi , Rupar , and Lothal in modern-day India. In total, more than 1,000 settlements have been found, mainly in
11325-756: The Murrah and Jafarabadi from India, and the carabao from the Philippines. The official Brazilian herd number in 2019 is 1.39 million head. During the 1970s, small herds were imported to Costa Rica , Ecuador , Cayenne , Panama , Suriname , Guyana , and Venezuela . In Argentina, many game ranches raise water buffaloes for commercial hunting. Other important herds in South America are Colombia (>300.000), Argentina (>100.000) and Venezuela with unconfirmed reports ranging from 200 to 500 thousand head. In 1974, four water buffaloes were imported to
11476-753: The Phoenician letters, and argued that the Phoenician script evolved from the Harappan script, and not, as the classical theory suggests from the Proto-Sinaitic script. He compared it to the Phoenician alphabet , and assigned sound values based on this comparison. Reading the script from left to right, as is the case with Brahmi, he concluded that Indus inscriptions included numerals and were " Sanskritic ". S. R. Rao's interpretation helped to bolster Hindu nationalist and Aryan indigenist views propagated by writers, such as David Frawley , who hold
11627-517: The Tamil-Brahmi script. As with the Indus script, there is no scholarly consensus on the meaning of these non-Brahmi symbols. Some scholars, such as the anthropologist Gregory Possehl , have argued that the non-Brahmi graffiti symbols are a survival and development of the Indus script into and during the 1st millennium BCE. In 1960, archaeologist B. B. Lal found that a majority of the megalithic symbols he had surveyed were identifiably shared with
11778-739: The United States from Guam to be studied at the University of Florida . In February 1978, the first herd arrived for commercial farming. Until 2002, only one commercial breeder was in the United States. Water buffalo meat is imported from Australia. Until 2011, water buffaloes were raised in Gainesville, Florida , from young obtained from zoo overflow. They were used primarily for meat production, and frequently sold as hamburger. Other U.S. ranchers use them for production of high-quality mozzarella cheese. Water buffaloes are also kept in
11929-408: The age of 30 is not uncommon, and instances of a working life of 40 years have been recorded. The most probable ancestor of domesticated water buffalo is the wild water buffalo ( Bubalus arnee ), which is native to the Indian subcontinent and tropical Southeast Asia. Two types of domesticated water buffalo are recognized, based on morphological and behavioural criteria – the river buffalo (of
12080-467: The alluvial plain of the Indus and its tributaries. In addition, there was a region with disparate flora, fauna, and habitats, up to ten times as large, which had been shaped culturally and economically by the Indus. Around 6500 BCE, agriculture emerged in Balochistan , on the margins of the Indus alluvium. In the following millennia, settled life made inroads into the Indus plains, setting
12231-417: The animal is 12 years or even older. A good river buffalo male can impregnate 100 females in a year. A strong seasonal influence on mating occurs. Heat stress reduces libido . Although water buffaloes are polyoestrous, their reproductive efficiency shows wide variation throughout the year. The cows exhibit a distinct seasonal change in displaying oestrus , conception rate, and calving rate. The age at
12382-408: The animals depicted were totems indicating kinship or possibly clans . The computational linguist Rajesh P. N. Rao , along with a team of colleagues, performed an independent computational analysis and concluded that the Indus script has the structure of a written language, supporting prior evidence for syntactic structure in the Indus script, and noting that the Indus script appears to have
12533-547: The anoa branching somewhere between swamp and river buffalos. A 2023 Filipino study using the CytB gene instead found the tamaraw branching between the two. By 2011, the global water buffalo population was about 172 million. The estimated global population of water buffalo is 208,098,759 head distributed in 77 countries in five continents. More than 95.8% of the world population of water buffaloes are kept in Asia, including both
12684-409: The archaeologist and epigrapher Bryan Wells estimated that were around 694 distinct signs. Of the signs identified by Mahadevan, 113 are hapax legomena , 47 occur only twice, and 59 occur fewer than five times. Just 67 signs account for 80 percent of usage across the corpus of Indus symbols. The most frequently used sign is the "jar" sign, identified by Parpola as 'sign 311'. Most scholars agree that
12835-519: The body and shape of horns may vary greatly among breeds. Height at the withers is 129–133 cm (51–52 in) for bulls and 120–127 cm (47–50 in) for cows, but large individuals may attain 160 cm (63 in). Head-lump length at maturity typically ranges from 240–300 cm (94–118 in) with a 60–100 cm (24–39 in) long tail. They range in weight from 300–550 kg (660–1,210 lb), but weights of over 1,000 kg (2,200 lb) have also been observed. Tedong bonga
