Talk:Indus Valley Civilisation/Archive 8

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Archive 8

Harappan in the lede

@Fowler&fowler: Regarding this revert[1]: where is the discussion which resulted in the consensus that the first mention of "Harappan Civilisation" should only appear in the third paragraph of the lead section? I am admittedly too lazy to go through all archived discussions. Personally, I believe that an alternative name that is employed in a significant portion of the relevant literature (including popular texts) should appear in the opening sentence of an article. Non-expert readers looking for "Harappan culture", "Harappan civilisation" (+ all capitalized and s/z-variants) on a mobile device have to do some scrolling before they realize that they indeed have landed on the page they're looking for. A mention in the opening sentence will be helpful for many. Austronesier (talk) 17:30, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

I'd agree with that. Johnbod (talk) 18:07, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

Nonsense. Will give reasons in a few minutes. There is not a single living Homo sapiens who knows the word "Harappan" but to whom "Indus Valley" is double-Dutch, but there are many in the vice-versa category. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:05, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

I don't remember either, but as you can see here, it is lead-worthy but not lead-sentence-worthy.

There are also POV issues. It is used overwhelmingly by archaeologists from the Republic of India (established 1950). Their popular culture seems to be suffering from post-Partition regret, and occasional indignation, over all the celebrity IVC sites lying in territories unfairly awarded to Pakistan. Their collective response has been to determinedly call the civilisation "Harappan," after its type site Harappa (which is also in Pakistan but no one knows that from the name alone), or call it "Indus-Saraswati" based on conflating a Rg-Vedic, snow-fed, river Saraswati and a monsoon-fed river of palaeoarchaeology, then perennial but now seasonal, the Ghaggar-Hakra. (See the work of L. Giosan, et al, cited in the lead).

There is only one great post-Partition Indian archaeologist. She is Shereen Ratnagar. Her one famous book is Understanding Harappa: Civilisation in the Greater Indus Valley, where she seems to be sitting on the fence with respect to "Harappan." Her other famous book is: The Magic in the Image: Women in Clay at Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, which too is silent about adjectival use. The Indus-Saraswati camp has the support of a large number of Hindu nationalist fringe scholars, who also believe, IVC is Aryan, and the horsemen from the Saraswati river banks rode up and out of the subcontinent to eventually settle the Dneiper River banks.

"Harappan," besides, is more commonly preceded by early-, mature-, or late-, when describing culture(s) of the period 3300 BCE (or earlier, even 4500 BCE) to 1300 BCE, mature-Harappan being the civilisation.

So, summing up: Bringing Harappan to the lead sentence not only will be confusing to an ordinary reader, but also perplexing to some knowledgeable ones. It will raise demands from the fringe group for Indus-Saraswati's inclusion. It took us ten years to reliably elbow that out. This is not tongue-in-cheek. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:14, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

1) So after ten years of inhabiting this talk page, you can't direct me (who has so far wasted less than ten years in this strongman-haunted environment called Wikipedia) to a consensus? That's sad.

2) I am not sure what this is supposed to tell us when we actually should look at this.

3) It is used overwhelmingly by archaeologists from the Republic of India (established 1950). David W. Anthony being one of them? Readers of The Horse, the Wheel, and Language will belong to the group of people that has heard of the Harappan culture, but not of the IVC. But probably this not does not include homines sapientes in your definition.

4) I ignore the rest of your comments as they have little bearing on the actual question, and also because they betray the most boring aspect of your otherwise intellectually quite inspiring discourse.

5) I will not pursue this matter further. You can keep your elbows in non-alert position. I will direct my kidneys towards a safer environment.

Cheers. –Austronesier (talk) 20:53, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

@Austronesier: Many apologies. The last sentence was supposed to be, "This is not all tongue-in-cheek," meaning, "please don't dismiss it all because of my style of writing which I usually only employ with the Wiki-familiars." I will answer in Dr J mode in a little while. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:01, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

@Austronesier:

1. "Harappan," unlike "Indus," which is explained in the third sentence for those unfamiliar with the name, requires a more complex explanation related to the notion of a type site and of the first discovered city Harappa. That is too complicated in a lead paragraph, especially as Mohenjo-daro is the more famous and representative city of the civilization. The explanation is more appropriate in the third paragraph where excavations are discussed, as is type site and Harappa. Periodization is also discussed in the third paragraph: the pre-Harappan, early Harappan, mature Harappan, and post-Harappan. In that context, we tell the reader the mature Harappan is the "civilization" proper, or the Urban phase. In other words, semantic and stylistic coherence creates the paragraph structure. Those things do not happen in an article and remain in it for years if there is no consensus, whether explicit or implicit.
2. I've already stated: "Harappan" occurs in many contexts, most of which are not those of the civilization proper. I've looked at a number of books. "Harappan" is more commonly used with the culture, its period, and its artifacts (~weights, ~seals, ~phase, etc.). IV~ or I~ is more commonly used with civilisation.
3. Among the books that do so are not only the ones cited in the lead, e.g. those of Rita P. Wright, Jonathan Mark Kenoyer (see also his article on the "Indus Valley Tradition of Pakistan and Western India," which summarizes the work of Shaffer & L* on periodization), and those of Raymond Allchin and Bridget Allchin's Rise of Civilization in India and Pakistan, but also other scholars, e.g. those of Eurasian and Elamite Bronze ages, in the Cambridge World Archeology series, such as Philip L. Kohl's Making of Bronze Age Eurasia, and D. T. Potts's The Archaeology of Elam: Formation and Transformation of an Ancient Iranian State. Even David Anthony's popular trade version uses Harappan more in the secondary sense than the civilization.

Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:05, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

@Austronesier: I don't appreciate unhelpful comments from you of the sort,

"I ignore the rest of your comments as they have little bearing on the actual question, and also because they betray the most boring aspect of your otherwise intellectually quite inspiring discourse." made in a huff in a parting shot

I have written the lead and the first three sections very carefully. Even in jest I don't write things that are not supported in the scholarly literature with due weight. In particular I have written the section, "Name." Please read it carefully before. Among other things it quotes Irfan Habib on "Harappan" being preferred by the ASI in India. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:29, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

In shameful violation of point 5 of my previous reply, and only addressing your answer from 01:05, 3 December 2022: all of this is well-argued and would be relevant here if the third paragraph started like this (or similarly):

• "Harappan culture" has often been used, instead of "Indus civilization," to embrace both the earlier, developmental phase of the civilization and its mature phase, which is dated to c. 2600–1900 BCE. (borrowed for illustration from Parpola (2015), The Roots of Hinduism, p. 17)

But it doesn't do so. Implicit and explicit consensus has produced this version which follows a different rationale:

• The Indus civilisation is also known as the Harappan civilisation...

"Harappan civilisation" is thus introduced as a one-to-one alternative name of "Indus civilisation".

In such a case MOS:ALTNAME applies, which gives us two options:

1. The title can be followed in the first sentence by one or two alternative names in parentheses.
2. If there are three or more alternative names, or if there is something notable about the names themselves, they may be moved to and discussed in a separate section with a title such as "Names" or "Etymology".

What I see here is a lede that tries something in between, which in effect only results in an unnecessary time span of suspense for non-expert readers using a small screen who are looking for the "Harappan civilisation" or "Harappan culture". –Austronesier (talk) 12:48, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

I have debolded "Harappan," removed civilisation, and swapped paragraphs 2 and 3. A reader looking for "Harappan" will find it quickly at the top of the second paragraph.Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:22, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

I added Harappan, in bold in the first paragraph. If it is not professional, u are free to delete it. Also, I edited the redirect of Harappan civilisation to the IVC from its original redirect to Harappa. @Fowler&fowler I would think bolding Harappan would make it easier to find. PrathuCoder (talk) 14:39, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Expansion of the article

I have found that this article is lacking in information relating to the city planning, houses, drainage system and other special features. There is currently no article about the "Great Granary" nor is there sufficient information information relating to the topics above. PrathuCoder (talk) 14:31, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Some potentially addable information is that the Drainage system has regular holes for inspection, The houses were made of baked bricks, the city was divided into wards and blocks, with each ward consisting of about 50 houses, the houses ad sufficient ventilation. More information from the Great Bath article can be included in this article too. An article about the "Great Granary" is also required. PrathuCoder (talk) 14:35, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

The problem is that the article is already too long. See Wikipedia:Article size. Doug Weller talk 16:48, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Is there consistency across sites in city planning? Otherwise, this is better covered in individual articles. For example, the Mohenjodaro article has details on city planning, etc. --RegentsPark (comment) 16:58, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Essentially, yes, and this one of the most striking aspects of the IVC - standardized brick size and so on. And we could have more on this. One-off features like the so-called Great Granary should be covered at the site articles or given their own. Much of thr reason for the length is the habit of quoting huge chunks of sources in the notes & refs. Johnbod (talk) 17:44, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Yes, the article is too long. And the information is concentrated on only some topics. We have to make the article more generalised and then we have to create sub-articles or include major topics in their respective archaeological site's article. PrathuCoder (talk) 12:19, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

