Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c12.31

c12.31

We shall discuss the circumstance in which the Mohenjo-daro people, whose remains were found in houses or in the lanes of the final phase of the city's occupation, met their death, in the next chapter. For the present we are concerned with their appearance in life. Nearly half the skulls which could be classified belonged to a more or less homogeneous group, into which, incidentally, also comes the only well-preserved skull from the Nal cemetery in Baluchistan. This group is that classed as the Mediterranean type, and at the present day includes a large number of groups of peoples stretching from Iberia to India. The characteristic type appears in late Natufian times in Palestine (a Mesolithic phase referred to in Chapter II and perhaps dating back to the ninth or tenth millennium B.C.) and may have been differentiated in the southern steppes of Northern Africa and in Asia, and spread westwards and eastwards. The pre-dynastic Egyptians certainly belonged to this stock, and the purest representatives at the present day are to be found in the Arabian Peninsula. In India it forms today a dominant element in the population of the north and is widespread elsewhere among the upper social classes. Such people are medium to tall in stature, with a complexion ranging from dark to light olive-brown, a long head and face, and a narrow and relatively pronounced nose; black hair, and eyes ranging from black to brown and characteristically large and open. The body is slenderly built.