12986-408: The case of seals, which create a mirror image impression on the clay or ceramic on which the seal is affixed, the impression of the seal is read from right to left, as is this case with inscriptions in other cases. Some researchers have sought to establish a relationship between the Indus script and Brahmi , arguing that it is a substratum or ancestor to later writing systems used in the region of
13137-542: The citadel representing centralised authority and an increasingly urban quality of life. Another town of this stage was found at Kalibangan in India on the Hakra River. Trade networks linked this culture with related regional cultures and distant sources of raw materials, including lapis lazuli and other materials for bead-making. By this time, villagers had domesticated numerous crops, including peas , sesame seeds , dates , and cotton, as well as animals, including
13288-514: The cities for constructing seals, beads and other objects. Among the artefacts discovered were beautiful glazed faïence beads. Steatite seals have images of animals, people (perhaps gods), and other types of inscriptions, including the yet un-deciphered writing system of the Indus Valley Civilisation . Some of the seals were used to stamp clay on trade goods. Although some houses were larger than others, Indus civilisation cities were remarkable for their apparent, if relative, egalitarianism . All
13439-437: The civilisation may have contained between one and five million individuals during its florescence. A gradual drying of the region during the 3rd millennium BCE may have been the initial stimulus for its urbanisation. Eventually it also reduced the water supply enough to cause the civilisation's demise and to disperse its population to the east. Although over a thousand Mature Harappan sites have been reported and nearly
13590-550: The conviction that Indo-Aryan peoples are the original Bronze Age inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent and that the Indo-European language family originated in India. However, there are many problems with this hypothesis, particularly the cultural differences evident between the Indus River Civilisation and Indo-European cultures , such as the role of horses in the latter; as Parpola put it, "there
13741-602: The country's northeastern region. By the beginning of 2012, less than one million were in the country, partly as a result of illegal shipments to neighbouring countries where sales prices are higher than in Thailand. Water buffaloes are also present in the southern region of Iraq in the Mesopotamian Marshes . The draining of the Mesopotamian Marshes by Saddam Hussein was an attempt to punish
13892-410: The death rate increased, as the close living conditions of humans and domesticated animals led to an increase in contagious diseases. According to one estimate, the population of the Indus civilisation at its peak may have been between one and five million. During its height the civilisation extended from Balochistan in the west to western Uttar Pradesh in the east, from northeastern Afghanistan in
14043-409: The development of cities. The IVC residents did not develop irrigation capabilities, relying mainly on the seasonal monsoons leading to summer floods. Brooke further notes that the development of advanced cities coincides with a reduction in rainfall, which may have triggered a reorganisation into larger urban centres. According to J.G. Shaffer and D.A. Lichtenstein, the Mature Harappan civilisation
14194-527: The dissolution of the East India Company and the establishment of Crown rule in India , archaeology on the subcontinent became more formally organised with the founding of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). Alexander Cunningham , the Survey's first director-general, who had visited Harappa in 1853 and had noted the imposing brick walls, visited again to carry out a survey, but this time of
14345-659: The earlier Ravi phase from c. 3500–2800 BCE . In the Mature Harappan period , from about c. 2600–1900 BCE , strings of Indus signs are commonly found on flat, rectangular stamp seals as well as written or inscribed on a multitude of other objects including pottery, tools, tablets, and ornaments. Signs were written using a variety of methods including carving, chiselling, embossing, and painting applied to diverse materials such as terracotta , sandstone , soapstone , bone, shell, copper, silver, and gold. As of 1977, Iravatham Mahadevan noted that about 90% of
14496-541: The earliest and best-known of which is named after Mehrgarh , in Balochistan , Pakistan. Harappan civilisation is sometimes called Mature Harappan to distinguish it from the earlier cultures. The cities of the ancient Indus were noted for their urban planning , baked brick houses, elaborate drainage systems, water supply systems, clusters of large non-residential buildings, and techniques of handicraft and metallurgy . Mohenjo-daro and Harappa very likely grew to contain between 30,000 and 60,000 individuals, and
