Pre-history: Life of Early Humans

In terms of social behavior, humans were now evolving fast and started to take care of their weaker companions. They also buried their dead…sometimes with food and flowers. This could be the beginning of the concept of after-life. Or, as most Indians know it…the cycle of life and death. One more noteworthy development was that of art in the form of cave drawings of animals. Ornaments made up of bones and stones were made.

By 32,000 BC we figured out how to heat up certain clay and harden it in any form we like. This was the beginning of making figurines and pots. By this time, humans were so fascinated by the process of birth and female embodiment of this fertility, that female goddess figurines were among the first ones made out of these hardened clay.

With expansion across all continents now, trading links began to form and exchange of exotic material took place. With trading possible, there was no need for every community to make everything needed for human sustenance. This is how communities of humans developed their characteristic cultures. And, with this cultures developed separate identities and ethnicities.

Food diet expanded from vegetables and animal meat to seafood. Also by this time smoking and drying of meat was mastered. After all, with advanced weapons and better team work with advanced language patterns, they hunted bigger animals. With ample supply of good quality food, better equipped humans accelerated their population growth and replaced all the previous species of human (homo erectus, Neanderthals).

Pre-history: homo sapiens

Let’s jump a few thousand years and get to around 400,000 to 200,000 years before our time. This is when early homo sapiens (a variety known as Neanderthals…because of where their fossils were found, in Neander valley caves in Germany) eventually evolved in Africa as sons of homo erectus with bigger brains. With this bigger and more industrious brain and previous know-how of path to north-eastern Africa, they traveled away from harsher central African climate. First, they settled in north-east Africa of present day Ethiopia, Somalia, Aritrea and Djibouti. And, from there, using their now mastered skills of rafting crossed Red Sea to land on the coasts of Near East in Yemen. Straits of Red Sea separating Africa and Asia, known as Gate of Grief, is only 20 kms wide right now. 70,000 years ago when this historical event happened, lot of water was still trapped in snow from the Great Ice Age. So, the Gate of Grief could’ve been even narrower than 20 kms. Once this pass was established, humans (and, from now on I’m going to use this term exclusively for homo sapiens), traveled fast and happy along the coasts of Arabia and Persia to enter India around 50,000 years ago.

Humans were happy to arrive in India because they found abundance of water, flora, fauna and wildlife to sustain. Entering India from Iran and Pakistan into Gujarat, humans stayed west of Sindhu river and populated west coasts first, before finally crossing over to east side and spread northward reaching delta region Ganga-Brahmaputra in West Bengal. From there, they spread further into south-east Asia till they reached Australia around 46,000 years ago. During this period mainland Asia was still connected to islands off of coast of south-east Asia. And so was, New Guinea and Australia by narrow straits of land. By 40,000 years ago humans have formed camps in Europe, China and Japan. Americas were populated at the end.

By this time (30,000 to 24,000 years ago), Neanderthals became extinct from their last colonies in Iberian peninsula (modern day Spain and Portugal) from increasing population pressure of modern humans (homo sapien sapien).

Pre-history: homo erectus

homo habilis species developed into homo erectus (= person who stands straight, who was around 5.5 feet tall) little more than 2 million years ago. Although they used same material, these early humans developed more sophisticated stone tools; especially evident from their biface (or two sided) stone tools that were ground on both sides. On the defensive side, a revolutionary development was that of building a controlled fire by 1.8 million years ago. This enabled homo erectus to come out of their caves and venture out in open. How? Because, other animals were, and are still afraid of fire. Other side-benefits of fire were: cooking food to sanitize, keeping warm in colder climate, providing light to draw those cave drawings.

Somewhat disputed, but interesting speculation is that these humans also developed rafts to travel over water. Whether they had help from these river or ocean-crossing rafts or not, homo erectus’s historical contribution is that they were the first human family members to leave African continent and venture into Eurasia around 1.2 million years ago. Cause for this migration was drying of African rain forests during the Great Ice Age (Pleistocene). They populated areas as far as France in Europe and Vietnam and China in Asia. Settling in frigid Europe, north Asia and Australia was tougher for this tropical hominids, but most of the Asian continent was welcoming to the new settlers.

With better social organization and technology of tools, homo erectus was hunting with better efficiency than homo habilis. In fact, attaining better efficiency in all skills acquired by their ancestors, was the single most achievement of homo erectus. Otherwise, from hominid development point of view, nothing much happened over a million year or so when homo erectus populated tropical earth.

Pre-history: homo habilis

So, as humans took a different path of evolution from chimpanzees and entered into Old Stone Age (or Paleolithic Era), they were…well…using first stone tools. These were our ancestors of homo habilis (handy person = person with tools of little over 4 feet tall) species about 2.5 to 2.6 million years ago. They were among many other human species. The social experimentation of humans have already begun by this time and they started living in groups. They relied on gathering plants and hunting wild animals to feed themselves. Apart from stone as the primary material for tools, they also used animal bones, wood, leather and vegetable fibers. At this stage, though, large portion of their meat diet came from scavenging from other animal's kills rather than actual hunting.