I found a new article, named the Sanitation of the Indus Valley Civilisation, which covers the problems i said in detail. Some information from it and be written in summary style in this article. Also, that article is quite short and would need some expansion. PrathuCoder (talk) 11:24, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

There's also relevant stuff in Harappan architecture. Johnbod (talk) 13:36, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I think we could summary style to include content from those articles, I'll do that soon. PrathuCoder (talk) 14:12, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

The bias.

Compared to other ancient cultures, there a lack of information about the Indus Valley civilization . it is possible that cultural prejudices influenced how the Indus Valley civilization was studied. There may have been a bias in favor of emphasizing the more recent Hindu or Islamic civilizations over the Indus Valley civilization because the area where the Indus Valley civilization was found is now a part of Pakistan and northwest India, which are primarily Islamic and Hindu cultures in recent years( edit war) , there has been an increase in interest in the Indus Valley civilization.Early archaeologists , and scholars, old books gave the ancient civilization the names "Mohenjo-daro Harappan Civilization," referring to its two cities . Later on, the term "Indus Valley Civilization" was adopted. The change in the civilization's name serves as an illustration of how cultural influences can affect how we learn about and comprehend history, in this instance the civilization was given a name that reflected the geography and culture of the area in which it was found. This is an illustration of how a region's cultural and political context can influence how we comprehend and research its history. RsEkanayake 03:36, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

DNA

Any DNA studies on them? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.144.246.117 (talk) 10:23, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 19 May 2023

I would like to edit this page as the start date Of the IVC/Indus-Saraswati River Civilization has now been confirmed to be started in 7000BCE, 2500 Years before what we thought of first, and before ancient Egypt, and around 500 years before mesopotamia started. VedaGamer (talk) 08:22, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. Lightoil (talk) 08:51, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

7000 BCE is already mentioned in the article; but why bother to read? Please understand what civilization means; not people living in shallow pits. And note that "Saraswati" is anachronistic; it comes from a later, non-IVC culture, and refers to a goddess and a river, not the IVC, which had disappeared by that time. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 09:05, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

Yes this is a misunderstanding from the way archaeologists classify pottery. There was no civilization in 7000BCE, just a few people living in small villages (very much like those in Egypt, Mesopotamia & indeed most of the world), using basic pottery styles (called "Harappan" or pre-Harappan) that have a continuity with those used by the actual IVC some millennia later. The Fertile Crescent still probably holds the dubious Cradle of civilization award, with Prehistoric Egypt probably second, but none of them were at all urbanized or developed this early, still in the Mesolithic or Neolithic at best. Johnbod (talk) 14:21, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

Dating

The Indus Valley cultures were not a 'civilisation' in 3300 BC, so why is this date given as the beginning of the Indus Valley Civilisation? Ario1234 (talk) 12:07, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Because this is when the archaeologists begin "Early Harappan", but no this wasn't civilization. It's fairly clear for those who read beyond the infobox or first sentence, but of course many don't. Perhaps it should be made clearer. Minoan civilization has exactly the same problem. See the previous section. Johnbod (talk) 19:09, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 17 June 2023

The Indus Valley civilization is also Harappan civilization 49.206.115.3 (talk) 12:04, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. M.Bitton (talk) 17:28, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

It's fairly clear - "Harappan" is mentioned in para 2, but not bolded as Harappan is a disam page, with the site etc. Johnbod (talk) 17:31, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Section on food

The information provided in the food section may be incorrect and misleading and not based on reliable source.

This section says that Indus valley civilization had dominance of meat diet of ruminant animals such as cattle, buffalo, goat.

However, on origin of lipid residues in pottery from the Indus Civilisation, the abstract of the original research paper by Akshyeta Suryanarayan et al 2021 clearly mentions a dominance of non-ruminant fats.

….”71% of the vessels yielded appreciable quantities of lipid. Lipid profiles revealed the use of animal fats in vessels, and contradictory to faunal evidence, a dominance of non-ruminant fats, with limited evidence of dairy processing”.

