Early Indians

by Tony Joseph

  But there was an even more impressive discovery. At an excavation level dated to around 6000 BCE, the archaeologists found imprints of cotton thread inside the holes of copper beads discovered in one of the two graves there – the first evidence of the use of cotton anywhere in the world, and also the first evidence of the use of copper in the subcontinent.

  The quantity and quality of beads and other ornaments kept rising over time, with some of the raw materials coming from faraway areas. The techniques were also improving, with the beadmakers, for example, figuring out how to transform black steatite into white steatite by a heating process.

  If crafts were flourishing, so it seems were other occupations – some graveyards show the earliest evidence of dentistry in archaeological records anywhere. Eleven drilled molar crowns from nine individuals (four females, two males and three unidentified) have been recorded. One individual has three drilled teeth; another has the same tooth drilled twice. We do not know whether there were full-time ‘dentists’, or part-time dabblers in a new profession, but one guesses the new Neolithic eating habits were not great news for the teeth of the Mehrgarhians! (‘Neolithic’ is associated with the beginnings of farming and the domestication of animals and plants in general. In archaeological records, this period is often represented by polished stone tools and implements such as grinding stones and, sometimes, pottery. The Neolithic Age is preceded by the Palaeolithic Age and succeeded by the Chalcolithic or Copper Age.)

  The ceramic period in Mehrgarh began only around 6000 BCE – more than a thousand years after the start of the settlement. Until then, the people of Mehrgarh made do with baskets coated with bitumen (a naturally occurring sticky, black hydrocarbon mixture) and stone vessels. When the first few samples of pottery appear in Mehrgarh around 6000 BCE, they are pretty crudely made potsherds. But crucially these pots were not wheel-made, but constructed by ‘assembling pieces of clay’, perhaps using bitumen to hold them together. This early pottery technique is called sequential slab construction and we will come across this again later.

  During the ceramic period, the number and size of storage structures increase dramatically, indicating a rising population. There is increasing use of fine, lustrous red pottery, but grave goods are no longer a common practice, except for a few beads seen now and then. By 5300 BCE, the Chalcolithic period had begun, and the progress in material culture continued unabated, with innovation upon innovation: wheel-turned pottery, cotton cultivation, terracotta figurines, all leading up to the early Harappan phase of the civilization by 3000 BCE. (‘Early Harappan’ only refers to the time period. Mehrgarh is not considered a part of the Harappan Civilization.)

  A vessel in the Mehrgarh style, 3000–2500 BCE

  The Mehrgarh site was abandoned sometime between 2600 BCE and 2000 BCE in favour of the larger, fortified city of Nausharo about five miles away. Mehrgarh is likely to have spawned a number of Chalcolithic cultures in the region that were precursors to the full-fledged Harappan Civilization, with names such Hakra, Kot Diji, Amri, Nal and Ahar.

  Terracotta figurines of women in the Mehrgarh style, 3000–2500 BCE

  So within a period of about 5000 years, Mehrgarh had grown from a small settlement beginning its experiments with farming to perhaps an important centre2 for the rapid expansion of a new way of living across the north-western region of the subcontinent that would ultimately lead to the making of the largest civilization of its time in the valleys of the Indus and the Ghaggar–Hakra river. But who were the people of Mehrgarh and where did they come from?

  West Asian parallels

  If you look back at the beginnings of Mehrgarh, you will notice that there is a gap between the hunter-gatherer lifestyle that we saw in the previous chapter and the lifestyle reflected in the excavation layers. It is as if there’s a missing link. The Mehrgarhians start building the first mud-brick houses in the subcontinent and the first granaries as soon as they set up base, and there is almost instant start-up of farming and pastoralism, without the long lead times one observes in West Asia, where the early experiments in agriculture began a few millennia earlier, in fits and starts, often reaching dead ends and going no further, as the changing climate sometimes spurred on new experimentation and sometimes killed them off.

