Prehistory and Protohistory in India and Pakistan c4.s17: Civilization and Environment

Prehistory and Protohistory in India and Pakistan c4.s17

Language: English

Civilization and Environment

c4.s17.1

We are thus up against the exact role of geography and environmental factors in the development of civilization. Without going into much details, it is necessary to point out that even in the West, where formerly the "Fertile Crescent" was regarded as the cradle of civilization, now the hilly flanks characterized by the foothills and intermontane valleys at an elevation of 1250 to 3000 ft. above sea level in Iraqi Kurdistan are regarded as such. Here it appears that transition took place from the earlier food-gathering pattern of life to that of food production. For here more than anywhere else "the wild wheats and barley, the wild sheep, goats, pigs, cattle and horses were to be found in a single natural environment."

c4.s17.2

However, after this was written, investigations are being continued in Iran. And it was found¹³ that such a zone of grassy and open oakland ran from Shiraz in Iran through highland Iraq and southern flanks of Turkey—a distance of some 12,00 miles. Hence BRAIDWOOD concluded, "It continues to appear that the more important generative factors in the appearance of effective plant and animal domestication are not to be sought in the facile explanation of environmental determinism."

c4.s17.3

¹³ BRAIDWOOD, in Illustrated London News, October, 22, 1960, pp. 695-97.

c4.s17.4

He further said that Jarmo or any other site examined by them was not in any way a unique instance in time and place wherein food production began. These were sites which happened to be those which the accident of archaeological discovery had brought forth.¹⁴

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¹⁴ Cf. also WRIGHT (in BRAIDWOOD and HOWE), Prehistoric Investigations in Iraqi Kurdistan, p. 75. "speculation about the effects of climatic change on the inception of agriculture is justified only after the fact of climatic change has been established" and this must be based on geological evidence.

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These revised views of an author who believed only a few years ago in a particular site in a particular area as the birth place of civilization are quite relavent to the problem we are discussing.

c4.s17.7

Though India appears to be on the periphery of the culture spread in relation to Western Asia, and within India itself the present distribution of forests and the gradual removal of forest-cover from Sind, the Panjab, Saurashtra, Malwa, Uttar Pradesh (as even attested by literary evidence, for instance the burning of Khandavavana, the home of Nagas, for building the new capital of the Pandavas—Indraprastha—is vividly described in the *Mahabharata*) the concentration of primitive tribes in certain inaccessible forests and hills, and above all the increasing archaeological evidence—though all this points to the spread of civilization from west to east, *it still cannot be over-emphasized that our knowledge is relative, based on insufficient evidence (in some cases no evidence at all) and the fact that there is no unanimity among the archaeologists themselves whether the various Chalcolithic cultures which appear in the wake of the destruction or disappearance or gradual transformation of the Indus Civilization are purely indigenous or introduced (again) by movements and ideas from Western Asia.*

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Prehistoric archaeology in India is thus called upon to answer very vital questions. Let us see how far it has done so. However, with a view to following the sequel, let us define clearly the aims and scope of pre- and proto-historic archaeology and indicate its present position in India and Europe, of which it is an off-shoot.

Linked texts (1)

Mahābhārata — Vyāsa, Sanskrit