One of the curves showing sea level fluctuations over the past 18,000 years (the so-called eustatic curve). In the 12th millennium BC. sea level was about 65 m below the present, and in the 8th millennium BC. - already at incomplete 40 m. The rise in level occurred quickly, but unevenly. (According to N. Mörner, 1969)
The sharp drop in ocean level was associated with the widespread development of continental glaciation, when huge masses of water were withdrawn from the ocean and concentrated in the form of ice in the high latitudes of the planet. From here, the glaciers slowly spread towards the middle latitudes in the northern hemisphere by land, in the southern hemisphere - by sea in the form of ice fields that overlapped the shelf of Antarctica.
It is known that in the Pleistocene, the duration of which is estimated at 1 million years, three phases of glaciation are distinguished, called in Europe the Mindelian, Rissian and Würmian. Each of them lasted from 40-50 thousand to 100-200 thousand years. They were separated by interglacial epochs, when the climate on Earth warmed noticeably, approaching the modern one. In some episodes, it even became 2-3° warmer, which led to the rapid melting of ice and the release of huge spaces on land and in the ocean from them. Such dramatic climate changes were accompanied by equally sharp fluctuations in ocean levels. During the epochs of maximum glaciation, it decreased, as already mentioned, by 90-110 m, and in the interglacial period it increased to +10 ... 4-20 m to the current level.
The Pleistocene is not the only period during which there were significant fluctuations in ocean levels. In fact, they marked almost all geological epochs in the history of the Earth. Ocean level has been one of the most unstable geological factors. And this has been known for quite some time. After all, ideas about the transgressions and regressions of the sea were developed back in the 19th century. And how could it be otherwise, if in many sections of sedimentary rocks on platforms and in mountainous folded areas clearly continental sediments are replaced by marine ones and vice versa. The transgression of the sea was judged by the appearance of the remains of marine organisms in the rocks, and the regression was judged by their disappearance or the appearance of coals, salts or red flowers. Studying the composition of faunistic and floristic complexes, they determined (and still determine) where the sea came from. The abundance of heat-loving forms indicated the intrusion of waters from low latitudes, the predominance of boreal organisms spoke of transgression from high latitudes.
In the history of each specific region, its own series of transgressions and regressions of the sea stood out, since it was believed that they were due to local tectonic events: the intrusion of sea waters was associated with the subsidence of the earth's crust, their departure - with its uplift. In application to the platform regions of the continents, on this basis, even a theory of oscillatory motions was created: the cratons either fell or rose in accordance with some mysterious internal mechanism. Moreover, each craton obeyed its own rhythm of oscillatory movements.
It gradually became clear that transgressions and regressions in many cases manifested themselves almost simultaneously in different geological regions of the Earth. However, inaccuracies in the paleontological dating of certain groups of layers did not allow scientists to come to a conclusion about the global nature of most of these phenomena. This conclusion, unexpected for many geologists, was made by the American geophysicists P. Weil, R. Mitcham and S. Thompson, who studied the seismic sections of the sedimentary cover within the continental margins. Comparison of sections from different regions, often very distant from each other, helped to reveal the confinement of many unconformities, hiatuses, accumulative or erosional forms to several time ranges in the Mesozoic and Cenozoic. According to these researchers, they reflected the global nature of ocean level fluctuations. The curve of such changes, constructed by P. Weil et al., makes it possible not only to distinguish the epochs of its high or low standing, but also to estimate, of course, in the first approximation, their scales. Strictly speaking, this curve summarizes the experience of geologists of many generations. Indeed, one can learn about the Late Jurassic and Late Cretaceous transgressions of the sea or its retreat at the turn of the Jurassic and Cretaceous, in the Oligocene, Late Miocene, from any textbook on historical geology. Perhaps what was new was that now these phenomena were associated with changes in the level of ocean waters.
The scale of these changes was surprising. Thus, the most significant marine transgression, which flooded most of the continents in the Cenomanian and Turonian times, was believed to be due to a rise in the level of ocean waters by more than 200-300 m above the modern one. The most significant regression that took place in the middle Oligocene is associated with a drop in this level by 150-180 m below the modern one. Thus, the total amplitude of such fluctuations in the Mesozoic and Cenozoic was almost 400-500 m! What caused such grandiose fluctuations? You can’t write them off as glaciations, since during the late Mesozoic and the first half of the Cenozoic, the climate on our planet was exceptionally warm. However, many researchers still associate the Middle Oligocene minimum with the onset of a sharp cooling in high latitudes and with the development of the Antarctic ice sheet. However, this alone, perhaps, was not enough to lower the ocean level immediately by 150 m.
The reason for such changes was tectonic restructuring, which led to a global redistribution of water masses in the ocean. Now we can offer only more or less plausible versions to explain fluctuations in its level in the Mesozoic and early Cenozoic. Thus, analyzing the most important tectonic events that occurred at the turn of the Middle and Late Jurassic; as well as the Early and Late Cretaceous (with which the long rise of the water level is associated), we find that it is these intervals that were marked by the opening of large oceanic depressions. In the Late Jurassic, the western arm of the ocean, Tethys (the region of the Gulf of Mexico and the Central Atlantic), was born and rapidly expanded, and the end of the Early Cretaceous and most of the Late Cretaceous epochs were marked by the opening of the southern Atlantic and many basins of the Indian Ocean.
How could the initiation and spreading of the bottom in young oceanic basins affect the position of the water level in the ocean? The fact is that the depth of the bottom in them at the first stages of development is very insignificant, no more than 1.5-2 thousand meters. The expansion of their area occurs due to a corresponding reduction in the area of ancient oceanic reservoirs, which are characterized by a depth of 5-6 thousand meters. m, and in the Benioff zone, sections of the bed of deep-sea abyssal basins are absorbed. The water displaced from the disappearing ancient basins raises the general level of the ocean, which is recorded in the land sections of the continents as a transgression of the sea.