  The story of agricultural beginnings in West Asia is not a linear or a neat one, but it is fascinating, because this is the most dramatic episode in the history of modern humans until then, in a period of roughly 300,000 years. It is possible that other regions where agriculture developed early have equally fascinating backgrounds, but nowhere has this modern human breakout moment been recorded, researched and analysed as closely and graphically as in West Asia. We must follow that process of evolution to understand the nature of the agricultural transition, its world-altering consequences and, most importantly, its relationship with Mehrgarh. So here we go.

  The archaeologists A. Nigel Goring-Morris and Anna Belfer-Cohen of the University of Jerusalem, who have written extensively on the emergence of the farming culture in the Levant, say: ‘It is important to stress that developments appear to have been directional only in retrospect. The processes that took place were multifaceted, with various options available at the time; some of the choices, ultimately, were signi?cant to future developments, but others were “sideshows” or culs-de-sac in the evolutionary sense. Accordingly, within the archaeological record, we may stumble on evidence for both categories.’3 The authors then lay out the case for why the early processes of Neolithization – or farming transition – should be traced all the way back to around 20,000 years ago, during the last glacial period (29,000 to 14,000 years ago). ‘This corresponds to a chronological span of some 15,000 years until the end of the Neolithic, that is, the equivalent of some 500–600 generations,’ they say.

  The story begins with hunter-gatherers in the Levant struggling with the stresses of the glacial period when many areas turned uninhabitable and resources became scarce. Population density in the habitable regions would have increased as existing populations crowded into these refuges as they retreated from elsewhere. Populations at this time would usually mean bands of twenty to thirty individuals, who may have had a larger social network of 250 to 500 individuals, which is necessary for a minimal sustainable mating network.

  Increasing scarcity of habitable environments could have given the first impetus for a greater degree of sedentism – or being less mobile than earlier – and the rising population density could have triggered the search for better ways of gathering and processing food. As the climate started getting better slowly around 14,000 years ago, some of these experiments would have succeeded, while others failed. And those groups who had success with their experiments might have taken to a greater degree of sedentism, while others remained as mobile as earlier.

  The Natufian culture that existed for about 3000 years from 12,500 BCE to 9500 BCE is often seen as the embodiment of this new dual style of living – with some sections of the population being sedentary and others remaining mobile to varying degrees. (Natufian comes from Wadi-an-Natuf, or the valley of Natuf, in Palestine, the area where the archaeologist Dorothy Garrod discovered cultural deposits of what she would in 1928 call the Natufian culture.) According to Goring-Morris and Belfer-Cohen, ‘While some groups were more or less sedentary in favourable ecological settings (e.g., on the shores of lakes or marshes), others likely practised seasonal residential mobility, and still others on the margins were even more mobile.’

  The Natufians had a large variety of groundstone utensils, especially mortars and pounding stones, suggesting that they were improving and intensifying their food processing techniques. They also had stone sickles – or stone blades inserted in bone handles – which suggests that they were harvesting something, perhaps reeds. It is unlikely that they were harvesting wild cereals because that would have led to sickle gloss (the sheen on a blade that is a by-product of cutting the stalks of cereals as they are rich in silica), which few, if any, of these implemen
ts had. There is also no evidence that they were doing any cultivation, though they had intensified the collection of plants just as they had intensified food processing.

  There is reason to think that the sizes of at least some Natufian populations were increasing, and a sense of territoriality was becoming prevalent. For example, the Natufian sites began to have specially designated areas for burials. There were also exchange networks that were trading both utilitarian things such as stone utensils and exotic items such as molluscs, greenstone and other minerals. New cottage industries were emerging, with archaeological evidence suggesting an increased abundance of bone tool assemblages for basketry and matting. There is evidence for new fire technologies as well, such as lime-plaster production and the making of fired clay and ochre.

