Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c12.59

c12.59

The camel is an animal whose early history as a domesticated beast is curiously obscure, though it was extensively used by the Assyrians from the ninth century B.C. onwards. Today no wild camels exist, both species, one-humped and two-humped, being domesticated, and there is a remarkable lack of early representations of the animal in the Ancient East. However, a few camel bones of the Indian one-humped race (*Camelus dromedarius*) were found at Mohenjo-daro and at Harappā, and they have also been found at Anau in Turkestan and in the neolithic Tripolye Culture of South Russia, where they are likely to be approximately contemporary with the Harappā civilization. One of the rare representations of a camel in prehistoric Western Asia comes from a site probably of the second millennium B.C. just over the border of Baluchistan in Persian Makran, at Khurab, where it is modelled in relief on a bronze object.