Worldview of the Indus Valley

The chronology and succession of civilizations obey many factors; among them, and perhaps the most important, is the geographical factor. All the great civilizations were born on the banks of great rivers; they all depended on agriculture, because without agriculture surplus, there would be no time or disposition to dedicate to other activities, that is, without agriculture there would be no culture.

Linked to the geographical factor is the climate. All great civilizations were born in temperate or subtropical climates. On one hand, excessive cold does not allow for agriculture, and on the other hand, fighting the cold leaves no time or inclination to create culture.

As for the chronology with which these succeeded each other, it is clear that the first ones appeared near Africa, on the bridge between Africa, Asia and Europe. Humans who settled in the Tigris and Euphrates basins created culture before those who went on to colonize Asia and Europe.

 For this reason, the last cultures are those of Central America, because it took many years before humans colonized all of Asia and then make the crossing of the Bering Strait to descend the American continent to Central America where they found a climate similar to that of the Fertile Crescent, where they could develop a culture based on the agriculture of maize. The Indians of cold North America never constituted a civilization that could match that of the Mayans and the Aztecs, so they remained primitive until the European settlers came along.

Origin and Discovery of the Indus Valley Civilization
They were probably nomads from the Fertile Crescent who have moved further east in search of living conditions similar to those of the Nile, Tiger and Euphrates and found the Indus Valley, in the area that now belongs to Pakistan, near the city of Karachi. The Indus River is the longest river in Pakistan; it originates in the Himalayas and travels 3,000 km to the Arabian Sea.

Developed some time after the Sumerian and the Egyptian civilizations, the Harappan civilization is practically contemporary with these two, between the years 3300 B.C. and 1900 B.C. Not much is known about this civilization yet, and some say it predates the Egyptian and the Mesopotamian ones. However, I think it makes no sense that humans coming from Africa built a civilization far from this continent, before building one closer, when the conditions were the same in terms of rivers and fertile lands.

The main cities or archaeological sites of this civilization are Harappa, Mohenjo-Daro, and Lothal. While Sumer was discovered in 1825, the archaeological sites of the Indus Valley civilization were discovered only very recently – Harappa in 1921 and Mohenjo-Daro in 1922.

Urban Planning
Before the excavation of these cities, it was thought that Indian civilization began in the Ganges River Basin, when Aryan immigrants from Persia and Central Asia settled in the region around 1250 B.C. The discovery of the Indus Valley civilization refuted this theory, giving the Indian culture a much earlier beginning.

At its peak, the Indus Valley civilization may have had a population of more than five million. The Indus cities are distinguished by their elaborate urban planning, which suggests the existence of a technical, political, and administrative process related to the rational use of land for agriculture and the design of the urban environment. The Harappans were among the first to develop a system of standardized weights and measures.

The houses were made of baked bricks, and all of the same size, which leads us to conclude that this was an egalitarian society without much social stratification. The cities had a sophisticated and elaborate drainage system, sewage, and water supply.

Each house had a water well, while wastewater was directed into covered canals in the main streets. Even the smallest houses on the outskirts of the city were connected to the system, thus supporting the idea that hygiene and sanitation were a matter of great importance to them.

They also had pools of water reserved for public baths that even then were used more for spiritual purification ritual than for bodily hygiene, something very characteristic of Indian society even today. In the image that illustrates this text we can see in the foreground one of these public baths in the city of Mohenjo-Daro.

Religion, Language, and Culture
Little is known about the Harappan religion and language. A collection of texts written on clay and stone tablets unearthed at Harappa, with a carbon dating of 3300-3200 B.C., contain vegetable and trident-shaped markings that appear to be written from right to left.

There is considerable debate as to whether it is a codified language or whether it is related to the Indo-European and South Indian families. The Indus Valley writing remains indecipherable, with no comparable symbols in existence, and is believed to have evolved independently of the writing in Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt. Researchers are using technological and computer advances to try to decipher it.

The Harappan religion also remains a subject of speculation. It has been widely suggested that Harappans worshipped a mother goddess who symbolized fertility. An idea that agrees with the early conception of the divine in prehistoric societies. In contrast to Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations, the Indus Valley civilization does not seem to have had temples or palaces that clearly prove the existence of specific religious rites or deities.

Many of the symbols of Harappan writing appear on stamps and seals. A stamp has been found in which a man appears in a yoga position in meditation. He is surrounded by a buffalo, a rhinoceros, an elephant, and a tiger, with two deer at his feet. He is sitting under a Pipa tree and was called Pashupati. It is perhaps a representation of who would later be known in Hinduism as the god Shiva.