  The Natufian culture, however, didn’t survive long perhaps because of the deleterious effects of the dry, arid Younger Dryas phase (12,900 to 11,700 years ago). The early Natufian had large, well-built structures that were occupied by units bigger than nuclear families, but later on these units became smaller. There was also increasing mobility, while some areas were simply abandoned. The changing nature of Natufian culture was probably a result of the volatile nature of the climate and their response to it.

  It wasn’t just the Natufians in the Levant who were experimenting with new things. Excavations at the site of Abu Hureyra, near Mureybit on the Middle Euphrates, turned up evidence that around 11,000 BCE the residents here were harvesting wild wheat and rye. Rye, in fact, started showing signs of being domesticated as early as 10,700 BCE. There is still some debate about this among scientists and the issue is not settled, but if this finding is correct, it would be the earliest instance of domestication of any cereal. This didn’t lead anywhere though – rye never became an important part of the agricultural package of west Asia, and Abu Hureyra itself was almost abandoned after the Younger Dryas.

  The stresses of the Younger Dryas were soon put behind when the world started warming up again very rapidly around 11,700 years ago – raising the global temperature by as much as seven degrees Celsius on average. And very quickly, archaeologists say, we start seeing evidence of domesticated varieties of cereals or at least ‘management’ of wild varieties of plants and animals in the larger Fertile Crescent region. By ‘management’ they mean people taking care of wild plants and animals in a variety of ways with an intent to use them for later consumption. The different ways of management could range from deliberate cultivation to careful tending and harvesting of wild crops.

  The earliest evidence for ‘domesticated’ wheat varieties – emmer and einkorn – come from sites in the Upper Euphrates valley in the Levant, dated to about 8500–8200 BCE. Securely dated domesticated barley is seen around 8000 BCE, by which time its presence is recorded throughout the Fertile Crescent and the Anatolian plateau.

  The first evidence for domestication of goats, on the other hand, comes from the settlement of Ganj Dareh in the central Zagros mountain region and is dated to 7900 BCE. Archaeologists found in this natural habitat of goats the typical herding signature: early slaughter of young male goats and delayed slaughter of females. This is a strong signal of herding because herders usually cull the young males while keeping the females for breeding and perhaps milk consumption as well. A similar pattern was also observed in the settlement of Ali Kosh in south-western Iran, which was first occupied around 7500 BCE. Ali Kosh is outside the natural habitat of goats, which suggests that the pastoralists were already taking their herds to newer regions by then.

  Both Ganj Dareh and Ali Kosh show evidence of full-fledged herding, but there are earlier signals of ‘game management’ that may not have gone as far as herding.4 So one way or another, in the period between 8000 BCE and 7000 BCE, the evidence of goat domestication became widespread in the whole region, with goats replacing the hunted gazelle as the dominant presence in the animal remains of the settlements. The last regions to see this happen were the Levant (7200 BCE) and the eastern arm of the Fertile Crescent (7000 BCE).

  According to the archaeologist Melinda A. Zeder, the evidence for cattle (Bos taurus) domestication in the region is still sketchy. In a 2011 paper, she wrote that although cattle remains from sites in the Upper and Middle Euphrates valley dated between 9000 BCE and 8000 BCE fall within the size range of wild aurochs (a Eurasian ox), at several sites there is evidence for a reduction in sexual dimorphism.5 Cattle from other contemporary sites in the same region were still highly sexually dimorphic and could thus be seen as representing wild, hunted cattle. According to Zeder, domestic cattle slowly spread out of this heartland of initial domestication, getting to the southernmost reaches of the Levant only around 7500–7000 BCE at the earliest and the southern Zagros around 6500 BCE.

  So the broad picture we see is that between 9500 BCE and 6500 BCE – that is, a 3000-year period immediately following the end of the Younger Dryas and the beginning of Holocene – both plant and animal domestication had spread across most of the Fertile Crescent, after progressing in fits and starts during the last glacial period, with different regions contributing in different ways at different times and probably with multiple instances of domestication for the same species.