14647-409: The first oestrus of heifers varies between breeds from 13 to 33 months, but mating at the first oestrus is often infertile and usually deferred until they are 3 years old. Gestation lasts from 281 to 334 days, but most reports give a range between 300 and 320 days. Swamp buffaloes carry their calves for one or two weeks longer than river buffaloes. Finding water buffaloes that continue to work well at
14798-514: The foot of the Bolan Pass in Balochistan , excavations were carried out in Mehrgarh by French archaeologist Jean-François Jarrige and his team in the early 1970s. The cities of the ancient Indus had "social hierarchies, their writing system, their large planned cities and their long-distance trade [which] mark them to archaeologists as a full-fledged 'civilisation.'" The mature phase of
14949-433: The general region of the Indus and Ghaggar-Hakra Rivers and their tributaries. A sophisticated and technologically advanced urban culture is evident in the Indus Valley Civilisation, making them the first urban centre in the region. The quality of municipal town planning suggests the knowledge of urban planning and efficient municipal governments which placed a high priority on hygiene , or, alternatively, accessibility to
15100-454: The genus Bos and the water buffalo under the binomial Bos bubalis in 1758; the species was known to occur in Asia and was held as a domestic form in Italy. Ellerman and Morrison-Scott treated the wild and domestic forms of the water buffalo as conspecifics , whereas others treated them as different species . The nomenclatorial treatment of the wild and domestic forms has been inconsistent and varies between authors and even within
15251-571: The graves of Mehrgarh beginning in the Togau phase (3800 BCE)." Gallego Romero et al. (2011) state that their research on lactose tolerance in India suggests that "the west Eurasian genetic contribution identified by Reich et al. (2009) principally reflects gene flow from Iran and the Middle East." They further note that "[t]he earliest evidence of cattle herding in South Asia comes from
15402-411: The houses had access to water and drainage facilities. This gives the impression of a society with relatively low wealth concentration . Archaeological records provide no immediate answers for a centre of power or for depictions of people in power in Harappan society. But, there are indications of complex decisions being taken and implemented. For instance, the majority of the cities were constructed in
15553-590: The journal Science also challenged the argument that the Indus script might have been a nonlinguistic symbol system. The paper concluded the conditional entropy of Indus inscriptions closely matched those of linguistic systems like the Sumerian logo-syllabic system, Rig Vedic Sanskrit etc., but they are careful to stress that by itself does not imply the script is linguistic. A follow-up study presented further evidence in terms of entropies of longer sequences of symbols beyond pairs. However, Sproat argued there existed
15704-446: The late Mr. R. D. Banerji , to whom belongs the credit of having discovered, if not Mohenjo-daro itself, at any rate its high antiquity, and his immediate successors in the task of excavation, Messrs. M.S. Vats and K.N. Dikshit . ... no one probably except myself can fully appreciate the difficulties and hardships which they had to face in the three first seasons at Mohenjo-daro." — From, John Marshall (ed), Mohenjo-daro and
15855-715: The leaves, stems or trimmings of banana, cassava , Mangelwurzel , esparto , Leucaena leucocephala and kenaf , maize, oats , Pandanus , peanut, sorghum , soybean , sugarcane , bagasse , and turnips . Citrus pulp and pineapple wastes have been fed safely to buffalo. In Egypt, whole sun-dried dates are fed to milk buffalo up to 25% of the standard feed mixture. Swamp buffaloes generally become reproductive at an older age than river breeds. Young males in Egypt, India, and Pakistan are first mated around 3.0–3.5 years of age, but in Italy, they may be used as early as 2 years of age. Successful mating behaviour may continue until
16006-465: The live export ban that year, the exports dropped to zero, and had not resumed as of June 2013. Tom Dawkins, CEO of NT Buffalo Industry Council, said in May 2022 that culling should be a last resort, given the flourishing and growing live export trade and economic benefits for Aboriginal people. By the end of 2021, cattle exports to Indonesia had dropped to the lowest level since 2012, while demand for buffalo
16157-490: The local population. Despite these reports, Harappa was raided even more perilously for its bricks after the British annexation of the Punjab in 1848–49. A considerable number were carted away as track ballast for the railway lines being laid in the Punjab. Nearly 160 km (100 mi) of railway track between Multan and Lahore , laid in the mid-1850s, was supported by Harappan bricks. In 1861, three years after