At this point of evolution, our ancestors were very similar chimpanzees, but subtly different in two defining ways - walking on two legs and depending on tools and other members of their "herd" in addition to their own abilities.

Pre-history: Our Superfamily - Homonoidea

We, humans, are part of animal super-family called hominoidea. Within this super-family there are other members such as chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and gibbons. Gray (or Hanuman) langur, a commonly found "monkey" in most parts of India (including my balcony) with black face gray hair is NOT part of this hominoidea family. But, they are part cercopithecoidea family, just like baboons. If you had seen a chimpanzee in a zoo, it won’t take you long to realize that they are our closest relatives. By this I mean no offense to humans…or chimps who are reading this. Chimpanzees in fact belong to the same tribe as humans. This tribe of hominids may have first came down from trees around 10 million years ago in the region of modern day Ethiopia. Fortunately, or unfortunately, humans developed into separate homo genus from chimpanzees of Pan genus about 6 million years ago in African savanna. With this, began a 3 million years of evolution of modern homo sapiens or what we call present day “humans”.

You have to bear with me as I try to grind through some of the pre-historic human development and its impact on India. Lot of this material may be dry and full of terminology straight out of museums filled with cavemen. I promise that once we are out of Bronze Age and well into Iron Age, things will be lot less dry and more personal.

Pre-history: Birth of Sindhu, Ganga and Brahmaputra

Large quantities of water trapped between Himalayan ranges during its formation, lead to great glacier and river system. It is estimated that some 15000+ glaciers store about 12000 cubic km of water in them. These glaciers gave birth to lot of the rivers on the eastern and western side of the India.

Major rivers on the western side – Beas, Chenab, Jhelum, Ravi and Sutlej – feed into Sindhu/Indus river that flows south-west to modern day Pakistan to the Arabian sea.

On the eastern side, Ganga and Brahmaputra are the biggest ones meeting in Bangladesh before draining into Bay of Bengal thru the world’s largest river delta system.

Sindhu and Ganga river systems provided backdrop for organic life forms that relied heavily on water for their sustenance. This includes all human and their humanoid predecessors. Over 50,000 years of human presence and history on the Indian subcontinent that we will attempt to understand here is, on a large part, a gift of these two river systems.

Formation of Indian subcontinent thru tectonic activities may not be a revered event in the eyes of Aryans who later inhabit this land and lay foundation of Vedic religion. But, they definitely understood the importance of the Himalayas and the river systems conferred upon them by the great mountains. And, for this reason, mountains and rivers were deified by Aryans. Maybe, we should start doing the same now. Consider this: the glacier systems in Himalayan ranges are retreating as a result of climate change. This means, the water deposits we have in those glaciers are getting drained at a faster rate. If this continues, then as per UN climate report, by the year 2035 all major river systems in India would disappear. This will happen in two phases – first, the melting of all glaciers in a dramatic fashion….flooding India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and Myanmar. And, then there will be a drought. A long one. A very long one.

So, maybe it’s time once again to treat Himalaya, Sindhu and Ganga as deities and try to make them “happy”.

Pre-history: Birth of the Himalaya

Indian subcontinent sits on a tectonic plate called “Indian Plate”. A tectonic plate is a part of uppermost crust of the Earth’s surface called “lithosphere”. Below this lithosphere is a semi-solid layer of “asthenosphere”. The semi-solid nature of asthenosphere makes tectonic plates of lithosphere float. The Indian Plate is pushing against African Plate and Arabian Plate in the west. It is relatively stable against Australian Plate in the east and south, but is constantly pushing towards Eurasian Plate in the north. The boundary line with Eurasian Plate is where Himalayan mountain ranges are. And, the reason those mountains are getting taller every year is this constant pushing match between the Indian Plate and the Eurasian Plate.

This floating movement between plates can range from anywhere between 50mm to 100mm per year. To naked eye this movement of up to 0.0002 mm per minute is impossible to notice, but over a long period, say in next 1000 years, Indian Plate will move by a meter from it’s current location. Instead of fast forward button, hit a rewind button and imagine where Indian subcontinent would have been 250 milion years ago. It was actually part of a supercontinent which we now call “Pangaea”. On this supercontinent, Africa, Antarctica and Australia were the immediate neighbors of Indian subcontinent; with ocean to it’s north-east. Yes, ocean to the north-east! There were no Himalayan mountain ranges…at least not yet. Himalayan mountain ranges started to form around 70 million years ago (making them one of the “youngest” ones), when Eurasia was pushed closer to the Indian Plate at ~15 cm per year rate, by the very action of separation between African and South American Plate. To this date, as a result of this drifting, Himalaya continues to grow taller at the rate of ~5 mm per year. It is quite amusing to think that since the days of Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary (who scaled it for the 1st time in May 29, 1953), Mt. Everest could have already grown taller by almost a foot.

