Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c12.37

c12.37

A sculptured limestone head showing a man with a beard and an elaborate coiffure, with a ‘bun’ at the back, bound round by a fillet, would fit well enough into the Mediterranean facial type, while the treatment of the eyes in another rather similar head might indicate a Mongolian cast of countenance; but this resemblance should not be stressed unduly. But the most important piece of sculpture, that of the well-known bearded man wearing a trefoil-decorated robe, is rather puzzling from an ethnic point of view. It has been suggested that one should see in this sculpture a representation of an Armenoid type with short head – a physical type which appears to be present in Mesopotamia from Early Dynastic times onwards as an ingredient of the population, but which at Sialk is known only from the late Cemetery B, not likely to be earlier than 1000 B.C., and in the main some centuries later. But it is always dangerous to argue from ancient sculpture to ancient skulls, and, as we have seen, there is an earlier short-headed element present at Sialk, and at Mohenjo-daro, in the so-called Alpine types of skull. As many anthropologists regard the Armenoid type as a stable hybrid between the Alpine stock and the Indo-Iranian branch of the Mediterranean race, the early and perhaps sporadic appearance of the type in the third millennium is by no means impossible.