
Did The Harappan Civilization Avoid War for 2,000 Years? - fillskills
http://io9.com/a-civilization-without-war-1595540812
======
tjradcliffe
No. Neither did the Mayans.

There has always been a strain of utopianism in the study of ancient history
that tries desperately to fit radically implausible social critiques into
areas we are ignorant of.

It is the sociological or anthropological equivalent of the "God of the gaps"
approach in the hard sciences, which disingenuously begs the question "Does
God exist?" by insisting that anything we can't positively and fairly
certainly explain by physical causes must be due to the Big Guy in the Sky.

In the case of magically peaceful civilizations, the most extreme instance was
the Maya, who up until the last quarter of the 20th century were presumed to
have "solved the problem of war", unlike we nasty brutish and short moderns.
Then we learned to read their writing, and discovered they were incredibly
violent and war-prone, just like every other human civilization:
[http://articles.sun-
sentinel.com/1986-05-27/news/8601310832_...](http://articles.sun-
sentinel.com/1986-05-27/news/8601310832_1_temple-walls-torture-new-history)

The similarity between the article's claims about the Harappan civilization to
the myths about the Maya are so striking that I've got to say the author and
editor are both pretty far out of their depth to have not mentioned it.

So my prediction is that contrary to the article's closing complex question,
we won't ever find out how the Harappan civilization avoided war, because they
didn't. When their writing is eventually translated there will be the
"surprising" revelation that their highly ordered civilization was heavily
regulated by highly organized violence at all scales, just like every other
one we know anything detailed about.

As a river civilization, state control of irrigation may have played a
significant role in social control, but violence underpinned it, and warfare
was the largest-scale expression of that violence. Lack of evidence of sacked
cities is evidence that they didn't sack cities, not that they didn't engage
in war. Maybe they simply killed all the inhabitants in a more organized way.
They were, after all, highly organized.

In general, it is more likely that the gaps are filled with things similar to
well-studied cases than completely and entirely at odds with them. These
mysterious people are deeply fascinating and were clearly extremely
accomplished, but the odds are they had basic sociological similarities to
everyone else.

~~~
humanrebar
> which disingenuously begs the question "Does God exist?" by insisting that
> anything we can't positively and fairly certainly explain by physical causes
> must be due to the Big Guy in the Sky.

I agree with your position, but in my view your summary of some well-
considered theological positions undermines your on-topic points. To be sure,
there are people with shallow appreciation of the metaphysical implications of
the exploration of nature, but people with more rich views are easy to find
and the typical viewpoint is probably more reasonable than you give credit to.

I hope you would consider being more measured and even-handed in your
critiques of other viewpoints, especially when any responses would be off-
topic.

Thanks.

~~~
tjradcliffe
For some reason I can't reply to your longer comment below, where you say:

> I thought tjradcliffe might consider phrasing his comments more courteously
> next time.

That actually _was_ my more courteous phrasing :-)

But I appreciate your civility, and in retrospect I should have left out
"disingenously", which is needlessly inflamatory and distracting. I'll edit
the comment to remove it. [Edit: unfortunately I guess there is a time-limit
on the editability of comments, which has passed, so it'll have to stand as a
permanent monument to my inherent irritability.]

However, I do believe "the God of the Gaps" is an instance of question-
begging: people who use it attempt to build the assumption "anything that
cannot be explained by current physics must be assigned to God" into the
mutually accepted context of the argument. They assume--and ask their opponent
to assume--what they are setting out to prove, which is what "question
begging" is.

This is very much the mode of argument used by people promoting peaceful
ancient civilizations, which _only_ crop up in areas of ignorance, and which
have a tendency to be proven false when more information becomes available--
the Maya are not unique in this regard, but merely the most prominent example.
This makes the point relevant to the article under discussion.

I'll plug my book here as you sound like the kind of reader I was aiming for:
[http://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Theorem-TJ-Radcliffe-
ebook/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Theorem-TJ-Radcliffe-
ebook/dp/B00KBH5O8K/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1416339457&sr=8-1&keywords=darwin%27s+theorem)
, which as well as engaging in some egregiously speculative biology was
written in part as a (hopefully) respectful attempt to engage intelligent and
humane believers with alternative viewpoints on the relationship between
science, religion, scripture and God (which was a struggle for me... I'm not
an inherently respectful person, and clearly have more work yet to do.)

~~~
humanrebar
Fair enough.

I'll forgo rebutting except to say that "science or it doesn't exist" (not
that you believe it) only works if you have a fully materialist viewpoint,
which is another form of begging the question. It also precludes the
possibility that the Creator likes internally his physical reality internally
consistent.

I mention that to say that I think a bit of humility about the limits of our
"proof" helps us treat each other better. Which has to happen if we're going
to have productive conversation.

Anyway, thanks for listening.

P.S. You might know where the term God of the Gaps came from:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps#Criticism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps#Criticism)

~~~
cbd1984
How is a fully materialist perspective question-begging?

------
zeteo
> Every city was surrounded by a wall

This by itself indicates warfare. City walls are huge, costly infrastructure
projects that require serious justification for both construction and
maintenance. For instance, in contemporary Mesopotamia cities only began to
build walls with the emergence of serious warfare at the beginning of the
Early Dynastic period (ca. 2900 BC).

> scientists find no layers of ash that would suggest the city had been burned
> down, and no signs of mass destruction

As the main evidence in the article this is unimpressive. Warfare does not
usually result in the mass destruction of cities. E.g. Medieval England had
endemic warfare for centuries but London, Bristol etc. didn't get burned down.
Factors such as siege methods and building materials also make a big
difference in how cities are affected by warfare.

~~~
jeltz
Indeed, the article just casually mentioned city walls without countering the
obvious that city walls are normally built in an environment with warfare.
City walls is something you do not build unless you really have to. We stopped
building them once they stopped being cost effective.

~~~
Gravityloss
I didn't read this article, but they were mentioned in the Geo magazine some
years ago.

The walls were thought to be for protection from the river flow.

~~~
jessaustin
To those who have seen the remains of structures exposed to floodwater, this
will seem unlikely. The way to deal with floods, if you must live on the
floodplain, is to build levees, berms, dikes, etc. Huge piles of rock and
dirt, miles long and scores of yards wide, stacked and compacted by hordes of
zero-skill labor. Not tiny little stone walls, crafted by masons who would
have been among the most skilled artisans a Stone-Age society could have.

------
r0h1n
As an Indian I can only add that I simultaneously feel a sense of pride (at
how advanced the Indus Valley civilization was) and shame (at the fact that
modern India is _still_ rediscovering concepts like well-planned cities and
sewage/water supply 2000 years later).

I live in a fairly well-off suburb of south Bangalore that has NO municipal
sewage or water supply. Mine isn't an isolated case either as large parts of
Bangalore have neither. Also, large parts of Gurgaon, arguably India's largest
new city.

So how do we make by? Apartment communities have their own sewage & waste
water treatment plants; rain-water harvesting; private garbage disposal (we
segregate into multiple categories); drinking water brought in by water
tankers that pump ground water (which the law doesn't really protect).

~~~
Harris1246
4500 years later, not 2000 years.

But India is not alone. Europe also experienced civilization reversion. As did
East Asia. As did the Americas.

~~~
r0h1n
Sorry, my bad.

Can you explain "civilization reversion"?

~~~
ceejayoz
The Fall of Rome, I'd imagine.

~~~
trynumber9
The Bronze Age collapse as well.

~~~
arethuza
The one between the "Heroic" age of Mycenae and Troy and the later "Classical"
Grrece?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_Dark_Ages](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_Dark_Ages)

------
tokenadult
Poor research produces a poor article, below the standard we should expect
here on Hacker News. In one example, the article author writes, "It's also
during this time that we begin to see markings that look like writing on
pottery. Over a period of just a couple of centuries, these crude marks
evolved quickly into an alphabet that we still can't decipher." First of all,
"alphabet" is surely the wrong word, as that refers to a specific kind of
writing system that the Harappan script most likely was not. Indeed, there is
considerable controversy over whether the Harrapan script is writing at all,
that is a representation of language, rather than proto-writing, for example
markings of ruling families or the like. (Those are stages of development of
not-yet-writing attested in other centers of ancient civilization.) As the
article correctly notes, there is no evidence of a successor civilization to
the Indus Valley civilization, so at the very least we have no sure evidence
of any linguistic affiliations of any use of Harappan script for writing. The
attested later historical development of writing in India (which flourished at
the time of the emperor Ashoka) is based on script forms from the ancient Near
East.

AFTER EDIT: As usual, I would be happy to hear a rationale for the
disagreement that is evidently being expressed regarding this comment. Please
show your capacity to teach me (and onlookers) something. I'll mention here
that I have studied a variety of other languages (those are disclosed in my
Hacker News user profile), including Chinese, and I have made specialized
study of the origins of writing around the world. That's my basis for judging
the plausibility of various claims about the ancient Harappan inscriptions. A
book on that topic I highly recommend, because it is written by very
knowledgeable historical linguists, is _The World 's Writing Systems_, edited
by Peter T. Daniels and William Bright. There has been a little bit of new
work on Harappan inscriptions since that book was published, with several
claims and counterclaims by competing scholars, but no settled demonstration
that the Harappan inscriptions are writing at all, and certainly no settled
demonstration of what they are writing about, if anything (as the article
submitted here acknowledges).

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Worlds-Writing-Systems-Peter-
Daniels/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Worlds-Writing-Systems-Peter-
Daniels/dp/0195079930)

~~~
cw0
I had the same thoughts as you while reading the article and I can only
imagine you are being downvoted by nationalists who aren't happy at the
suggestion that the Harappans weren't writing Sanskrit epics on their pots.

------
ajarmst
Almost certainly not. Stephen Pinker has a whole book discussing not only why
not, but why some people are willing to ignore both evidence and reason in
order to believe it anyway: The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
([http://www.amazon.com/The-Blank-Slate-Modern-
Denial/dp/01420...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Blank-Slate-Modern-
Denial/dp/0142003344))

~~~
astazangasta
Unfortunately Pinker is as guilty of just-so stories and easy essentialism as
those he criticizes. What fraction of modern Americans are dying in wars
again? Be wary of 'human nature'.
[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/11/25/what-comes-
natu...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/11/25/what-comes-naturally-2)

~~~
ajarmst
Wow, that's one of the most egregious and intricately constructed straw man
attacks I've ever seen. It's above and beyond the New Yorker's ordinary
standard of belittlement and misrepresentation. Thank you. <Edit>Heh. I just
noticed the other commenter who added a link to a description of the tu quoque
falacy, which is brilliant. I agree that Pinker can often be a bit facile, and
he does tend to caricaturize his opponents (although invariably using their
own words to do it). But this takedown piece attributes ideas and attitudes to
Pinker that are not only not in evidence, but which are frankly and directly
contradicted in the actual text of the book.</edit>

~~~
astazangasta
Care to elaborate, or are we just going to trade claims of logical fallacies
all day (please kill me first)? Pinker is the prime exponent of a field
(evolutionary psychology) widely regarded by other scientists as a pseudo-
science. When I had him as a lecturer, his own TAs would ridicule the shoddy
claims he made in lecture behind his back (e.g. that old one about how men
prefer blondes because it reminds them of the savannah, I kid you not) and
encouraged us to think critically about them.

Pinker is a great writer, and he's exposed a lot of people to new ideas. Many
of those ideas are extremely bad and have little basis in evidence. He's also
in dangerous territory alongside assholes like Charles Murray and the
Thornhills.

~~~
ajarmst
"To say that music is the product of a gene for “art-making,” naturally
selected to impress potential mates—which is one of the things Pinker
believes." No, it's not. "Pinker doesn't care much for art, though." Assumes
facts not in evidence. "It's O.K. to rewire people's “natural” sense of a just
price or the movement of a subatomic particle, in other words, but it's a
waste of time to tinker with their untutored notions of gender difference."
Snidely misrepresents Pinker's thesis, which is simply that gender differences
are real, are a product of evolution, and that an assumption that gender
differences are social constructs is dangerous and wrong. "He argues, for
example, that democracy, the rule of law, and women's reproductive freedom are
all products of evolution." No, he doesn't. Would anyone? That's all in just a
few lines. I don't really have the time or intestinal fortitude to give you a
whole line-by-line refutation. Maybe just read what Pinker wrote, instead of
this hatchet job?

A final note, as I think we're both growing bored with this, but if you find
accusations of logical fallacy so tedious, perhaps avoid making statements
like "He's also in dangerous territory alongside assholes like Charles Murray
and the Thornhills."

------
tempodox
I really dislike those “Did X do Y?” article titles. It's like they're saying,
“If you even assume the answer could be Yes, you're the idiot we're looking
for”. I know not every article with such a title is written with that
attitude, but it still sucks.

~~~
JacobAldridge
In case you're not already familiar with it, Betteridge's Law of Headlines is
one I reference often [1]. "Any headline which ends in a question mark can be
answered by the word no."

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines)

------
throwaway283719
I take slight issue with this quotation -

> Though the idea of a street grid seems perfectly ordinary to city-dwellers
> today, it was unusual at the time. Most great cities in Mesopotamia, for
> example, had curving streets and a more organic-looking layout.

Maybe a street grid seems ordinary if you live in a large city in the US, but
most European cities don't have gridded streets (and I don't think it's the
norm in many other places in the world either).

~~~
allendoerfer
Except when some monarch built one for fun.

Like Mannheim [0]. Can't get more gridded than that.

[0]:
[https://encrypted.google.com/maps/place/Mannheim,+Deutschlan...](https://encrypted.google.com/maps/place/Mannheim,+Deutschland/@49.4869063,8.4649963,15z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x4797cc24518e3f45:0xb1e4fe7aa406e687)

~~~
twic
Meanwhile, in Karlsruhe:

[https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Karlsruhe,+Germany/@49.0...](https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Karlsruhe,+Germany/@49.014667,8.4076456,15z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x47970648a2e07809:0xb6fc55734cb7ee7f)

------
DanielBMarkham
Just to state the obvious, which might not be so obvious to everybody: looking
at the big picture, over billions of lives and thousands of years? War is not
such a bad thing.

I'm not trying to just be randomly contrarian. I'm serious.

When I look at all the Europeans went through, starting with Greece and ending
with the takeover of the New World, it was conflict after conflict. Terrible
time to live. But through all of that experience the Europeans learned to have
something resembling "competitive improvement", where folks could have huge
egos, dogmatic religions, a quest for progress, and seek to make a difference
in the world -- without war. Took a lot of war to figure that out, and we're
still working on parts of it, but the lesson is clear: a certain level of
creative destructive chaos is something to be demanded and never surrendered.
Peaceful harmony is the way of plants, not mankind. We're here to challenge
each other to move forward (without war, of course, but it we have to keeping
failing to figure out where the boundaries are)

~~~
jerf
"Peaceful harmony is the way of plants, not mankind."

Bwuh? Plants do not live in peaceful harmony. They just fight in ways that are
not immediately obvious to the naked human eye, mostly involving things that
we humans would consider serious violations of the Geneva convention. But they
are as vicious as any animal, just differently.

~~~
frobozz
Indeed, anyone who would make that claim must be utterly ignorant of
horticulture.

I frequently have to rip out bindweed (which has killed many of my plants) and
tormentil (which has taken over much of my lawn). That's just the stuff that
_is_ immediately obvious.

~~~
jkaunisv1
Then there are the plants that will 'poison' the ground around them so other
plants can't grow there.

~~~
hrjet
And then, there are carnivorous plants too.

~~~
jkaunisv1
True, though I was thinking of plants making war on each other rather than
eating animals.

------
carsongross
A more interesting and relevant thing to study would be how modern Switzerland
managed to avoid war in the bloodiest century the world had ever seen.

It's like the miracle no one wants to notice.

~~~
ovulator
Is it really? Finance the most likely aggressor (Germany), don't fight for
them. Then be of no strategic importance for any other invading army. No one
wants to march their army over the alps to get somewhere.

~~~
ajarmst
Don't forget "be armed to the teeth and express a willingness to violently
respond to any intrusion into your territory". It's pretty much standard lex
talionis strategy, which has been around as long as humans have formed groups.

------
junto
This might be a stupid question, but surely basing their theory on simply
studying the buried bodily remains would be somewhat pointless if the
Harappans burnt their dead?

~~~
chippy
I'd imagine that there would be evidence of cremation

------
xerophyte12932
If i remember my history, most historians agree that the harappans were wiped
out by the Aryans from Central Asia. the Harappans were farmers, where as the
Aryans were hunters and soldiers. The south-asian subcontinent was then ruled
by the Aryans who laid the foundation of modern day Indians

~~~
cubancigar11
That is largely discredited theory. It was devised by British, and it is well
accepted that they were rather looking for a way to explain how 'India' always
had outsiders.

~~~
geekam
It has not been discredited, yet. It has been challenged. You should see the
latest paper on this subject that used gneetics - Characterizing the genetic
differences between two distinct migrant groups from Indo-European and
Dravidian speaking populations in India[1]

[1]
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4120727/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4120727/)

~~~
thevardanian
No. It's been challenged, and the characterized genetic differences between
the two populations, while existing, does not point to any recent history
signifying a cultural divide. This intermingling between the so called ANI
("Aryans"), and ASI ("Dravidians") genetic markers between the two population
is not a recent phenomenon, and in fact at this point the two populations do
not in any way point to a cultural difference as the time frame for the
intermingling of these genetic traits predates much of the cultural
connotations that "aryan", and "dravidian" denote, not to mention the very
concepts are genetically irrelevant today, because of the intermingling that
began around 4200 years ago making the two groups sharing a common genetic
make up. [1]

The India of today is fundamentally uniform, and shares a common shared
genetic makeup throughout all the tribes, castes, and geographies. So the idea
that somehow these genetic differences point to a cultural divide is bunk,
because fundamentally the cultural divid postdates the genetic intermingling.
Furthermore that common shared genetic makeup is not a recent phenomenon,
because the genetics of India has for the past 60,000 years been relatively
the same. So whatever genetics that exists in India today, whether that's
isolated, or mixed, has for the past 60,000 years been relatively the same.
[2]

The R1a1a gene that's commonly referred to in these instances that drive the
Aryan, and the Dravidian divide theory is a gene marker that points to a
population that many argue proves the idea of Aryan invasion, or at least
migration, as the R1a1a is a common genetic marker in Poles, Czechs,
Lithuanians, and other Eastern European genetics, and not in India. That alone
is a weak argument, as the question then is who had the gene first, and who
migrated where. A closer, and higher resolution look at genetics gives a
different picture. The Europeans carrier of the R1a1a gene have a further M458
mutation of the R1a1a gene that's virtually nonexistent in Asia. Since the
M458 mutation is estimated to have occurred at least 8000 years ago it seems
that something happened to divide the populations that carried the common
R1a1a gene, but the reason of that divide is yet to be empirically
established.

Thus this genetic marker explains at best a shared ancestry between Europeans,
and Indians, not some Aryan invasion theory. The R1a1a genetic marker is not a
common genetic trait among Europeans, west Iranians, or throughout central
Asia, but found commonly in South Asia. [3]

So no. The Aryan invasion theory is thoroughly debunked as Imperial bias to
subjugate, and justify their economic plunder over a people.

[1] [http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Aryan-Dravidian-
div...](http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Aryan-Dravidian-divide-a-
myth-Study/articleshow/5053274.cms)

[2] [http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-new-research-debunks-
ar...](http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-new-research-debunks-aryan-
invasion-theory-1623744)

[3]
[http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/v18/n4/full/ejhg2009194a....](http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/v18/n4/full/ejhg2009194a.html)

~~~
geekam
Thanks! This, along with the other replies, was very helpful.

So, basically the whole concept of North Vs South India divide with Southern
Indians holding on to this information is incorrect since Indian subcontinent
is pretty uniform for about 60,000 years.

------
asadlionpk
Being a resident of South Asia, it makes me sad that we aren't taking any care
of these historical locations.

------
VLM
That was an interesting and well written article. I also found the comments
interesting and like how the author interacted with the commenters.
Unfortunately I can not provide any significant constructive criticism to
improve it, as it is extremely good.

Could we talk about presentation?

On the good side, no 90s era re-imagining of the splash screen that has to be
ignored and scrolled past to see the text... I like that. Another good side is
no scroll bar hijacking where click hold the scroll bar in the lower half of
the article makes the page flip downwards unusably, I hate sites that do that
and will go out of my way to avoid them.

On the bad side, lets look at the first 5 seconds of user experience. The site
renders with 3 pixs, a large artists interpretation of the Harappan (cool), a
smaller strange landscape with a only slightly tinier headline "Imagine What
It Looked Like Before the Collapse" (to save you time, it has nothing to do
with the Harappan although that headline would be a cool follow up story) and,
I kid you not, "The Origin of the Speculum Is Just As Creepy As You Imagined".
I would suggest fine tuning that a little bit. Especially the last bit. Unless
there's a Harappan connection to the speculum (which I guess is possible?)

