Civilization first emerged around rivers: In Egypt, the Nile; in the Near East, the Tigris and Euphrates; in China, the Yellow River; and in the India-Pakistan-Afghanistan region, the Indus River Valley. We know the least about the Indus, or Harappan civilization. Its written language is the only one of these major civilizations’ forms of writing that remains uncracked, there being no “Rosetta Stone” for the curious ancient script.
Harappan culture sported elaborate plumbing, but no great monuments. This leads experts to suspect that the culture was “more democratic” than in the other cradles of civilization.
Truth is, we know next to nothing about Harappan governance or politics. By “democratic,” they probably mean “decentralized.” Or at least not heavily militaristic.
And, if that is borne out in further research, that’s huge. The hand of political governance lay quite heavily upon early city folks, and is generally associated with conquest. Could it be that Harappan civilization was freer, more voluntaristic and individualistic than Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Xia and Shang Dynasty societies?
We can only guess. But on a different Harappan puzzle, there’s a new theory out, purporting to explain what happened to this largest of ancient “empires”: climate change.
The weather got warmer, their riverways dried up, and the people scattered, mainly heading east.
Too bad for the civilization. But note two things:
- The climate change was natural, and
- People reacted naturally, by moving.
If we are experiencing, today, the beginnings of a global climate change, it may very well be natural, and (natural or not) people freely moving about may be the best response to the worst of it.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
7 replies on “Harappan Puzzles”
People freely moving about?
Easier said than done. There aren’t the open spaces available today that there were in antiquity. We may have freedom of movement but not all countries have open borders. Even if people are free to leave their own country where will they be welcomed? Where will people who are affected by climate change go if there is no haven within their own country?
The climate change was due to all of the carbon dioxide emitted by the Babylonian SUVs, despite the dire warnings from their great pontificator, Obam-anon-anonah. He arranged for the people to be taken care of by the kingdom of the far East, in exchange for half of all their income in perpetuity.
Paul, good point. Actually my premise has been that someone, with a future time machine, sent back a Hummer H1 as the optimal vehicle to explore the glaciers to the end of the last 7 ice ages, each time tripping a global warming cycle.
Seriously, the lack of information regarding the Harappan civilization perhaps can teach us a number of implied lessons.
First that history is the recording of aberrational behavior,i.e. war. That decentralzed authority and normal human action does NOT lead to war and therefore merits no historical recordation. Normaal and individual human action is voluntary, normal, productive and not news or history worthy.
Another lesson from the “new” theory is that change, including climate change, is normal. Because governments, especially those which are centralized, authoritian, and yes, democracies which have evolved to a tyranny of the majority, by their nature attempt to eliminate or at least retard change, they are as abnormal as the belligerence they tend to instigate, and therefore “make” history. War is only considered normal because, over the eons, that is what we recorded.
Perhaps Murray Rothbard was correct in being an “enemy of the state”. Do you know of any individuals who, like governments, covet and seek to have their own troops and WMD?
Given the difficulties of centralized government taking hold of power in Afghanistan and the region, I’d say that “democratic” or “decentralized” aren’t the right word. Unless you decentralize not to provinces or cities, but to individuals (in essence — no government). The long resistance to central government power in Afghanistan reflects their opposition to government tyranny, and is more libertarian. Not that many there are libertarian. There certainly are tyrants who use Islam in an attempt to tyrannize them.
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But where are WE going to move to?
http://brianrwright.com/CoffeeCoasterBlog/?p=1261
‘Global warming’ is a controversial subject in the freedom movement, with a sizable percentage dismissing it as globalist propaganda intended to better control the masses. I think we need to separate the science from the agendas present on one side of the Cartelocracy or the other, then do what we can as human beings to avoid realistic dangers of climate catastrophe in the geologic-time near term.
Dr. Hansen‘s comments, now as a private citizen, seem solid to me from the perspective of simple precautionary rationality. Plus his suggested fixes appear to be a lot freer from politics and globalist meddling than cap and trade.
Excellent website, congratulations for what you’re doing here.