Thus, the breakup of continental megablocks must be accompanied by a gradual rise in ocean level. This is exactly what happened in the Mesozoic, during which the level rose by 200-300 m, and maybe more, although this rise was interrupted by epochs of short-term regressions.
Over time, the bottom of the young oceans in the process of cooling the new crust and increasing its area (the Slater-Sorokhtin law) became deeper and deeper. Therefore, their subsequent opening had much less effect on the position of the level of ocean waters. However, it inevitably had to lead to a reduction in the area of the ancient oceans and even to the complete disappearance of some of them from the face of the Earth. In geology, this phenomenon is called the "collapse" of the oceans. It is realized in the process of convergence of continents and their subsequent collision. It would seem that the collapse of the oceanic depressions should cause a new rise in the water level. In fact, the opposite happens. The point here is a powerful tectonic activation that covers converging continents. Mountain-building processes in the zone of their collision are accompanied by a general uplift of the surface. In the marginal parts of the continents, tectonic activation is manifested in the collapse of blocks of the shelf and slope and in their lowering to the level of the continental foot. Apparently, these subsidence also cover the adjacent areas of the ocean floor, as a result of which it becomes much deeper. The general level of ocean waters is falling.
Since tectonic activation is a one-stage event and covers a short period of time, the level drop occurs much faster than its increase during spreading of the young oceanic crust. It is precisely this that can explain the fact that sea transgressions on the continent develop relatively slowly, while regressions usually begin abruptly.
Map of possible flooding of the territory of Eurasia at various values of the probable sea level rise. The scale of the disaster (with a sea level rise of 1 m expected during the 21st century) will be much less noticeable on the map and will have almost no effect on the lives of most states. Zoomed in areas of the coasts of the North and Baltic Seas and southern China. (The map can be enlarged!)
Now let's look at the issue of MEAN SEA LEVEL.
Surveyors performing leveling on land determine the height above "mean sea level". Oceanographers who study sea level fluctuations compare them to the marks on the shore. But, alas, even the “average long-term” sea level is far from constant and, moreover, not the same everywhere, and the seashores rise in some places and fall in others.
The coasts of Denmark and Holland can serve as an example of modern land subsidence. In 1696, in the Danish city of Agger, a church stood 650 meters from the shore. In 1858, the remains of this church were finally swallowed up by the sea. During this time, the sea advanced on land at a horizontal speed of 4.5 m per year. Now on the western coast of Denmark, the construction of a dam is being completed, which should block the further advance of the sea.
The low-lying shores of Holland are exposed to the same danger. The heroic pages of the history of the Dutch people are not only a struggle for liberation from Spanish rule, but also a no less heroic struggle against the advancing sea. Strictly speaking, here it is not so much the sea that advances, but the sinking land recedes before it. This can be seen at least from the fact that the average level of full waters on about. Nordstrand in the North Sea from 1362 to 1962 rose by 1.8 m. The first benchmark (altitude mark) was made in Holland on a large, specially installed stone in 1682. soil subsidence on the coast of Holland occurred at an average rate of 0.47 cm per year. Now the Dutch are not only defending the country from the onset of the sea, but also reclaiming land from the sea, building grandiose dams.
There are, however, places where the land rises above the sea. The so-called Fenno-Scandinavian shield, after liberation from the heavy ice of the ice age, continues to rise in our time. The coast of the Scandinavian Peninsula in the Gulf of Bothnia is rising at a rate of 1.2 cm per year.
Alternate subsidence and rise of coastal land are also known. For example, the shores of the Mediterranean Sea fell and rose in places by several meters even in historical time. This is evidenced by the columns of the temple of Serapis near Naples; marine lamellar-gill mollusks (Pholas) have burrowed into them up to the height of human growth. This means that since the construction of the temple in the 1st c. n. e. the land sank so much that some of the columns were submerged in the sea, and probably for a long time, because otherwise the mollusks would not have had time to do such a great job. Later, the temple with its columns again emerged from the waves of the sea. According to 120 observation stations, the level of the entire Mediterranean Sea has risen by 9 cm in 60 years.
Climbers say: "We stormed a peak so many meters above sea level." Not only surveyors, climbers, but also people who are not at all connected with such measurements are accustomed to the concept of height above sea level. She seems unshakable to them. But, alas, this is far from the case. The ocean level is constantly changing. It is swayed by tides caused by astronomical causes, wind waves excited by the wind, and as changeable as the wind itself, wind revolvers and water surges off the coast, changes in atmospheric pressure, the deflecting force of the Earth's rotation, and finally, the heating and cooling of ocean water. In addition, according to the studies of Soviet scientists I. V. Maksimov, N. R. Smirnov and G. G. Khizanashvili, the ocean level changes due to episodic changes in the speed of the Earth's rotation and the displacement of its axis of rotation.
If only the upper 100 m of ocean water is heated by 10 °, the ocean level will rise by 1 cm. Heating by 1 ° of the entire thickness of ocean water raises its level by 60 cm. Thus, due to summer heating and winter cooling, the ocean level in middle and high latitudes subject to significant seasonal fluctuations. According to the observations of the Japanese scientist Miyazaki, the average sea level off the western coast of Japan rises in summer and falls in winter and spring. The amplitude of its annual fluctuations is from 20 to 40 cm. The level of the Atlantic Ocean in the northern hemisphere begins to rise in summer and reaches a maximum by winter; in the southern hemisphere, it reverses.