System of Government
Written records have given historians great insight into the civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt; in contrast, very few written materials have been discovered in the Indus Valley. There are those who ponder that the system of government was centralized like that of Egypt by the standard measurements of bricks and other measures of weight and distance; just as there are those who understand that they were city-states like those of ancient Sumer.

We do not have enough data to lean towards one theory or the other, both are ancient forms of government, one more democratic, like the Sumerian society and even the Mayan society of Central America, and the other more dictatorial, like those of Egypt and the Aztecs in Central America.

Peaceful Society
It is widely believed that the Harappan civilization was peaceful and did not engage in any warfare, but there is no conclusive evidence to confirm this belief, and some archaeologists consider it a widespread myth. Some scholars argue that the Harappans were peaceful mainly because they had no natural enemies due to the geographical location of their large cities. Weapons have been found at archaeological sites, but it is debated whether they were used in conflict with other groups or as self-defense against wild animals.

Decline of the Indus Valley Civilization
The Indus Valley civilization collapsed around 1800 B.C. Scholars debate what factors brought on the death of this civilization. One theory suggests that a nomadic Indo-European tribe, the Aryans, invaded and conquered the Indus Valley civilization, although more recent evidence tends to contradict this claim. Most historians believe that the collapse of the Indus Valley civilization was caused by climate change. Some experts believe that the drought of the Saraswati River, which began around 1900 B.C., was the main cause for these changes in climate and living conditions.

In 1800 B.C., the climate of the Indus Valley became colder and drier, and a tectonic event may have diverted or disrupted the river systems, which were the lifelines of the Indus Valley civilization. The Harappans were forced to emigrate to the Ganges River Basin in the east, where they may have established villages and used the land for agriculture.

These small communities would not have been able to produce the same agricultural surplus to support the large cities. With the reduction in the production of goods, there would have been a decline in trade with Egypt and Mesopotamia. By 1700 B.C., most cities in the Indus Valley civilization had been abandoned.

Of those who went to the Ganges River Basin, around the year 800 B.C., some settled as hermits (the Vedas) in the forests of the Ganges River. Inspired by the Dravidian religion that originated from the Indus Valley, they worshipped natural spirits. These religions believed that souls acquired another physical form after the death of the body; thus, was born the theory of reincarnation, so popular in Hinduism.

The Vedas, a word meaning "knowledge", are the oldest texts of Hinduism. They are derived from the ancient Indo-Aryan culture of the Indian subcontinent and began as an oral tradition that was passed down through generations, before finally being written down in Vedic Sanskrit, between 1500 and 500 B.C.

Conclusion: Personal hygiene, sanitation, and ritual and spiritual purity, as well as urban organization and mathematical precision in weights and measures, suggest that this was an advanced society for its time, "democratic", egalitarian, and peaceful. It is a pity we have not yet deciphered the symbols they left behind for us to know more. The Indian worldview eventually influenced the thinking and life of all of South Asia.  

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Worldview of the Fertile Crescent

After dwelling on the prehistoric worldview, let us now study the worldviews that succeeded it after the appearance of writing, which is the line that divides prehistory from history. For a long time, it was thought that writing first appeared in Sumer, ancient Mesopotamia, and then from there it spread to other civilizations. The discovery of a form of writing in Central America, with no connection to the Fertile Crescent or the Far East, proves that writing arose in different civilizations disconnected from each other.

This is just one of the many proofs that there is only a single model of development, and that human nature is the same because the planet is populated by a single hominid, Homo sapiens, who left Africa about 200,000 years ago. Writing is, therefore, concomitant with the appearance of the first civilizations. In each of these civilizations appeared different version of it.

The first and oldest version of writing is the cuneiform writing that appeared in Sumer (4000 B.C.). For this reason, Sumer is also known as the first human civilization. Then came the hieroglyphic writing of Egypt (3,000 B.C.). The pictorial writing of China appeared around 1,200 B.C. and the Mayan writing of Central America in the year 500 B.C. Not much is known about the writing of the Harappa civilization in the Indus Valley but in some circles, it is regarded as the second form of writing after Sumer. This form of writing dates back to 3,500 B.C., but to date it has not been deciphered, and therefore does not count as writing, but as symbols disconnected from each other.

