India
I have to say this is quite extraordinary news.
The migration of humans into, out of, and within India, has been hotly debated for a very long time. Despite the fact I am certain “civilisation” started with the Indus Valley culture, I have not been involved too much in the migration debate, simply because it’s a complicated story with many chapters. What I am certain of, though, is the Sanskrit language – the forerunner of modern-day Hindi – arrived / started somewhere in Northern India. DNA evidence is now proving beyond doubt the Sanskrit language arrived in India with the arrival of the Aryans, and this occurred as the Indus Valley civilisation started to collapse. The latter part of that evidence is extremely important because the Indus Valley culture have a part to play in the story in a big way. I had certainly always assumed the Indus Valley culture would have been a part of the Sanskrit language story, but it seems they were not. This would also explain why the Indus Valley script has never been deciphered, because it was a separate language from the Indo-European group that gave us Sanskrit. The Indus Valley language is long extinct, and since it has no comparisons in modern-day Indian languages, it’s proving almost impossible to decipher it.
Since the article can be read and I don’t need to add to the immense detail within it, I would like to focus attention on the Indus Valley, as many questions now arise. Since the Indus Valley culture collapsed and the Aryans arrived bringing Sanskrit, what happened to the language of the Indus Valley people? The DNA evidence suggests they simply disappeared, or at least scattered so far and wide that the people who left had to adopt the languages of other cultures existing in the areas they lived, including modern-day Pakistan, Afghanistan and India. Let’s not forget the Indus Valley culture covered an area so vast it’s almost impossible to imagine, hence why the question of what happened to all of those people and their language now becomes even more important.
For that reason an element of caution arises over the DNA evidence, despite the fact it appears to be so conclusive there are no alternatives. DNA evidence is notoriously suspect the further back in time we travel. The immense size of the Indus Valley culture beggars huge questions over what happened to them if Sanskrit was brought in and replaced them and their own language. There is no evidence of warfare whatsoever, and only climate change in the form of shifting Indus river channels gives any evidence as to their disappearance. Now we have a new player – a huge migration of Aryans into the Indus Valley, bringing a new language, culture, and practically wiping out the old. But since no warfare seems to have ensued and the Indus Valley people were forced to move to different locations due to natural causes then there is a huge chapter missing in this story. We must now question the timing of the Aryan migration – at the time the Indus Valley culture was dissolving and disappearing altogether. Did they arrive filling in a void that was being left? That doesn’t make sense because those people would have to encounter the same climate changes the Indus Valley people were experiencing. Again, there is no evidence of any warfare anywhere in the Indus Valley – they didn’t even have weapons! – so warfare can be ruled out. So we now must ask – what is the connection between the Aryan migration and the end of the Indus Valley civilisation? This is now one of the biggest questions of history.
Jordan
Archaeologists have discovered King Herod’s mikvah (or mikveh – a large ritual bathing pool) in his palace in Jordan.
The discovery is unique in that mikvahs of this style were only previous found in Qumran, on the other side of the Dead Sea.
Machaerus, the name of the palace, was actually built in 90 BC by King Alexander Jannaeus, but King Herod later renovated the palace. It was destroyed by the Romans in 71 AD during an attack. Machaerus, however, wasn’t just a palace, it was a fortified military outpost, and thus it took the Romans quite an effort to break through the defences.
Egypt
Most likely they were used, yes, but I do not see the revelation in such a conclusion. And neither did they “build” the city. They may have been used as labourers, but certainly not builders.
Perhaps using children as young as seven is a bit harsh, but certainly teenagers being involved in hard labour is not so unusual – they were fit and healthy, for the most part.
What’s missing from this article is a very important factor regarding Amarma – it was built mostly with adobe bricks, not the typical large stones you might find with the pyramids, etc. Amarna was required to be built very rapidly, so using children for that purpose is not unusual, for they would not have needed to be particularly strong to use bricks.
It amazes me with such an article and its implications that this fact is missing from the data, for it changes the entire perspective and thus the possible conclusions for the use of children as a workforce. Without knowing the city was built with bricks, we instantly get the impression of young children working on massive blocks of stone, which is not the case. I suspect, despite the injuries found in the bones, these children were on “adobe brick duty”. The “normal” workforce, if I may use such a term, was then used on the larger stones while skilled workmen, or bricklayers, put the bricks into place. As for the death toll, health and safety in the modern sense would have been totally ignored and children have little sense of keeping themselves safe in such an environment. And let’s not forget that Amarna was built in a relatively short time, so this wasn’t a workforce that was born into labour until death. It is definitely quite likely these children came from a conquered land, brought back as slaves for the purpose of the building project, but DNA evidence will soon provide that data.
**Breaking News**
Brazil
Well, I told you so! 🙂
Here we go again with more evidence, this time in eastern Brazil. Human artefacts dating to 23,000 years ago and found inland, a very significant piece of evidence and a total smack in the face for the Bering Straight theory. Or if the Bering Straight idea is the correct one, we have to push the time barrier back to at least 30,000 years. But my bets are either on a sea-faring people landing in south America, or even we may find a separate evolution of man on this continent – the further the date goes back, we either have to accept that man was boating his way around earth for a very very long time or, as I as stated in my book, humans evolved on different continents without contact with one another.
https://www.archaeology.org/news/5896-170906-brazil-early-occupation