The Soviet oceanographer A. I. Duvanin distinguished two types of fluctuations in the level of the World Ocean: zonal, as a result of the transfer of warm waters from the equator to the poles, and monsoonal, as a result of prolonged surges and surges excited by monsoon winds that blow from the sea to land in summer and in reverse direction in winter.
A noticeable inclination of the ocean level is observed in areas covered by ocean currents. It is formed both in the direction of the flow and across it. The transverse slope at a distance of 100-200 miles reaches 10-15 cm and changes along with changes in the speed of the current. The cause of the transverse slope of the surface of the current is the deflecting force of the Earth's rotation.
The sea also reacts noticeably to changes in atmospheric pressure. In such cases, it acts like an "inverted barometer": more pressure - lower sea level, less pressure - higher sea level. One millimeter of barometric pressure (more precisely, one millibar) corresponds to one centimeter of sea level.
Changes in atmospheric pressure can be short-term and seasonal. According to the studies of the Finnish oceanologist E. Lisitsyna and the American J. Patullo, level fluctuations caused by changes in atmospheric pressure are isostatic in nature. This means that the total pressure of air and water on the bottom in a given section of the sea tends to remain constant. Warm and rarefied air causes the level to rise, while cold and dense air causes it to fall.
It happens that surveyors are leveling along the seashore or overland from one sea to another. Arriving at the destination, they discover a discrepancy and begin to look for an error. But in vain they rack their brains - there may not be a mistake. The reason for the discrepancy is that the level surface of the sea is far from equipotential. For example, under the influence of the prevailing winds between the central part of the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Bothnia, the average difference in level, according to E. Lisitsyna, is about 30 cm. Between the northern and southern parts of the Gulf of Bothnia at a distance of 65 km, the level changes by 9.5 cm. the difference in level between the sides of the Channel is 8 cm (Creese and Cartwright). The slope of the sea surface from the English Channel to the Baltic, according to Bowden's calculations, is 35 cm. The level of the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea at the ends of the Panama Canal, which is only 80 km long, varies by 18 cm. In general, the level of the Pacific Ocean is always slightly higher than the level of the Atlantic. Even if you move along the Atlantic coast of North America from south to north, a gradual rise in level by 35 cm is found.
Without dwelling on the significant fluctuations in the level of the World Ocean that occurred in past geological periods, we will only note that the gradual rise in the level of the ocean, which was observed throughout the 20th century, averages 1.2 mm per year. It was caused, apparently, by the general warming of the climate of our planet and the gradual release of significant masses of water, bound until that time by glaciers.
So, neither oceanologists can rely on the marks of surveyors on land, nor surveyors on the readings of tide gauges installed off the coast in the sea. The level surface of the ocean is far from an ideal equipotential surface. Its exact definition can be reached through the joint efforts of geodesists and oceanologists, and even then not earlier than at least a hundred years of material of simultaneous observations of the vertical movements of the earth's crust and sea level fluctuations in hundreds, even thousands of points. In the meantime, there is no "average level" of the ocean! Or, which is the same thing, there are many of them - each point has its own coast!
Philosophers and geographers of hoary antiquity, who had to use only speculative methods for solving geophysical problems, were also very interested in the problem of ocean level, although in a different aspect. We find the most concrete statements on this subject from Pliny the Elder, who, by the way, shortly before his death while observing the eruption of Vesuvius, rather presumptuously wrote: “There is currently nothing in the ocean that we could not explain.” So, if we discard the disputes of the Latinists about the correctness of the translation of some of Pliny's arguments about the ocean, we can say that he considered it from two points of view - the ocean on a flat Earth and the ocean on a spherical Earth. If the Earth is round, Pliny reasoned, then why does the water of the ocean on the other side of it not drain into the void; and if it is flat, then for what reason does the ocean waters not flood the land, if everyone standing on the shore can clearly see the mountainous bulge of the ocean, behind which ships hide on the horizon. In both cases he explained it this way; water always tends to the center of the land, which is located somewhere below its surface.
The problem of ocean level seemed unsolvable two thousand years ago and, as we see, remains unresolved to this day. However, the possibility is not ruled out that the features of the level surface of the ocean will be determined in the near future by geophysical measurements made with the help of artificial earth satellites.
Gravity map of the Earth compiled by the GOCE satellite.
These days …
Oceanologists re-examined the already known data on sea level rise over the past 125 years and came to an unexpected conclusion - if for almost the entire 20th century it rose noticeably more slowly than we previously thought, then in the last 25 years it has grown very rapidly, according to article published in the journal Nature.
A group of researchers came to such conclusions after analyzing data on fluctuations in the levels of the seas and oceans of the Earth during the tides, which are collected in different parts of the world using special tide gauges over the course of a century. Data from these instruments, as scientists note, are traditionally used to estimate sea level rise, but this information is not always absolutely accurate and often contains large time gaps.
“These averages do not correspond to how the sea actually grows. Tide gauges are usually located along the banks. Because of this, large areas of the ocean are not included in these estimates, and if they are included, then they usually contain large "holes", - the words of Carling Hay from Harvard University (USA) are quoted in the article.
As another author of the article, Harvard oceanologist Eric Morrow, adds, until the early 1950s, mankind did not systematically observe sea levels at the global level, which is why we have almost no reliable data on how quickly the world's ocean in the first half of the 20th century.
We do not know much about the fifth millennium BC. Obviously, we learn about the events that took place in such a distant past only from available sources, so the data may not always be 100% reliable.
Development in agriculture
Surprisingly, it was about five thousand years ago that man first began to cultivate rice and corn. The first culture at that time was the staple food in Southeast Asia, and the second - in what is now Mexico. Even within the framework of products, we can mention the development of brewing in the fifth (!) Millennium BC. If we turn to the development of cattle breeding, then already five thousand years ago, the domestication of the buffalo in China, as well as chickens and pigs, began.