We will therefore study these first great ancient civilizations that are at the base of the civilizational nuances that we find here and there in this globalized world with fewer and fewer differences. These civilizations are the Fertile Crescent, the Indus Valley, the Chinese, and finally, the Central American comprised of the Mayas, the Aztecs, and the Incas. Let us first look at the Fertile Crescent (the Cradle of Western civilization) and the cultures that succeeded from there, starting with Sumer, until the appearance of the First Empire.

The Sumerian civilization arose somewhat earlier than the Egyptian civilization. However, these two cultures grew and developed at the same time, with little or no relation to each other, because they were separated by a desert and, maybe because of that, they never confronted each other in war.

SUMERIAN
It is questioned today whether Sumer predates Egypt. However, until the contrary is unequivocally proven, we adopt here the orthodox view that the Sumerian civilization, the first on the planet, arose just before the Egyptian, 4,000 years before Christ, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq).

The regular flooding of the rivers made the land fertile and allowed for an agriculture based mainly on cereals which, as we have studied in previous texts, permitted goods to be stored for a long time, thus freeing man from the tutelage of nature and the constant search for food, like other living beings.

We will study the Fertile Crescent from the first Sumerian civilization to the appearance of the First Empire.

Religion
The Sumerians knowing that they could not control the wind, the air, the sun, and other elements, believed that a higher power controlled these realities. The Sumerian word for universe was AN-KI, meaning the god AN and the goddess KI. The children of this divine marriage were ENLIL, the god of air, who was seen as the most powerful god, like Zeus in Greek mythology. ENKI was the goddess of love and war. Eros and Thanatos, affection and aggression, were controlled by the same deity. Apart from these, there were many other less powerful gods, and each city-state had its own protector god.

Anthropomorphic Polytheism
The Sumerians believed that their gods were very much like people; they ate, drank, slept, and got married. Unlike humans, however, the gods lived eternally and exercised power over humans. For this reason, humans had to keep them happy, with prayers, offerings, and sacrifices so that they would be favorable to them and bring fortune and prosperity to the city. If that did not happen, they could bring war, floods, and other disasters.

Ziggurat, the First Temple in History
In Mesopotamia, at the center of every city on a higher place, there was always a ziggurat, that is, a temple in a helical shape or tiered mound. This temple is common to all civilizations around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers: Sumer, Akkad, Assyria, and Babylon.

The Philosophy of Sumerian Life in the Poem of Gilgamesh – the first work of world literature
In the epic story of the hero Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, the first pearl of world literature written on clay tablets around the year 3,400 B.C. in cuneiform writing invented by the Sumerians, it describes the humanity represented in Gilgamesh, awakening from his long sleep of unconsciousness, realizing, at the same time, his brutality, but also his culture and wisdom.

Gilgamesh gives us an idea of how the human being sees himself and the world around him. He overcomes all the enemies and obstacles that come his way, and sees himself as an all-powerful being. As the result, he does not accept his limitations, especially his mortality. He is not perfect and at the beginning of the poem, he is a bad king, which leads the people to protest to God against him. But then wisdom gradually tames him, revealing himself to be a person of great feelings, especially in his friendship with the uncivilized Enkidu.

Many realities come together in this story, feeling of loneliness, friendship, loss of a loved one (his friend Enkidu), love, revenge and the fear of death. Gilgamesh is a leader, strong, fearless, and handsome, a demigod, and king of the city-state of Uruk in old Sumer.

He has a sex life that is unbridled, instinctive, and without feeling, but when he meets his friend Enkidu, he discovers an affection for another human being that he never felt before for a woman. This affection leads him to put aside sex and pleasure, that is, to trade Eros for Philia. From then on, he is no longer interested in women and does not allow himself to be seduced even by Enki, the goddess of war and love.

In this culture, men are dominant because women cannot control sex and love (eros). Love and war are emotional acts, not of reason, hence both realities are represented by the same deity unlike in Greek and Roman mythology. The leader is male, someone who stands out from the others, for his physical strength, courage, and wisdom. However, among the Sumerian kings there is a list that includes a woman, Kubaba, as queen of the city-state of Kish.

Gilgamesh battles against the fatality of mortality and seeks a way to defeat the inevitable. In the end, after being unable to find immortality and a way to relive his life, Gilgamesh finds peace in death.

Inventions
Sumer is famous for the invention of beer and even had a goddess named NinKasi as the goddess of beer. The Sumerians invented the wheel, the plow, the bow, bronze, and the measurement of time, dividing the hour into 60 minutes, and the minute into 60 seconds.