Non-ruminant animals (i.e., animals with a single-compartment stomach) are swine, poultry, horses, dogs, cats, and humans while ruminant animals cows, bulls, oxen, calves, buffalo, sheep, and goats). Because the researchers found “dominance of non-ruminant fats” in the vessels, therefore based on bio-chemical evidence it can be inferred that meat consumed by the Indus valley people was mainly of non-ruminant origin such as pigs, poultry or horses. 1234simon (talk) 15:05, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

@1234simon: I not a fan of including very recent research in this broad scale description. In my approach, if it hasn't made it to the textbooks on IVC then more than a passing reference at the very end would constitute undue weight. (See WP:TERTIARY and the reference to textbooks and due weight.) I took a quick look at the 2021 paper cited in the article. It seems to be an early foray into the topic, i.e. the use of lipid residue in pottery to conjecture broad constituents of diet. I don't know how long and how stably lipids survive through the geographical extent of IVC. Ancient DNA, for example, is usually only viable there among samples from the far northwestern regions of Pakistan, where the climate is more temperate.

I admit I am not well-versed in this topic, but I can recall during my time on Wikipedia (2006 to now) what was recent research has kept changing. I'm thinking of the chicken, the domesticated jungle fowl of Asia. It was thought for decades to have originated during early- or pre-IVC times in Southern Pakistan. Then with DNA studies, the site of origin changed to Thailand, to China, to Southern India and Sri Lanka, and eventually to multiple origins but with the clade that has spread to the Western World to have had its origins in IVC or South Asia. And it might have changed again from the time I last paid attention to it.

I think that section should summarize what there is on the topic in Rita Wright's Ancient Indus, CUP, 2006, for example, and then supplement it with a sentence or two at the end about the recent research. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:08, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

I forgot to thank you for bringing up the topic in your comment. It is an important one. So, thanks. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:14, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler: “A. Suryanarayan et al 2021” paper is an extensive seminal work in archaeological science on culinary practices of IVC. Your arguments effectively make this a non-reliable source (vis-a-vis its key finding of dominance of biomarkers of non-ruminant meat in the IVC vessels) while you have happily cited yellow journalistic sources (Scroll and India Today) to say just the opposite of what archaeological science researchers found. Kindly reconsider please. With respect. 1234simon (talk) 01:37, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

I did not write the food section nor am I defending the current version. I'm saying only that the bulk of the emphasis be given to material in a tertiary source such as Rita P. Wright's Ancient Indus, Cambridge University Press, 2009. A couple of sentences at the end may then describe the very recent work of Suryanarayan et al, if it has been cited in more recent reviews of literature, per the general guidelines in WP:HISTRS. 02:01, 5 August 2023 (UTC) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:01, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Please see WP:RECENTISM Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:06, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

References

Infobox - "followed by"

@Joshua Jonathan:

Hello, Infobox "followed by" only lists Painted Grey ware culture but several preceding cultures (where iron/horses are known) were left-out. Please include them. Painted Grey Ware culture infobox has it listed in accurate in order.

• Cemetery H culture (Decline of IVC)
• Black and red ware (Indo-Aryan society - Iron)
• Ochre Coloured Pottery culture (Indo-Aryan society - Horses)
• Painted Grey Ware culture (Indo-Aryan society).

This is the order of transition into PGW. IVC did not transition directly into PGW.

Re-evaluation of the pottery sequence in north India during the first millennium BC https://www.academia.edu/692881/Re_evaluation_of_the_pottery_sequence_in_north_India_during_the_first_millennium_BC

This study has also listed it in that order. 117.198.112.236 (talk) 06:17, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Guess you're right; done. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 06:57, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Infobox - "followed by"

@Joshua Jonathan:

Hello, Infobox "followed by" only lists Painted Grey ware culture but several preceding cultures (where iron/horses are known) were left-out. Please include them. Painted Grey Ware culture infobox has it listed in accurate in order.

• Cemetery H culture (Decline of IVC)
• Black and red ware (Indo-Aryan society - Iron)
• Ochre Coloured Pottery culture (Indo-Aryan society - Horses)
• Painted Grey Ware culture (Indo-Aryan society).

This is the order of transition into PGW. IVC did not transition directly into PGW.

Re-evaluation of the pottery sequence in north India during the first millennium BC https://www.academia.edu/692881/Re_evaluation_of_the_pottery_sequence_in_north_India_during_the_first_millennium_BC

This study has also listed it in that order. 117.198.112.236 (talk) 06:17, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Guess you're right; done. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 06:57, 31 October 2023 (UTC)