Development in other areas of life
An important step in the chronology and counting of time as such was the introduction of a calendar in ancient Egypt. It consisted of 365 days. But in Romania then writing appeared, or rather its rudiments: inscribed signs on clay tablets. In the field of technological progress, one cannot fail to note the appearance of the wheel in Mesopotamia and Europe.
If we turn to history, which is closer to our people, then 5000 years BC, the Indo-European population (sometimes they are called a family, as well as Aryans) actively migrated, populating and developing more and more new territories. According to some reports, already at that time they had a written language, presumably in a runic form. Of course, they also began to have their own language, which subsequently broke up into several due to the settlement of peoples.
It could not do without wars, which at that time were still distinguished by their primitiveness. Weapons were made from improvised natural materials, solid remains of animals. Those groups of people who settled in certain territories arranged their life there, cultivated the land. Of course, at first they settled only near water bodies and forests, as sources of water and food. The main source of food at that time was hunting, fishing, and gathering.
It can be said that everything that a person knows and has today has gone through a difficult path, starting to emerge 5000 BC and earlier.
7 most frightening archaeological discoveries
Archaeological excavations are underway in India for an amazing culture that goes back four to five thousand years. Covering an area of 1.3 million square kilometers, this ancient civilization was larger than its great contemporaries - Egypt and Mesopotamia combined. Her cities were strictly planned, like the new buildings of our time.
Comfortable dwellings
Oriental studies as a science originated in the 16th-17th centuries, when the countries of Europe embarked on the path of colonial conquests, although the acquaintance of Europeans with the Arab world took place many centuries ago. But Egyptology arose much later - the date of its birth is considered to be 1822, when the French scientist Champollion deciphered the system of Egyptian hieroglyphic writing. And only relatively recently, in 1922, archaeologists first began to explore the territory along the banks of the Indus River. And immediately - a sensation: a previously unknown ancient civilization was discovered. It was called the Harappan civilization - after one of its main cities - Harappa.
When the Indian archaeologists D. R. Sahin and R. D. Banerjee were finally able to look at the results of their excavations, they saw the red-brick ruins of the oldest city in India belonging to the proto-Indian civilization, a city quite unusual for the time of its construction - 4.5 thousand years ago. It was planned with the greatest meticulousness: the streets stretched as if in a ruler, the houses were mostly the same, the proportions resembling cake boxes. But behind this "cake" shape, the following construction was sometimes hidden: in the center - a courtyard, and around it - four or six living rooms, a kitchen and a room for ablution (houses with this layout are found mainly in Mohenjo-Daro, the second big city) . The passages for stairs preserved in some houses suggest that two-story houses were also built. The main streets were ten meters wide, the network of driveways obeyed a single rule: some went strictly from north to south, and transverse ones - from west to east.
But this monotonous, like a chessboard, city provided residents with unheard-of conveniences at that time. Ditches flowed through all the streets, and from them water was supplied to the houses (although wells were found near many). But more importantly, each house was connected to a sewerage system laid underground in pipes made of baked bricks and taking all sewage out of the city limits. This was an ingenious engineering solution that allowed large masses of people to gather in a rather limited space: in the city of Harappa, for example, up to 80,000 people lived at times. The instinct of the then urban planners is truly amazing! Knowing nothing about pathogenic bacteria, which are especially active in warm climates, but probably having accumulated observational experience, they protected the settlements from the spread of the most dangerous diseases.
And other protection from natural adversities was invented by the ancient builders. Like the early great civilizations that were born on the banks of the rivers - Egypt on the Nile, Mesopotamia on the Tigris and Euphrates, China on the Yellow River and the Yangtze - Harappa arose in the Indus Valley, where the soils were highly fertile. But on the other hand, it is these places that have always suffered from high floods, reaching 5-8 meters in the flat course of the river. To save cities from spring waters, in India they were built on brick platforms ten meters high and even higher. Nevertheless, cities were built in a short time, in a few years. In the best years of the Harappan civilization around the cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, smaller settlements grew like mushrooms - there were about 1400 of them. To date, excavations have freed only one tenth of the area of the two ancient capitals. However, it has already been established that the uniformity of buildings is broken in some places. In Dolavir, lying to the east of the Indus Delta, archaeologists have found richly decorated gates, arches with colonnades, in Mohenjo-Daro - the so-called "Great Pool", surrounded by a veranda with columns and rooms, probably for undressing.
Townspeople
Archaeologist L. Gottrel, who worked in Harappa in 1956, believed that in such barracks cities one could meet not people, but disciplined ants. "In this culture," the archaeologist wrote, "there was little joy, but a lot of work, and the material played a predominant role." However, the scientist was wrong. The strength of the Harappan society was precisely the urban population. According to the conclusions of current archaeologists, the city, despite its architectural facelessness, was inhabited by people who did not suffer from melancholy, but, on the contrary, were distinguished by enviable vitality and diligence.
What did the inhabitants of Harappa do? The face of the city was determined by merchants and artisans. Here they spun yarn from wool, wove, made earthenware - in terms of strength it approaches stone, cut bone, and made jewelry. Blacksmiths worked with copper and bronze, forging tools from it, surprisingly strong for this alloy, almost like steel. They were able, by heat treatment, to give some minerals such a high hardness that they could drill holes in carnelian beads. The products of the then masters already had a unique look, a kind of ancient Indian design that has survived to this day. For example, today in peasant houses located in the excavation areas of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, in household use there are things that struck archaeologists with their "proto-Indian" appearance. This circumstance only emphasizes the words of the founder of the Indian state, J. Nehru: "For five millennia of the history of invasions and upheavals, India has maintained an uninterrupted cultural tradition." What underlies this persistence? Anthropologist G. Possel from the University of Pennsylvania (USA) came to the conclusion that this is the result of a combination in the character of the ancient Indians of such qualities as prudence, peacefulness and sociability. No other historical civilization has combined these features. Between 2600 and 1900 B.C. e. the society of merchants and artisans is flourishing. The country occupies then more than one million square kilometers. Sumer and Egypt combined were half the size.