16308-524: The main grazing animals on the subcoastal plains and river basins between Darwin and Arnhem Land (the " Top End ") since the 1880s. They became feral and caused significant environmental damage. Their only natural predators in Australia are crocodiles and dingoes , which can only prey on the younger animals. As a result, they were hunted in the Top End from 1885 until 1980. In the early 1960s, an estimated population of 150,000 to 200,000 water buffaloes
16459-471: The majority of the inscriptions, numerical nature of certain stroke-like signs, functional homogeneity of certain terminal signs, and some generally adopted techniques of segmenting the inscriptions into initial, medial, and terminal clusters. Over 100 (mutually exclusive) attempts at decipherment have been published since the 1920s, and the topic is popular among amateur researchers. Although no clear consensus has been established, there are those who argue that
16610-513: The means of religious ritual. As seen in Harappa, Mohenjo-daro and the recently partially excavated Rakhigarhi , this urban plan included the world's first known urban sanitation systems . Within the city, individual homes or groups of homes obtained water from wells . From a room that appears to have been set aside for bathing, waste water was directed to covered drains, which lined the major streets. Houses opened only to inner courtyards and smaller lanes. The housebuilding in some villages in
16761-592: The men and boys are concerned with the working animals. Throughout Asia, they are commonly tended by children who are often seen leading or riding their charges to wallows. Water buffaloes are the ideal animals for work in the deep mud of paddy fields because of their large hooves and flexible foot joints. They are often referred to as "the living tractor of the East". They are the most efficient and economical means of cultivation of small fields. In most rice-producing countries, they are used for threshing and for transporting
16912-663: The north to Gujarat state in the south. The largest number of sites are in the Punjab region , Gujarat, Haryana , Rajasthan , Uttar Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir states, Sindh , and Balochistan. Coastal settlements extended from Sutkagan Dor in Western Baluchistan to Lothal in Gujarat. An Indus Valley site has been found on the Oxus River at Shortugai in Afghanistan which is the northernmost site of
17063-572: The northern Philippines , where butchered remains of domesticated water buffalo have been recovered from the Neolithic Nagsabaran site (part of the Lal-lo and Gattaran Shell Middens , c. 2200 BCE to 400 CE). These became the ancestors of the distinctly swamp-type carabao buffalo breed of the Philippines which, in turn, spread to Guam , Indonesia , and Malaysia , among other smaller islands. The present-day river buffalo
17214-516: The one led by Mortimer Wheeler , a new director-general of the ASI appointed in 1944, and including Ahmad Hasan Dani . After the partition of India in 1947, when most excavated sites of the Indus Valley Civilisation lay in territory awarded to Pakistan, the Archaeological Survey of India, its area of authority reduced, carried out large numbers of surveys and excavations along the Ghaggar-Hakra system in India. Some speculated that
17365-405: The origin of a particular seal. The Late Harappan period , from c. 1900–1300 BCE , followed the more urbanised Mature Harappan period, and was a period of fragmentation and localisation which preceded the early Iron Age in the Indian subcontinent . Inscriptions have been found at sites associated with the localised phases of this period. At Harappa, the use of the script largely ceased as
17516-456: The province of Sindh . The water buffalo breeds used are the Nili-Ravi, Kundi, and Azi Kheli. Karachi alone has upwards of 400,000 head of water buffalo in 2021, which provide dairy as well as meat to the local population. In Thailand, the number of water buffaloes dropped from more than 3 million head in 1996 to less than 1.24 million head in 2011. Slightly over 75% of them are kept in
17667-407: The region still resembles in some respects the housebuilding of the Harappans. The ancient Indus systems of sewerage and drainage that were developed and used in cities throughout the Indus region were far more advanced than any found in contemporary urban sites in the Middle East and even more efficient than those in many areas of Pakistan and India today. The advanced architecture of the Harappans
17818-548: The remains were from wild specimens. Both indicate that water buffaloes were first domesticated outside of China. Analyses of mitochondrial DNA and single-nucleotide polymorphism indicate that swamp and river buffaloes were crossbred in China. A 2020 analysis of the genomes of 91 swamp and 30 river buffaloes showed that they separated already before domestication about 0.23 million years ago . A 2021 analysis of water buffalo and lowland anoa genomes unexpectedly found
