Identical cities

Identical cities

Nor are we very much nearer when we examine the village cultures of Baluchistan and the adjacent plain which flourished about 3000BC and which were the immediate precursors of the Indus civilization. These village cultures were in the valleys between massive hill – ranges, and were isolated rather like the early Greek city – states, each in its mountain fastness. These cultures are at present the subject of much archeological activity, and are differentiated from one another largely by their pottery. The ware from the Nal and Amri districts is colourful and sophisticated with life – like representations of animals, while that from Kulli – Mehi seems to show the horror of vacant space which we associate with some early Greek vase painting, and its main preoccupation seems to be with the Indian  humped buffalo. From Zhob come various female figurines with a skull – like appearance, taking us into that weird world of magic and superstition which we sumise to have been behind the cultures of India as well as of Sumer, Egypt, Crete and America.

Heavy, brutal and authoritative, this bearded
 man has a presence more impressive than pleasant.
The trefils on his robe - religious symbols - may
indicate that he was priest or even a god.

In contrast to this localize variety we have the complete uniformity of the Indus civilization over a vast area. The two great cities themselves, each over a mile square, were laid out on the same rectangular plan, rather like that of a present – day American city. Their great resemblance to one another has led to speculation whether they were the twin seats of government of this vast area. Each was dominated by a central citadel and in each the width of the streets, the dimensions of the drainage, the pottery, the script, all are uniform. Not only is this noticeable in space, but in time. Until towards the end of their existence there seems little discernible change or development.

And yet this civilization had some strange features. In some respects it produced workmanship that is unsure passed in seals, jewellery, bronze ornaments and the like – but in weapons we find nothing more advanced than the hill villages previously mentioned. The socketed axe, for instance, was never thought of. Clearly the Indus people were not particularly warlike, and it is difficult to imagine them arriving from the northwest and subduing a native people, in the way that they themselves were subdued or destroyed by the advancing Aryans. We are much hampered, too, by the fact that although we have abundant examples of their script, running to nearly 500 characters, on one has yet been able to decipher it.

What did the people look like in these far – off cities? The predominant type is the Mediterranean, of medium height, with olive complexion, a long head and face, a long narrow nose and dark hair and eyes a type found in abundance in India today. Lower in the social scale were probably the proto – Australoid type with negroid features and bunched curly hair. This type is strikingly represented by the most charming of all the objects found at Mohenjo – Daro, a bronze statuette of a dancing girl, with head provocatively tilted and right arm o hip as if about to do a suggestive body – shake. A third or American type is seemingly represented by the head of a bearded man wearing a trefoil – decorated robe. The religious n  of the trefoil may indicate that this man is a priest or even a god, but his low receding forehead, narrow eye – slits, jutting lower lip, shaven upper lip and stylized beard make him the sort of man one would hate to meet on a dark night, and render it difficult to place him in any racial category.

Laboriously made from bored and polished carnelian and steatile,
these beads were a popular adornment for the ladies of the Indus civilizations.
Similar ones were found in Sumer. 

Time has played some very queer tricks of survival in the Indus cities. All trace of properly laid – out burial grounds is lacking, probably because the earliest strata are below water level and it has so far instance, at Mohenjo – Daro through the creation of metallic salts – by far the earliest known evidence of cotton; children’s toys, some found in drains as if they had been washed away with the bath water, and also models of animals and movable carts, even a whistle  and a monkey designed to run up a stick. There are the traces of rubbing on the corner of a building where pack animals have pushed along the street, the impression left by the mineral salts in a footmark near a well, even the paw – marks of a cat and a dog left on a drying brick at Chanhu – Daro we can tell that the dog was chasing the cat because the cat’s paw – marks were spread out as if in headlong flight. Yet we still know nothing of what these people wrote and said, what they thought and believed.

We do know a little about their dress on ceremonial occasions. The women seem to have extraordinarily large, even grotesque, head – dresses like panniers, and the men long tunics, though of their everyday apparel we know almost nothing. Various kinds of hair arrangement are found: the bun, the pigtail, even a kind of permanent wave. Several razors have been found, also kohl – sticks and pots for make – up.