Proto-Indian civilization arose not by chance on the banks of the Indus. As in Egypt and Mesopotamia, the river was the basis of life: it brought fertile silt from the upper reaches and, leaving it on the vast banks of the floodplain, maintained the high fertility of the land. People began to engage in agriculture in the ninth-seventh millennia. Now they no longer had to hunt or collect edible greens from morning to night, a person had time for reflection, for making better tools. Stable harvests gave man the opportunity to develop. A division of labor arose: one - plowed the land, the other - made stone tools, the third - exchanged the products of an artisan in neighboring communities for something that his fellow tribesmen did not produce. This Neolithic revolution took place on the banks of the Nile, the Tigris and Euphrates, the Yellow River and the Indus. Archaeologists in India have unearthed its late phase - when Harappa and other cities reached a certain perfection. People engaged in rural labor by this time had already learned to cultivate many crops: wheat, barley, millet, peas, sesame (here is the birthplace of cotton and rice). They raised chickens, goats, sheep, pigs, cows and even zebu, engaged in fishing and collected edible fruits grown by nature itself.
The well-being of the Harappan civilization was based on highly productive agriculture (two crops per year) and cattle breeding. An artificial canal 2.5 kilometers long discovered in Lothal suggests that an irrigation system was used in agriculture. One of the researchers of Ancient India, Russian scientist A. Ya. Shchetenko, defines this period as follows: thanks to "the magnificent alluvial soils, humid tropical climate and proximity to the advanced centers of agriculture in Western Asia, already in the 4th-3rd millennia BC, the population of the Indus Valley is significantly ahead of in the progressive development of the southern neighbors".
Riddles of letters
The society of merchants and artisans, apparently, was not headed by either a monarch or priests: in cities there are no luxurious buildings intended for those who stand above the common people. There are no magnificent grave monuments, even remotely resembling the Egyptian pyramids in their scale. Surprisingly, this civilization did not need an army, it did not have conquests, and it seems that it had no one to defend itself from. As far as the excavations allow to judge, the inhabitants of Harappa did not have weapons. They lived in an oasis of peace - this is in perfect agreement with the characterization of the mores of the ancient Hindus, given above.
Some researchers attribute the absence of fortresses and palaces in cities to the fact that ordinary citizens also took part in decisions important to society. On the other hand, numerous finds of stone seals depicting all kinds of animals indicate that the rule was oligarchic, it was divided among the clans of merchants and land owners. But this point of view is contradicted to some extent by another conclusion of archaeologists: in the excavated dwellings, they did not find signs of wealth or poverty of the owners. So maybe writing can answer these questions? Scholars who study the history of ancient India find themselves in a worse position than their counterparts who study the past of Egypt and Mesopotamia. In the last two civilizations, writing appeared many hundreds of years earlier than in Harappa. But it's not only that. The Harappan writings are extremely sparse and, to say the least, laconic, pictorial signs, that is, hieroglyphs, are used in inscriptions literally in units - 5-6 hieroglyphs per text. Recently found the longest text, it has 26 characters. Meanwhile, inscriptions on everyday pottery are quite common, and this suggests that literacy was not the lot of only the elite. The main thing, however, is that the decipherers are still ahead: the language is not known, and the writing system is not yet known.
The more important at the present stage of work is the study of the found objects of material culture. For example, an elegant figurine of a dancing woman fell into the hands of archaeologists. This gave reason to one of the historians to suggest that the city was fond of music and dancing. Usually this kind of action is associated with the performance of religious rites. But what is the role of the "Great Pool" opened in Mohenjo-Daro? Did it serve as a bath for the inhabitants or was it a place for religious ceremonies? It was not possible to answer such an important question: did the townspeople worship the same gods, or did each group have its own special god? Ahead - new excavations.
Archaeologists have a rule: to look for traces of its connections with the neighbors of the country under study. The Harappan civilization found itself in Mesopotamia - its merchants were on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates. This is evidenced by the indispensable companions of the trader - weights. The Harappan type of weights has been standardized, so weights from these places are similar to labeled atoms. They are found in many places along the coast of the Arabian Sea, and if you move north, then on the banks of the Amu Darya. The presence of Indian merchants here is also confirmed by the found seals of Harappan trading people (this is indicated in his book "The Forgotten Civilization in the Indus Valley" by Doctor of Historical Sciences I. F. Albedil). In the Sumerian cuneiforms, the overseas country of Meluh, or Meluhha, is mentioned, today's archeology identifies this name with Harappa. In one of the bays of the Arabian Sea, recently during excavations, the port city of Lothal, which belonged to the Harappan complex, was found. There was a shipbuilding dock, a grain warehouse and a pearl processing workshop. What goods were carried by proto-Indian merchants, for example, to Mesopotamia? Tin, copper, lead, gold, shells, pearls and ivory. All these expensive goods, as one might think, were destined for the court of the ruler. Merchants also acted as intermediaries. They sold copper mined in Balochistan - a country lying to the west of the Harappan civilization, gold, silver and lapis lazuli bought in Afghanistan. Oxen brought building timber from the Himalayas. In the 19th century BC e. proto-Indian civilization ceased to exist. At first it was believed that she died from the aggression of the Vedo-Aryan tribes, who plundered the farmers and merchants. But archeology has shown that the cities liberated from sediments do not bear signs of struggle and destruction by barbarian invaders. Moreover, recent studies by historians have found that the Vedo-Aryan tribes were far from these places by the time of the death of Harappa. The extinction of civilization occurred, apparently, due to natural causes. Climatic changes or earthquakes could change the course of rivers or dry them up, and soils were depleted. The farmers were no longer able to feed the cities, and the inhabitants left them. The huge socio-economic complex fell apart into small groups. Written language and other cultural achievements were lost. There is nothing to suggest that the decline happened all at once. Instead of empty cities in the north and south, new settlements appeared at this time, people moved east, to the Ganges valley.