17969-437: The river and swamp types of water buffalos; the river type was referred to as Bubalus bubalis bubalis (Linnaeus, 1758) , while the swamp type was referred to as Bubalus bubalis carabanensis (Castillo, 1971) . However, Bubalus carabanensis is considered a junior synonym of Bubalus kerabau Fitzinger, 1860 . The skin of the river buffalo is black, but some specimens may have dark, slate-coloured skin. Swamp buffaloes have
18120-604: The river-type and considered to be of the same breed named the Mediterranean buffalo. In Italy, the Mediterranean type was particularly selected and is called the Mediterranea Italiana buffalo to distinguish it from other European breeds, which differ genetically. Mediterranean buffalo are also kept in Romania , Bulgaria , Greece , Serbia , Albania , Kosovo , and North Macedonia , with a few hundred in
18271-541: The river-type and the swamp-type. The water buffalo population in India numbered over 97.9 million head in 2003, representing 56.5% of the world population. They are primarily of the river type, with 10 well-defined breeds: the Bhadawari , Banni , Jafarabadi , Marathwadi, Mehsana , Murrah , Nagpuri , Nili-Ravi , Pandharpuri , Surti , and Toda buffaloes. Swamp buffaloes occur only in small areas in northeastern India and are not distinguished into breeds. In 2003,
18422-600: The second-largest population lived in China, with 22.76 million head, all of the swamp-type, with many breeds kept only in the lowlands, and other breeds kept only in the mountains; as of 2003, 3.2 million swamp-type carabao buffaloes were in the Philippines, nearly 3 million swamp buffaloes were in Vietnam, and roughly 773,000 buffaloes were in Bangladesh. About 750,000 head were estimated in Sri Lanka in 1997. In Japan,
18573-612: The second-millennium BCE, which are unrelated to the mature phase of the Indus Valley Civilization. Recent geophysical research suggests that unlike the Sarasvati, described in the Rigveda as a snow-fed river, the Ghaggar-Hakra was a system of perennial monsoon-fed rivers, which became seasonal around the time that the civilisation diminished, approximately 4,000 years ago. The Indus Valley Civilisation
18724-464: The site's two mounds. Farther south, along the main stem of the Indus in Sind province, the largely undisturbed site of Mohenjo-daro had attracted notice. Marshall deputed a succession of ASI officers to survey the site. These included D. R. Bhandarkar (1911), R. D. Banerji (1919, 1922–1923), and M. S. Vats (1924). In 1923, on his second visit to Mohenjo-daro, Baneriji wrote to Marshall about
18875-417: The site, postulating an origin in "remote antiquity", and noting a congruence of some of its artifacts with those of Harappa. Later in 1923, Vats, also in correspondence with Marshall, noted the same more specifically about the seals and the script found at both sites. On the weight of these opinions, Marshall ordered crucial data from the two sites to be brought to one location and invited Banerji and Sahni to
19026-558: The south for the 1991 Iraqi uprisings . After 2003 and the Firdos Square statue destruction , these lands were reflooded and a 2007 report on Maysan and Dhi Qar shows a steady increase in the number of water buffaloes. The report puts the number at 40,008 head in those two provinces. Water buffaloes were probably introduced to Europe from India or other eastern sources. In Italy, the Longobard King Agilulf
19177-412: The stage for the growth of rural and urban settlements. The more organized sedentary life, in turn, led to a net increase in the birth rate. The large urban centres of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa very likely grew to containing between 30,000 and 60,000 individuals, and during the civilisation's florescence, the population of the subcontinent grew to between 4–6 million people. During this period
19328-535: The swamp-type originated independently from Mainland Southeast Asia and was domesticated about 3,000 to 7,000 years ago. The river buffalo dispersed west as far as Egypt , the Balkans , and Italy; while swamp buffalo dispersed to the rest of Southeast Asia and up to the Yangtze Valley. Water buffaloes were traded from the Indus Valley Civilisation to Mesopotamia , in modern Iraq , in 2500 BC by
19479-882: The threshold of such a discovery in the plains of the Indus." In the next issue, a week later, the British Assyriologist Archibald Sayce was able to point to very similar seals found in Bronze Age levels in Mesopotamia and Iran, giving the first strong indication of their date; confirmations from other archaeologists followed. Systematic excavations began in Mohenjo-daro in 1924–25 with that of K. N. Dikshit , continuing with those of H. Hargreaves (1925–1926), and Ernest J. H. Mackay (1927–1931). By 1931, much of Mohenjo-daro had been excavated, but occasional excavations continued, such as
19630-423: The two types were domesticated independently. Sequencing of cytochrome b ( CytB ) genes of Bubalus species implies that the water buffalo originated from at least two populations, and that the river-type and the swamp-type have differentiated at the full species level. The genetic distance between the two types is so large that a divergence time of about 1.7 million years has been suggested. The swamp-type