  As we saw, even as the transition was on, people were taking their plants and animals, perhaps still in the process of being domesticated and perhaps not even that, and migrating to newer places. Many places in the Fertile Crescent itself saw plants or animals being imported – an example being goats in the southern Levant. But the most interesting case of the introduction of plants and animals to a new area is Cyprus, where migrating humans brought with them both plants and animals, around 8500 BCE. Where the migrants came from is not clear, but there are indications that they could have been from north Levantine littoral, which may have seen significant increases in population during that period.

  Archaeological evidence on the ground shows that the incoming migrants brought with them domesticated barley and wheat (both einkorn and emmer) and wild but ‘managed’ cattle and goats. Zeder writes: ‘This means that at the same time that the earliest morphologically domesticated einkorn and emmer is found in the Upper Euphrates valley (and even earlier than there is solid evidence for morphologically altered domestic barley) and when we see the ?rst indications of animal management in the mainland Fertile Crescent, people were loading these managed plants and animals into boats and carrying them, along with the knowledge of how to successfully care for them, to an island 160 kilometres off the Levantine coast.’

  None of these animals occurred naturally in Cyprus, so the confidence of the migrants in importing them and their success in exploiting them show that human control over these budding domesticates was more established than is apparent on the mainland, says Zeder.

  Route to Mehrgarh

  This is the background to be kept in mind while we go back to the question that started this discussion: where did the people of Mehrgarh come from? There are also a few other things to consider. For example, remember that the Kacchi plain where Mehrgarh is located is a semi-arid region even in today’s wetter and warmer Holocene climate, so it is likely to have been desert-like until about 9700 BCE because of the glacial age and then the Younger Dryas. So whoever left behind the evidence of their settlement in Mehrgarh starting from around 7000 BCE couldn’t have been thriving there for longer than a few thousand years before that. The region would have become significantly populated only when the climate changed, the deserts started turning green, the herbivores moved in looking for food and the carnivores followed them, looking for prey. And the humans, of course, followed all of them. So where could they have come from? There are two broad possibilities: they were either the First Indians, expanding their range westwards from their glacial age refuges in central, southern or eastern India, or they were the original inhabitants of Iran, expanding eastwards from their own refuges in the region. Or perhaps both happened simultaneously, or in quick succession, resulting in a mixed population.

  O
ne factor that is of importance while considering this issue is that Mehrgarh is on the edge of a west Asian climatic zone that is dominated by winter rains and winter crops. To its east is the Indian climatic zone, dominated by monsoons and summer rains and summer crops. For the First Indians, therefore, travelling north-west from central or southern India would have meant moving into unfamiliar territory. For the Iranians moving into the same region, though, it would have been just a range expansion, with no discernible change in climate or vegetation patterns. This is not to say, of course, that Mehrgarh couldn’t have been populated by those moving in from the east, because if climatic zones had been an impenetrable factor for them, modern humans would never have got out of Africa in the first place.

  So we need to look at other pieces of evidence to see how Mehrgarh could have come into being. But before we do that, let us remember that neither India nor Iran existed then and, therefore, these terms would be meaningless to the people moving into these regions. These terms are being used here merely as approximate geographical assignations to understand this period.

  One obvious set of evidence to look for is similarities between what we find in Mehrgarh and what we find towards its east and its west. Towards the east the earliest evidence for agriculture is from Gujarat and eastern Rajasthan from around 3700 BCE; in southern and eastern India from around 3000 BCE; in Malwa, Madhya Pradesh, from around 2000 BCE; in the Vindhya region from around 1700 BCE; and in the Kashmir and Swat valleys from around 1500 BCE. (North-eastern India is too inadequately excavated to come to a conclusion on the beginnings of agriculture there.) All of these post-date Mehrgarh by thousands of years and, therefore, do not provide a platform for comparison.