AKKADIAN EMPIRE
As there were no deterrents either from the north or the south, nor from the east or the west, in this same place in Mesopotamia several civilizations succeeded one another until the consolidation of the great empires. While all this is happening, Egypt, as we shall see below, develops its own civilization, hieroglyphic writing, and way of understanding life.

At around 3,000 B.C., the Sumerians had a significant cultural exchange with a group from northern Mesopotamia, known as the Akkadians – named after the city-state of Akkad. The Akkadian language is related to the Semitic languages of Hebrew and Arabic.

The term Semitic comes from the biblical character Shem, son of Noah, the supposed progenitor of Abraham and, consequently, of the Jewish and Arab peoples. Around 2,334 B.C., Sargon of Akkad came to power and established what may have been the world's first dynastic empire. The Akkadian Empire ruled over both the Akkadian and the Sumerian speakers in Mesopotamia and Levant – modern day Syria and Lebanon. The Akkadian Empire collapsed in 2,154 B.C., 180 years after its founding.

ASSYRIAN EMPIRE
Assyria owes its name to its original capital, the ancient city of Ashur, in northern Mesopotamia. Ashur was originally one of several Akkadian-speaking city-states ruled by Sargon and his descendants during the Akkadian Empire. Hundreds of years after its collapse, Assyria became a great empire.

For much of the 1,400 years from the late 21st century B.C. to the end of the 7th century B.C., the Akkadian-speaking Assyrians were the dominant power in Mesopotamia, especially in the north. The empire reached its peak near the end of this period in the 7th century. At its peak, the Assyrian Empire stretched from the borders of Egypt and Cyprus in the west to the borders of Persia – present day Iran – in the east.

BABYLONIAN EMPIRE
Finally comes Babylon the Great, where the Jews, according to the Bible, were exiled. One of the most important works of Babylonian culture was the compilation of a code of law around 1754 B.C. called the Code of Hamurabi, which mirrored and improved upon the earlier written laws of Sumer, Akkad, and Assyria. The Code of Hamurabi is the oldest code of law in the world. Written around 1754 B.C. by the sixth king of Babylon, Hamurabi, the Code was written on stone slabs and clay tablets. It consists of 282 laws, with punishments scaled according to social status, adjusting "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth", to avoid spiraling violence.

The Babylonian Empire, founded by Hamurabi, lasted 260 years, until Babylon was sacked by invaders in 1531 B.C. In the period between 626 B.C. and 539 B.C., Babylon reasserted itself in the region with the Neo-Babylonian Empire. This new empire was overthrown in 539 B.C. by the Persians who ruled the region until the time of Alexander the Great in 335 B.C.

The Babylonian Myth of Creation
In addition to the oldest code of laws, Babylon also has the oldest myth of creation of the universe and human beings. It says that in the beginning there was the god Apsu and the goddess Tiamat who had several children. Because the younger ones were noisy when they played, and Apsu could neither sleep or work, he decided to kill them. However, the young gods discovered the plan and anticipated it by killing Apsu.

Tiamat vowed revenge for the death of her husband. Filled with fear, the rebellious gods solicitate the help of cousin Marduk. He captured and killed Tiamat, later tearing her body to pieces, and spreading her blood. This is how the universe was created, according to the Babylonian myth. That is, creation is an act of violence and not of goodness, as it is in the biblical myth of creation.

The cosmic order requires the violent suppression of the feminine and is mirrored in the social order by the subjection of women to men and men to their ruler. In the beginning was chaos and violence was used to establish order. Thus, the use of violence is justified because without it, there would be no order. The myth of redemptive violence is the victory of order over chaos by means of violence.

After the creation of the world, Marduk threw into prison the gods who were on Tiamat's side. As they were protesting because the food in the prison was not good, Marduk and his father Ea (son of Apsu), killed one of them and from his blood, created human beings to be servants of the gods.

Therefore, according to the Babylonian myth of creation, violence is natural and is embedded in our genes. It was not humanity that created violence as an act of disobedience to God, as in the case of the biblical myth. In the Babylonian myth, violence has always been present, being part of the cosmic and human nature. Human beings are naturally incapable of peaceful coexistence and peace must be imposed from above by the ruling power. Much later, this was the idea behind the "Pax Romana" imposed by the Romans.

The smartest and most powerful therefore stand before others as kings, pharaohs, czars, emperors, princes, priests and teachers, representatives of God's goodness and justice, with the mission to fight the wicked and punish them.