19781-639: The use of inscribed seals ended around c. 1900 BCE ; however, the use of the Indus script may have endured for a longer duration in other regions such as at Rangpur, Gujarat , particularly in the form of graffiti inscribed on pottery. Seals from the Jhukar phase of the Late Harappan period, centred on the present-day province of Sindh in Pakistan, lack the Indus script, however, some potsherd inscriptions from this phase have been noted. Both seals and potsherds bearing Indus script text, dated c. 2200–1600 BCE , have been found at sites associated with
19932-415: The view of Stephen Langdon, that the number of resemblances "seem to be too close to be explained by coincidence". The following factors are usually regarded as the biggest obstacles to successful decipherment: Over the years, numerous decipherments have been proposed, but there is no established scholarly consensus. The few points on which there exists scholarly consensus are the right-to-left direction of
20083-563: The water and carrying quantities of edible plants. Water buffaloes eat reeds , Arundo donax , a kind of Cyperaceae , Eichhornia crassipes , and Juncaceae . Some of these plants are of great value to local peoples. Others, such as E. crassipes and A. donax , are a major problem in some tropical valleys and by eating them, the water buffaloes may help control these invasive plants. Green fodders are widely used for intensive milk production and for fattening. Many fodder crops are conserved as hay, chaffed, or pulped. Fodders include alfalfa ,
20234-476: The water buffalo differs from the rumen of other ruminants . It contains a larger population of bacteria, particularly the cellulolytic bacteria, lower protozoa , and higher fungi zoospores . In addition, higher levels of the rumen ammonia nitrogen (NH 4 -N) and pH have been found compared to those in cattle. River buffaloes prefer deep water. Swamp buffaloes prefer to wallow in mudholes, which they make with their horns. During wallowing, they acquire
20385-519: The water buffalo was used as a domestic animal throughout the Ryukyu Islands or Okinawa prefecture , however it is almost extinct now and mainly used as a tourist attraction. Per a 2015 report, about 836,500 water buffaloes were in Nepal . The water buffalo is the main dairy animal in Pakistan, with 23.47 million head in 2010. Of these, 76% are kept in the Punjab . The rest are mostly kept in
20536-472: The west, and predates the Kot Diji Phase (2800–2600 BCE, Harappan 2), named after a site in northern Sindh , Pakistan, near Mohenjo-daro . The earliest examples of the Indus script date to the 3rd millennium BCE. The mature phase of earlier village cultures is represented by Rehman Dheri and Amri in Pakistan. Kot Diji represents the phase leading up to Mature Harappan, with
20687-584: The western Indian subcontinent and west to the Levant, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean) and the swamp buffalo (found from Assam and East India in the west, east to the Yangtze Valley of China, and south through Indochina and Southeast Asia). River- and swamp-type water buffalo are believed to have been domesticated independently. Results of a phylogenetic study indicate that the river-type water buffalo probably originated in western India and
20838-493: The works of single authors. In March 2003, the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature achieved consistency in the naming of the wild and domestic water buffaloes by ruling that the scientific name Bubalus arnee is valid for the wild form. B. bubalis continues to be valid for the domestic form and applies also to feral populations. In the early 1970s, different names were proposed for
20989-568: Was "a fusion of the Bagor, Hakra, and Kot Diji traditions or 'ethnic groups' in the Ghaggar-Hakra valley on the borders of India and Pakistan". Also, according to a more recent summary by Maisels (2003), "The Harappan oecumene formed from a Kot Dijian/ Amri-Nal synthesis". He also says that, in the development of complexity, the site of Mohenjo-daro has priority, along with the Hakra-Ghaggar cluster of sites, "where Hakra wares actually precede
21140-618: Was Harappa, a metropolis of the Indus civilisation in the valley of Indus's tributary, the Ravi river . Masson made copious notes and illustrations of Harappa's rich historical artifacts, many lying half-buried. In 1842, Masson included his observations of Harappa in the book Narrative of Various Journeys in Baluchistan, Afghanistan, and the Punjab . He dated the Harappa ruins to a period of recorded history, erroneously mistaking it to have been described earlier during Alexander's campaign. Masson
21291-527: Was a Bronze Age civilisation in the northwestern regions of South Asia , lasting from 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE, and in its mature form from 2600 BCE to 1900 BCE. Together with ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia , it was one of three early civilisations of North Africa , Southwest Asia and South Asia , and of the three, the most widespread, its sites spanning an area including much of modern-day Pakistan , northwestern India and northeast Afghanistan . The civilisation flourished both in
21442-499: Was found in Banawali , which was probably used for testing the purity of gold (such a technique is still used in some parts of India). The people of the Indus civilisation achieved great accuracy in measuring length, mass, and time. They were among the first to develop a system of uniform weights and measures. A comparison of available objects indicates large scale variation across the Indus territories. Their smallest division, which
21593-593: Was growing both in Australia and in Southeast Asia. Water buffaloes were introduced into the Amazon River basin in 1895. They are now extensively used there for meat and dairy production. In 2005, the water buffalo herd in the Brazilian Amazon stood at roughly 1.6 million head, of which 460,000 were located in the lower Amazon floodplains. The breeds used include the Mediterranean from Italy,
21744-407: Was impressed by the site's extraordinary size and by several large mounds formed from long-existing erosion. Two years later, the Company contracted Alexander Burnes to sail up the Indus to assess the feasibility of water travel for its army. Burnes, who also stopped in Harappa, noted the baked bricks employed in the site's ancient masonry, but noted also the haphazard plundering of these bricks by
21895-594: Was introduced full-fledged from Near-East to South Asia," and the similarities between Neolithic sites from eastern Mesopotamia and the western Indus valley, which are evidence of a "cultural continuum" between those sites. But given the originality of Mehrgarh, Jarrige concludes that Mehrgarh has an earlier local background, and is not a "'backwater' of the Neolithic culture of the Near East". Lukacs and Hemphill suggest an initial local development of Mehrgarh, with
22046-728: Was living in the plains and nearby areas. The commencement of the brucellosis and tuberculosis campaign (BTEC) resulted in a huge culling program to reduce water buffalo herds to a fraction of the numbers that were reached in the 1980s. The BTEC was finished when the Northern Territory was declared free of the disease in 1997. Numbers dropped dramatically as a result of the campaign, but had recovered to an estimated 150,000 animals across northern Australia in 2008, and up to an estimated 200,000 by 2022. Both swamp and river buffaloes exist in feral populations, but swamp buffaloes are more prevalent than river buffaloes. " Nganabbarru "
22197-420: Was noticed to have the closest relationship with the tamaraw of the northern Philippines. A 2008 DNA analysis of Neolithic water buffalo remains in northern China (previously used as evidence of a Chinese domestication origin) found that the remains were of the extinct Bubalus mephistopheles and are not genetically related to modern domesticated water buffaloes. Another study in 2004 also concluded that
22348-558: Was probable domesticated about 6,300 years ago; the swamp-type originated independently from Mainland Southeast Asia , being domesticated between 3-7,000 years ago. The river buffalo dispersed west as far as Egypt , southern Europe, the Levant , and the Mediterranean regions; swamp buffalo dispersed in the opposite direction, to the rest of Southeast Asia, and as far as the Yangtze Valley in China. Swamp-type water buffalo entered Island Southeast Asia from at least 2,500 years ago through
22499-563: Was related to or identical with that of the late Harappans. The characters are largely pictorial , depicting objects found in the ancient world generally, found locally in Harappan culture, or derived from the natural world. However, many abstract signs have also been identified. Some signs are compounds of simpler pictorial signs, while others are not known to occur in isolation, being known only to occur as components of more complex signs. Some signs resemble tally marks and are often interpreted as early numerals . The number of principal signs
22650-694: Was roughly contemporary with the other riverine civilisations of the ancient world: Ancient Egypt along the Nile , Mesopotamia in the lands watered by the Euphrates and the Tigris , and China in the drainage basin of the Yellow River and the Yangtze . By the time of its mature phase, the civilisation had spread over an area larger than the others, which included a core of 1,500 kilometres (900 mi) up
22801-500: Was then the Punjab province of British India and is now Punjab, Pakistan . The discovery of Harappa and soon afterwards Mohenjo-daro was the culmination of work that had begun after the founding of the Archaeological Survey of India in the British Raj in 1861. There were earlier and later cultures called Early Harappan and Late Harappan in the same area. The early Harappan cultures were populated from Neolithic cultures,
#38961