Structure of Discussions

These discussions are divided into following eras:

1. Pre-history
   
2. Neolithic Revolution
3. Indus Valley Civilization
4. Aryan Colonization
5. Magadha Empire
6. Incursion of Shakas & Kushans
7. Incursion of Huns
8. Dark Ages
9. Delhi Sultanates
10. Mughal Empire
11. British Raj

Number of chapters for each of these sections, of course, will not be equal. As you can guess, there is lot more written history available on British raj period than about pre-historic formation of Indian sub-continent when the Indian peninsula separated from Africa. Or, about the time when homo sapiens migrated to Indian sub-continent. Nevertheless, understanding of ancient history is equally important to realize how India got here and what her heritage is. To understand why India is such a hodge-podge of cultures, languages, food, philosophies and deities. To understand why Indian Republic is one of the only two countries (the other being Czech Republic) today who confers supreme victory to the truth with it’s “Satyameva Jayate” motto.

Why “India”?

Why is this “History of India” and not “History of Bhaarat” or “History of Hindustan”? While “Hindustan” has a strong, although misplaced, religious connotation; “Bhaarat” has certain mythical connotation to it. Since we will be talking about history and not mythology…well mostly…therefore I would like to avoid “Bhaarat”.

The word “India” comes from the name of great river Sindhu. Persians and Greeks, the first people to write about the land beyond Sindhu river, could not pronounce “S” in Sindhu. So, they continued calling it “Indu”. Much later, Muslim invaders from beyond Afganistan called people living beyond the Sindhu river as “Hindu”…and thus the land they occupied became “Hindustan”. So, as you can see, “Hindu” or “Hindustan” has no direct religious connotation, but merely a geographical one. It simply means, land beyond the Sindhu river and people inhabiting that land. Coincidently, most of these inhabitants also practiced Vedic religion….which is used interchangeably as Hindu religion. In the political landscape of today, the country known as “Republic of India” is a subset of this geographical region beyond the Sindhu river. Although, backdrop of “History of India” would be mostly set in this country, “History of India” would go beyond today’s political borders and will attempt to elaborate history of a south Asian sub-continent that stretches from the borders of today’s Afganistan in the west to Bangladesh in the east, and Himalayan mountain ranges in the north to the Indian ocean on the south.

Now that we defined geographical boundaries of this discourse, let’s define the era under consideration as well. We will start the journey from the birth of the sub-continent and continue till the time when the “Republic of India” was born.

About this Blog

Apart from my family and the work I do for livelihood, history of ancient world has been of tremendous interest to me for last few years. I stopped studying history as a serious study topic after 10th grade itself. But, seeds of curiosity sown by my 10th grade history teacher (thank you Mrs. Patil) were far from dead, albeit dormant. So, when I started learning about Greek, Roman and Byzantine history, my interest in history started germinating. It interests me not just because of intrigues and wonderful plots it holds, but also because it is universal and says a lot about human nature.

That human nature has some universal elements, but it also has unique characteristics in different parts of the world. For example, premium civilization of the ancient western world, the Greeks, philosophized and created foundation of democracy. But, they constantly fought amongst each other. With their philosophy, they even created formidable fighting machine of their time - the phalanx - to conquer half of the known world with Alexander. But, that was the zenith of their military conquest. Greeks didn't seem to come out of their theoretical discourses, phalanx fighting system and constant squabbling. They were eventually conquered by their western neighbors, the Romans, who excelled in practical applications of every known theory available to them and constantly improvised. From the foundation of Roman republic to the fall of Byzantine Empire, "Romans" ruled most of the civilized world for close to 2,000 years. Difference in human nature could not be seen in any greater contrast than between idealistic Greeks and pragmatic Romans.

It was these kind of intrigues, then, that kept me up at night reading more about my homeland's history. Much of the recent Indian history (from 12th century onwards) was studied during my school days. But, only passing references were made to earlier history....the one that talked about Aryan colonization, rise of religions of the subcontinent, the Mauryans, Shakas, Kushans, the Guptas, and Huns. So, I decided to start my exploration of India from the very beginning - when the Indian subcontinent was formed. Through this blog, I'd like to create a common man's understanding of Indian history. Not being a modern historian myself, I don't claim this to be an accurate or objective representation of events that happened. Sources for these ramblings are various books and online information (yes, including Wikipedia)...so GIGO principle applies here. Also, being my blog, from time to time I will take liberty to present my views on events as they unfold. Take what you like, ignore what you don't. But, post comments either way. Although not a historian, I pride myself being an open minded person....so maybe I will learn from your comments.