Archaeological finds in India and on the territory of modern Pakistan allow us to speak of the existence of an ancient civilization stretching from Balochistan in Pakistan to Gujrat in India. This civilization was called the "Indus Valley Civilization" or "Harappa Civilization", since the first finds were made in the town of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro in British India (at the beginning of the 20th century), in the Indus River Valley. Later, traces of the Harappan civilization were also found in Gujarat (Lothal near Ahmedabad and other places)
The first inhabitants of the Indus Valley were nomadic tribes who gradually settled down and took up agriculture and cattle breeding. Gradually, conditions were created for urbanization and the emergence of urban culture. Starting from 3500 B.C. large cities with a population of up to 50,000 people appear on the territory of the Indian River Valley.
The cities of the Harappan civilization had a strict layout of streets and houses, a sewerage system and were perfectly adapted for life. Their device was so perfect that it has not changed for a millennium! In its development, the Indus Valley Civilization was not inferior to the great civilizations of that time. Lively trade was carried out from the cities with Mesopotamia, the Sumerian kingdom and Central Asia, and a unique system of measures and weights was used.
Archaeological finds also testify to the rather high culture of the "Harappans". Terracotta and bronze figurines, models of wagons, seals, and jewelry were found. These finds are the oldest artifacts of Indian culture.
By the beginning of the second millennium BC, the Indus Valley Civilization fell into decay and disappeared from the face of the earth for unknown reasons.
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At the beginning of the twenties, now of the last century, the Indian scientist R. Sahni led the first expedition to the Indus River Delta to find the ruins of a temple that belonged to the most ancient deity - "old Shiva". The temple was mentioned in many legends of the Ho people, whose possessions in ancient times bordered on the territory belonging to the northern Maharajas. Myths told about "mountains of heavenly gold stored in the dungeons of the temple" ... So the incentive to dig in the swampy earth was still considerable.
What was the surprise of Sakhni when his people began to dig out of the ground entire city blocks of multi-storey buildings, imperial palaces, huge statues of bronze and pure iron. From under the shovels showed the pavements, equipped with deep grooves for the carriage wheels, gardens, parks, courtyards and wells. Closer to the outskirts, luxury diminished: here one- and two-story buildings of four to six rooms with a toilet were grouped around central courtyards with wells. The city was surrounded by a wall of rough, unhewn, but very tightly adjacent stones, alternating with mud brick masonry. The citadel was an even higher and more durable stronghold, equipped with several towers. In the imperial chambers, a real and very ingeniously designed plumbing was equipped - and this was three and a half thousand years before the discovery of the laws of hydraulics by Pascal!
Considerable surprise was caused by the excavations of huge libraries, represented by repositories of stearin tablets with pictograms that have not yet been deciphered by them. Images and figurines of animals, which also had mysterious writings, were also kept there. Experts who established a certain periodicity of signs came to the conclusion that a rhyming epic or religious prayers in verse were recorded here. Among the metal items found were copper and bronze knives, sickles, chisels, saws, swords, shields, arrowheads and spears. Iron things could not be found. Obviously, by that time people had not yet learned how to mine it. It came to Earth only with meteorites and was considered a sacred metal along with gold. Gold served as a frame for ritual objects and women's jewelry. The Sahni expedition accidentally ended up in the center of the large ancient city of Harappa. Archaeologists have unearthed more than a thousand monuments for hundreds of kilometers around. There were large merchant cities, small villages, seaports and border fortresses. Copper weights with ancient Chinese hieroglyphs suggested external trade relations.
By the middle of the 20th century, excavations began to decline. However, the curiosity of researchers did not dry out. After all, the main mystery remained - what is the reason for the death of a great and formidable civilization?
About thirty years ago, New York researcher William Fairservice claimed to have been able to recognize some of the Harappan writings found in the Metropolitan Library. And seven years later, Indian scientists tried to combine "read" with the ancient legends of the peoples of India and Pakistan, after which they came to interesting conclusions. It turns out that Harappa arose long before the third millennium. On its territory there were at least three warring states of carriers of different cultures. Strong weak, so in the end there was only a rival country with administrative centers in Mohend-Daro, Harappa. The long war was ended with an unexpected peace, the kings shared power. Then the most powerful of them killed the rest and thus appeared before the face of the gods. Soon the villain was found killed, and the royal power passed into the hands of the supreme. Thanks to contacts with the "supreme mind", the priests conveyed useful knowledge to people. In just a couple of years, the inhabitants of Harappa were already using with might and main huge flour mills, granaries equipped with conveyors, foundries, and sewers. Carts pulled by elephants moved along the streets of cities. There were theatres, museums and even circuses with wild animals in the big cities! In the last period of the existence of Harappa, its inhabitants learned how to mine charcoal and build primitive boiler houses. Now almost every city dweller could take a hot bath! The townspeople mined natural phosphorus and used some plants to light their dwellings. They were familiar with wine-making and opium-smoking, as well as the full range of comforts that civilization offered. Which destroyed them.
Until now, no one knows what was the main reason for the death of a developed centralized state. This was explained in different ways: floods, a sharp deterioration in the climate, epidemics, invasions of enemies. However, the version with a flood was soon ruled out, because in the ruins of cities and layers of soil there were no traces of the revelry of the elements. Versions about epidemics were not confirmed either. The conquest was also ruled out, since there were no traces of the use of edged weapons on the skeletons of the inhabitants of Harappa. One thing was obvious: the suddenness of the disaster. And just recently, scientists Vincenti and Davenport put forward a new hypothesis - civilization died from an atomic explosion caused by aerial bombardment!
The entire center of the city of Mohenjo-Daro was destroyed so that no stone was left unturned. The pieces of clay found there looked melted, and structural analysis showed that melting occurred at a temperature of about 1600 degrees! Skeletons of people were found on the streets, in houses, in basements and even in underground tunnels. Moreover, the radioactivity of many of them exceeded the norm by more than 50 times! In the ancient Indian epic there are many legends about a terrible weapon, "sparkling like fire, but having no smoke." An explosion, after which darkness covers the sky, is replaced by hurricanes, "bringing evil and death." Clouds and earth - all this mixed up together, in chaos and madness, even the sun began to quickly walk in a circle! The elephants, burned by the flames, rushed about in horror, the water boiled, the fish were charred, and the warriors rushed into the water to wash away the "deadly dust".
Researcher R. Furdui believes that such a weapon of mass destruction could well exist among the ancients, who received knowledge after contacts with "extraterrestrial intelligence". But, however, what difference does it make to us where this deadly weapon came from! Is not the Harappan civilization a formidable omen that our civilization will soon destroy us too!
English explorer D. Davenport He devoted 12 years to studying the excavations of the city. AT 1996 he made a sensational statement that this spiritual center of the Harappan civilization was destroyed 2000 BC as a result of a nuclear explosion! Studying the ruins of the buildings of the city, one can determine the center of the explosion, the diameter of which is about 50 m. At this place, everything is crystallized and melted. At a distance of up to 60 m from the center of the explosion, bricks and stones are melted on one side, which indicates the direction of the explosion. Stones melt at a temperature of about 2000°C.
Another mystery for researchers is the very high level of radiation in the area of the explosion. Also in 1927 archaeologists have found 27 fully preserved human skeletons. Even now, the level of their radiation background is close to the radiation dose that the inhabitants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki received!
afterword:
More than 94 types of nuclear weapons are mentioned in ancient Indian scriptures, called brahmastra. To activate it, it was only necessary to touch the water for purification and, concentrating, utter a special mantra. It is mentioned in the Mahabharata. Mohenjo-daro could well have been destroyed by this type of weapon.
For a long time, scientists have been trying to establish the exact period when homo sapiens began to actively spread around the planet. Archaeological finds gave us some clues, but finding the exact date is a difficult task. We can only speculate about the time interval during which anatomically modern man actually began to exist.
1. The mummified remains of the people of the Chinchorro culture
People began to mummify the dead long before the ancient Egyptians. The oldest known mummy belongs to the Chinchorro culture, it dates back to 5050 BC, which is about 7 thousand years. Today, 282 mummies have already been found in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, a third of them have been preserved naturally, and the rest were made by the hands of fellow tribesmen who removed organs from them and stuffed the body with vegetables.
2. Monte Verde, an archaeological site in Chile
Monte Verde was discovered at the end of 1975, and during the excavation two different levels were established: Monte Verde I (MV-I) and Monte Verde II (MV-II). Level MV-II was inhabited by humans in the area from 12,000 to 16,000 years ago. A group of 20-30 people lived here. Archaeologists have even discovered their feces. In addition, a footprint (possibly of a child), stone tools, ropes, cords, as well as seeds and even potatoes were found.
3. Iceman Otzi
On September 19, 1991, two German tourists found a body frozen in ice in the Alps. After its extraction, archaeologists found that Otzi is about 5 thousand years old. This mummy is the oldest in the world where the body was naturally preserved in natural conditions.
4. Bones of an adult and a child from a cave in Ireland
In November 2013, bones were found in a small, hard-to-reach cave on the slopes of Mount Knocknarea in Ireland. Upon further study of the cave space, other fragments of the remains were also found. Some of them belonged to a child, and some to an adult. Radiocarbon analysis showed that the adult died only about 300 years ago, but the child - as much as 5200 years ago.
5. Remains in Guar Kepa (Malaysia)
During construction work in Guar Kepa (Malaysia), human bones were discovered. Archaeologists immediately arrived at the area. Actually, excavations were already carried out here 7 years earlier, as a result of which prehistoric shells, tools, ceramics and food were found, but not human remains. Analysis of the bones showed that it was a woman, and the age of the skeleton is 5700 years.
6. "Footprints of Eve" in South Africa
In 1995, geologist David Roberts found three footprints on the shores of the Langebaan Lagoon (South Africa). They were left on a sand dune during a heavy downpour. The wet footprints later filled with dry sand and crushed shells, which subsequently hardened like cement. In the end, the footprints were buried at a depth of about 9 m. It is believed that these are footprints left by a woman, and their age is as much as 117 thousand years.
7. Drawings of prehistoric people in Lascaux cave
Lascaux Cave (France) was discovered in 1940 by four teenagers. Penetrating inside, they saw that the walls of the cave were covered with prehistoric drawings. These were large animals and fauna of the Upper Paleolithic. In total, there are more than 600 such drawings on the interior walls and ceiling, which were created by many generations of prehistoric people. According to estimates, their age is about 15-17 thousand years.
8. Skara Brae, a Neolithic settlement
Skara Brae is one of the well-preserved settlements in Scotland, discovered in 1850. The village consisted of eight huts, and about 5 thousand years ago, about 50 people lived in it. Each hut is 40 sq. m was equipped with a stone hearth for cooking and heating. Carved stone balls and a number of other artifacts from the bones of animals, birds and fish were also found here.
9. Newgrange, a Neolithic crematorium?
8 km from the Irish city of Drogheda, there is a 5,200-year-old structure, which makes it older than Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids. It is a large circular structure with stone passages and chambers inside. The purpose of Newgrange is a mystery yet to be solved. By the way, the entrance to it coincides with the rising sun during the winter solstice. And here, both burnt and unburned human bones were found.
10. Peche Merle, French cave with prehistoric drawings
In the Cabrera region of France, there is a cave called Peche Merle, covered with drawings from the Gravettes culture (about 27 thousand years ago), and this proves that people already existed at that time. The cave has seven chambers filled with drawings of prehistoric fauna: spotted and monochrome horses, mammoths, and deer. Archaeologists have also found human handprints and footprints of children in the clay.
Stephen Oppenheimer, a British physician who formerly worked in population genetics and DNA genealogy, and then switched to prehistoric history, along with the Bradshaw Foundation, drew a map of the early migrations of mankind, which clearly showed how climate changes over the millennia influenced the movement of people. Arzamas translated the map and asked him to explain why the dates he gives differ from those suggested by Oppenheimer.
Over 160 thousand years ago
Modern man - Homo sapiens - appeared on the territory of Africa. The oldest evidence of mitochondrial DNA and the Y chromosome known to archaeologists has been found in East Africa.
160–135 thousand years ago
Four hunter-gatherer groups formed, three of which traveled south to the Cape of Good Hope, southwest to the Congo Basin, and west to the Ivory Coast, carrying with them the first generation of the mitochondrial DNA haplogroup L1 gene.
135–115 thousand years ago
One group of people 125 thousand years ago passed through the green Sahara along the northern route to the Nile and the Levant.
115–90 thousand years ago
The branch that reached the Levant died out about 90 thousand years ago. Global cooling has turned this area and all of Africa into a harsh desert. Later this territory was mastered by Neanderthals.
90–85 thousand years ago
85 thousand years ago, one of the groups crossed the Red Sea in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait (called the "Gate of Tears"), migrating along the southern coast of the Arabian Peninsula towards India and eating food collected along the coast. All non-African peoples came out of this group.
85–75 thousand years ago
From Sri Lanka, they continued to move along the coast of the Indian Ocean to Western Indonesia, then to the Asian part of the land. Still adhering to the coast, they bypassed Borneo and moved towards South China.
74 thousand years ago
Volcano Toba
The eruption of the supervolcano Toba (Sumatra) led to a nuclear winter that lasted 6 years, an instant ice age of a thousand years and a sharp reduction in the population to 10 thousand adults. Volcanic ash covered the territory of modern India and Pakistan with a layer of up to five meters.
74–65 thousand years ago
After the devastation of the Indian subcontinent, it was repopulated. On boats, separate groups of people sailed from Timor to Australia and from Borneo to New Guinea. In the north, during the early pleniglacial period, there were severe colds.
65–52 thousand years ago
A sharp increase in temperature 52 thousand years ago allowed separate groups of people to finally rise north to the Fertile Crescent and return to the Levant. From there, about 50 thousand years ago, through the Bosphorus, they began to rise to Europe.
52–45 thousand years ago
Little Ice Age. The Aurignacian culture of the Upper Paleolithic period moved from Turkey to Bulgaria and Europe. Stone tools of a new type began to be found all the way up the Danube, in Hungary and Austria.
45–40 thousand years ago
Groups of people from the east coast of Asia began to move west across the steppes of Central Asia. From Pakistan they went to Central Asia, and from Indochina to the Tibetan Plateau.
40–25 thousand years ago
The Central Asians moved west towards Eastern Europe, north towards the Arctic Circle and joined the East Asians spreading across Northeast Eurasia. During this period, stunning works of art appeared, such as paintings in the Chauvet cave (France).
25–22 thousand years ago
The ancestors of the Native Americans who crossed the Bering Isthmus, which connects Siberia and Alaska, from the last glacial maximum reached Meadowcroft either through an ice-free corridor or along the coast.
22–19 thousand years ago
During the last ice age, the populations of northern Europe, Asia, and North America declined; there were separate surviving groups of people locked in their refugia. In North America, an ice-free corridor was closed, and the path along the coast also froze.
Refugiums
Places where species or groups of species endure unfavorable periods of geologic time—in this case, places where humans experienced the last ice age.
19–15 thousand years ago
The last glacial maximum 18 thousand years ago. In North America, at the southern edge of the glaciation, individual groups continued to develop a diversity of language, culture and genes, moving into South America. Australian rock art - Bradshaw murals.
15–12.5 thousand years ago
The continued improvement in the global climate has led to renewed migration along the coast. Radiocarbon analysis confirmed the presence of people in the settlements of Monte Verde (Chile) from 11,790 to 13,565 years ago. Simple stone tools were found here - flint flakes and cobblestones.
12.5–10 thousand years ago
The re-exploration of North America 12.5 thousand years ago from the south, following the retreating ice to the north. 11.5 thousand years ago in the Subarctic, people left the Bering Refugium, becoming representatives of the Eskimo-Aleut language family and the Na-Dene languages.
10–8 thousand years ago
The final cessation of the ice age marked the beginning of agriculture. The Sahara was green, as evidenced by life-size images of giraffes on petroglyphs in Niger. Recolonization of Britain and Scandinavia.
Places where agriculture originated
55th parallel