The "legal" violence of the leaders of society opposes the "natural" violence to subdue the wicked, to deter others from their evil tendencies, and to facilitate social coexistence. Hence the law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is born, to restrain the violence that is natural to human beings and to make it possible to live together.

THE EGYPT OF THE PHARAOHS
It is certainly the most emblematic and fascinating culture of the ancient world, not only for the grandiosity of the pyramids and so many other monuments that they left us, but they continue to arouse curiosity in man today. Archaeology has even changed its name to Egyptology, because of the millions of historical documents that this civilization has left behind.

The Egyptian civilization spans several distinct periods: the First Kingdom (3,000-2,660 B.C.), I and II dynasties; the Ancient Kingdom in the early Bronze Age (2,660-2,180 B.C.), III to VI dynasties; the First Middle Kingdom (2,180-2,040 B.C.), VII to XI dynasties; the Middle Kingdom (2,040-1,780 B.C.), XI and XII dynasties; the Second Middle Kingdom (1,780 to 1,560 B.C.), XIII to XVII dynasties; the New Kingdom (1,560-1,070 B.C.), XVIII to XX dynasties; the Third Intermediate Period (1,070-664 B.C.), XXI to XXV dynasties; the Late Period (664-332 B.C.), XXVI to XXX dynasties; the Greek Dominion/the Ptolemaic Period (332-30 B.C.) and the Early Roman Empire (30 B.C.-359 A.D.).

The success of the ancient Egyptian civilization came, in part, from its ability to adapt to the conditions of the Nile River valley for agriculture. The predictable flooding and controlled irrigation of the fertile valley produced surplus crops, reported also in the Bible in the story of Joseph of Egypt.

This rationalized agriculture allowed for a considerable increase in population. With resources to spare, the administration sponsored the mining of the valley and surrounding desert regions, the development of a writing system, the organization of collective and agricultural construction projects, trade with the surrounding regions, and an army designed to assert Egyptian dominance.

To motivate and organize these activities there was a bureaucratic force of elite scribes, religious leaders, and administrators, under the control of the pharaoh who ensured the cooperation and unity of the Egyptian people in the context of an elaborate religious belief system.

Life in Egypt
•    "Do not separate your mind from your tongue and all your projects will succeed"
•    "Let not your knowledge be a cause for arrogance; take counsel both with the wise and the ignorant”
Almost everyone was involved in agriculture and probably connected to the land. In theory, all the land belonged to the king, although in practice those who lived on it could not be easily removed and some categories of land could be bought and sold. Abandoned land reverted to state ownership and were transferred to others who would farm it.

A strong central state made possible the massive constructions Egypt is known for. How the construction of the great pyramids in the fourth dynasty (2,575–2,465 B.C.) was accomplished is still a puzzle to this day. People's houses were made of adobe or unbaked earth bricks; temples, pyramids, royal palaces, and tombs were built of stone.

Unlike cuneiform writing that allowed other languages to be written, hieroglyphic writing only permitted a single language to be written. However, it is from these hieroglyphs that our alphabet, the roman alphabet, is derived. This civilization left us numerous literary works, such as treatises on mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and magic, as well as various religious texts, collected later in the famous library of Alexandria.

In ancient Egypt they ate all kinds of meat, including pork. Marriage was monogamous, divorce was possible and easy, but costly. Women had a somewhat lower status than men; married women had the title of housewife, but they also worked in agriculture alongside their husbands.

The pharaoh was considered divine and his divinity was reaffirmed in sumptuous rituals. However, he was an inferior deity to the great gods. He was the guarantee of unity of the well organized and hierarchical Egyptian society. It was for this reason that monotheism was invented in Egypt, precisely as a unifying factor between people and social classes.

It was Pharaoh Akhenaten who promulgated the existence of one single god, the god Aten, that is, the sun god replacing the whole pantheon of gods. However, this monotheism was short-lived. The Egyptians, like all the peoples of that time and place, were naturally polytheistic. It is likely that the Jewish idea of a single God arose at this time and they retained it later during their period of slavery in Egypt and after their liberation.

Conclusion: At the end of the Neolithic period, between the Chalcolithic and the Bronze Age, the first human civilizations were born around the Tigris, Euphrates, and Nile rivers. The fertile land in the basins of these rivers provided a surplus of crops and this, in turn, a superior culture, evident in the technological inventions, writing and monuments left behind by these civilizations, the basis of Western civilization.
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC