How do thumbs up assosciate with ancient phallic symbol of masculine virility?

Indus river valley civilization?

Like Sumer, Egypt, and other early civilizations in the Middle East,civilizations first developed in East and South Asia in the vicinity of greatriver systems. When irrigated by the massive spring floods of the YellowRiver, the rich soil of the North China plain proved a superb basis for whathas been the largest and most enduring civilization in human history.Civilization first developed in the Indus River valley in present-day Pakistanin the middle of the 3d millennium B.C., more than a thousand years earlierthan it did in China. In fact, the civilization of the Indus valley, usuallycalled Harappan after its chief city, rivals Sumer and Egypt as humanity'soldest. But like Sumer and its successor civilizations in the Middle East,Harappan civilization was unable to survive natural catastrophes and nomadicinvasions. In contrast to the civilization of the Shang rulers in China around1500 B.C., Harappa vanished from history. Until the mid-19th century it was"lost" or forgotten, even by the peoples who lived in the vicinity of itssand-covered ruins. Important elements of Harappan society were transmitted tolater civilizations in the Indian subcontinent. But unlike the Shang kingdom,Harappa did not survive to be the core and geographical center from which aunified and continuous civilization developed like that found in China. Thedifference in the fate of these two great civilizations provides one of thekey questions in dealing with the history of civilized societies: What factorspermitted some civilizations to endure for millennia while others rose andfell within a few centuries?Between about 1500 and 1000 B.C., as the great cities of the Indus regioncrumbled into ruins, nomadic Aryan invaders from central Asia moved into thefertile Indus plains and pushed into the Ganges River valleys to the east. Ittook these unruly, warlike peoples many centuries to build a civilization thatrivaled that of the Harappans. The Aryans concentrated on assaulting Harappansettlements and different Aryan tribal groups. As peoples who dependedprimarily on great herds of cattle to provide their subsistence, they hadlittle use for the great irrigation works and advanced agricultural technologyof the Indus valley peoples. Though they conserved some Harappan beliefs andsymbols, the Aryan invaders did little to restore or replace the great citiesand engineering systems of the peoples they had supplanted.Eventually, however, many of the Aryan groups began to settle down, andincreasingly they relied on farming to support their communities. By about 700B.C., their priests had begun to orally record the sacred hymns and ritualincantations that had long been central to Aryan culture. In the followingcenturies, strong warrior leaders built tribunal units into larger kingdoms.The emergence of priestly and warrior elites signaled the beginning of a newpattern of civilization in South Asia. By the 6th century B.C., the renewal ofcivilized life in India was marked by the emergence of great world religions,such as Hinduism and Buddhism, and a renewal of trade, urban life, andsplendid artistic and architectural achievements.The early development of civilization in China combined the successivephases of advancement of Mesopotamian history with the continuity of Egyptiancivilization. Civilization in China coalesced around 1500 B.C. Chinesecivilization emerged gradually out of Neolithic farming and potterymakingcultures that had long been present in the Yellow River region of East Asia.The establishment of the Shang kingdom at this point in time gave politicalexpression to a combination of civilizing trends. The appearance of adistinctive and increasingly specialized elite supported by the peasantmajority of the Chinese people, the growth of towns and the first cities, thespread of trade, and the formulation of a written language all indicated thata major civilization was emerging in China.Though the political dominance of the Shang came to an end in 1122 underthe new royal house of the Zhou, civilized development in China was enrichedand extended as the Chinese people migrated east and south from their originalYellow River heartland. By the end of the Zhou era, which would lastofficially until 256 B.C., many of the central elements in Chinesecivilization, one of humankind's oldest, were firmly established. Some ofthose elements have persisted to the present day.The Indus Valley And The Genesis Of South Asian CivilizationGreat torrents of water from the world's highest mountain range, theHimalayas, carved out the vast Indus River system that was to nurture thefirst civilization in the Indian subcontinent. As the rapidly running mountainstreams reached the plains of the Indus valley, they branched out into sevengreat rivers, of which five remain today. These rivers in turn converge midwaydown the valley to form the Indus River, which runs for hundreds of miles tothe southwest and empties into the Arabian Sea. The streams that flow fromhigh in the Himalayas are fed by monsoon rains. Rain clouds are carried fromthe seas surrounding the Indian subcontinent by monsoons - seasonal winds -across the lowlands to the mountains where, cooled and trapped, they releasetheir life-giving waters. These "summer" or wet monsoons, which blow towardcentral Asia from the sea, are also a critical source of moisture for theplains and valleys they cross before they reach the mountain barriers. Thestreams from the mountains also carry prodigious amounts of rich soil to theseplains, constantly enlarging them and giving them the potential for extensivecultivation and dense human habitation. The Indus is only one of many riversystems in the Indian subcontinent formed by melting snow and monsoon rains,but it was the first to nurture a civilization.The lower Indus plains were a very different place in the 3d millenniumB.C. than they are today. Most of the region is now arid and desolate,crisscrossed by dried-up riverbeds and virtually devoid of forests. InHarappan times, it was green and heavily forested. Game animals and pasturagefor domesticated animals were plentiful. Long before the first settlementsassociated with the Harappan complex appeared, the plains were dotted with the settlements of sedentary agriculturists. By at least 3000 B.C., these pre-Harappan peoples cultivated wheat and barley, and had developedsophistacated agricultural implements and cropping techniques.The pre-Harappan peoples knew how to make bronze weapons, tools, andmirrors, and they had mastered the art of potterymaking. Recurring motifs,such as bulls and long-horned cattle on elaborately decorated bowls andstorage urns, suggest links to early agricultural communities in the MiddleEast, while fish designs indicate a preoccupation with what was probably amajor source of food. The long-horned bull was a central image in the Harappanculture and remains important in Indian iconography, the art of pictorialrepresentation. Pre-Harappan peoples in the Indus valley also carved largenumbers of small figurines of women. These statuettes differ from those foundin many other early cultures in the detailed attention given to hairstyles andjewelry. Early village sites also contained tiny carts with clay wheels thatmay be the earliest children's toys yet discovered.The Discovery And Mystery Of HarappaIn the late 1850s, the British were directing the building of railwaylines through the Indus valley. In need of bricks for the railway bed, theengineers allowed the construction workers to plunder those bricks found inthe dirt mounds of long-abandoned cities in the valley. A British generalnamed Cunningham, who would later be the head of the Indian ArcheologicalSurvey, visited one of these sites in 1856. While there, he was given a numberof artifacts including several soapstone seals imprinted with variouscarvings, including the figure of a bull and what were apparently letters in ascript. Cunningham was convinced that the artifacts were of ancient origin andwas intrigued by the strange script, which bore little resemblance to that ofany of the languages then in use in various parts of India. As head of thearcheological survey, Cunningham took steps to ensure the full-scaleexcavation of what came to be recognized as one of the earliest and mostmysterious of all human civilizations.Today the script still has not been deciphered and much of the originalmystery remains. But decades of extensive excavation at the original site andhundreds of other sites throughout the Indus valley have uncovered a hugecomplex of cities and villages that made up the first civilization in SouthAsia. The evidence found so far indicates that Harappan civilization developedquite rapidly in the middle centuries of the 3d millennium B.C. There aresharp divergences from the village cultures that preceded it in levels ofmaterial culture, scale, and organization. Equally notable is the lack ofstrong resemblances to other early civilizations to the west of Mesopotamia,which indicates that Harappa was not a colony. Skeletal remains, however, show that the dominant human type of the peoples who built the civilization was a tall, long faced, dark-haired strain much like those from the Mediterraneanregion.The civilization was anchored on two cities: Harappa in the north on oneof the five great rivers that forms the Indus, and Mohenjo-daro, 400 miles tothe south on the banks of the Indus proper. These cities formed the towncapitals of a complex of smaller urban centers and villages that covered anarea four times the size of Sumer and twice the size of Egypt during the OldKingdom. That the many sites associated with the Harappan complex were part of one civilization has been established due to excavations of layer after layer of cities and towns rebuilt in the same way, with the same proportions, at the same locations.The Great CitiesThough hundreds of miles apart, Harappa and Mohenjo-daro were remarkably similar in layout and construction. Both were built on a square grid pattern that was divided by main thoroughfares into 12 smaller and precisely measured grids. Each of the cities was surrounded by walls, which extended one mile from east to west and one-half mile from north to south. The buildings of the cities and the surrounding walls were made of standardized kiln-dried bricks. Controlled building on such a massive scale would have required an autocratic government with the capacity to organize and supervise the daily tasks of large numbers of laborers. This control appears to have extended to theHarappans' domestic lives as well.The existence of a strong ruling class is also indicated by the presenceof large and well-fortified citadels in each of the capital cities. Thesecitadels served as sanctuaries for the cities' populations in times of attackand as community centers in times of peace. The citadel at Mohenjo-daroincluded a very large building that may have been a palace. Both citadelscontained what are believed to have been audience and assembly halls or placesof worship, and bathing tanks for public use. The elaborately decorated bathat Mohenjo-daro was surrounded by a cloister, which opened onto many smallrooms that may have housed priests of the city's cults. Large granaries werelocated near each of the citadels, which suggest that the state stored grainfor ceremonial purposes, times of shortage, and possibly the regulatation ofgrain production and sale.Though the main avenues of the cities were straight and about 30 feetwide, the lanes and paths in the cities' quarters were narrow and twisting.Brick houses of one to three stories were jumbled together in these areas,which must have been densely populated at the height of Harappan civilization.The layout of the houses was strikingly uniform in that each consisted of acourtyard surrounded by rooms for sleeping, cooking, and, in the larger homes,receiving visitors. Entrance to the houses was gained through a longpassageway from the street, which in combination with few windows reflects aconcern for security. The lack of ornamentation on the houses and thedun-colored brick walls must have given the cities a very drab appearance.Each of the homes had a bathing area and drains that emptied into a covered,citywide sewage system, which was the best in the ancient world. The Harappans apparently bathed standing up by pouring pitchers of water over their bodies.Some scholars believe that bathing was related to religious rituals ratherthan hygiene.Harappan Culture And SocietyThe great cities and many towns of the Harappan complex were supported by a rather advanced agricultural system based on the cultivation of wheat, rye,peas, and possibly rice. Cotton was widely cultivated and numerousdomesticated animals were reared. It is likely that irrigation systems werebuilt to catch and control waters from the monsoon and the rivers, and thatfish caught in the rivers provided an additional dietary staple.The cities of Harappa were major trading centers. The mysterious sealsfrom the Indus civilization have been found in urban ruins as far away asSumer in Mesopotamia. Jade from present-day China and precious jewels fromwhat is now Burma have been unearthed at various Indus sites. Despite theseoverseas contacts, Harappan peoples appear to have been intensely conservativeand highly resistant to innovations introduced from the outside. They casttools and weapons in bronze, but most of their tools were inferior to those ofMesopotamian peoples with whom they had contacts, and their weapons were even more primitive. They lacked swords, tipped their spears with bronze points so thin that they would crumble on contact, and used stone for their arrowheads.These shortcomings may have proven fatal to the survival of the Harappancivilization.Harappan society was dominated by a powerful priestly class that ruledfrom the citadel of each of the capitals. Though there may have beenspecialized warriors, the priests appear to have been the main coordinators offortress construction and preparation for defense. The location of granariesand artisan dwellings near the citadels indicates that the priests may havealso overseen handicraft production and supervised both regional andlong-distance trade.The priests derived their impressive control over city and town dwellersfrom their role as the intermediaries between the Harappan populace and anumber of gods and goddesses, whose provision of fertility was of paramountconcern. Several of the gods are depicted on the undeciphered seals that aredominated by a naked male figure with a horned head and a fierce facialexpression. On some of the seals he is pictured in a crossed-legged posture ofmeditation similar to that which was later known as the lotus position.Numerous figurines of females, also naked except for a great deal of jewelry,have been found. These "mother goddesses" appear to have been objects ofworship for the common people, while the horned god was apparently favored by the priests and upper classes.The obsession with fertility was also reflected in the veneration ofsacred animals, especially bulls, and by the large quantity of phallic-shapedobjects that have been found at Harappan sites. Along with a handful ofsuperbly carved figurines of male notables, dancing girls, and animals, thesecult objects represent the pinnacle of artistic expression for the ratherunimaginative and practical-minded peoples of Harappa.The control exhibited by the uniformity and rigid ordering of Harappanculture would not have been possible without an extensive administrative classserving the priests. It is probable that members of this class and possiblywealthy mercantile families lived in the large two- and three-story houses.Characteristically, size - not decoration - set their dwellings off from theartisans, laborers, and slaves that made up the rest of the urban population.Outside of the two great cities, the subjects of the priest-rulers wereagriculturists, whose surplus production was essential to urban life and themaintenance of very vulnerable defenses against natural calamities and humanaggressors.The Slow Demise Of Harappan CivilizationIt was once widely accepted that Harappan civilization was the victim ofassaults by nomadic invaders eager to claim the rich Indus valley aspasturelands for their herds of cattle. A dramatic vision of a wave of"barbarian" invaders smashing town dwellers' skulls made for good storytellingbut bad history. Archeological investigations carried out in recent decadesdemonstrate rather conclusively that Harappa declined gradually in the middlecenturies of the 2d millennium B.C. The precise causes of that decline remaina matter of dispute. The later layers of building at Harappa and Mohenjo-daroas well as at other sites show a clear deterioration in the quality ofconstruction and building materials. There also are a few smashed skulls, butthese have been dated somewhat earlier than the period when the civilizationdisappears from history.It is likely that a combination of factors led to Harappa's demise. Thereis evidence of severe flooding at Mohenjo-daro and other sites. Short-termnatural disasters may have compounded the adverse effects of long-termclimatic changes. Shifts in the monsoon pattern and changes in temperature mayhave begun the process of desertification that eventually transformed theregion into the arid steppe that it has remained for most of recorded history.Rapid changes in types of pottery suggest a series of sudden waves of migrantsinto the region. It is possible that the Harappans were too weak militarily toprevent these incoming peoples from settling in or taking over their towns andcities.The marked decline in the quality of building and town planning indicatesthat the priestly elite was losing control. Some of the migrants probably werebands of Aryan herders who entered the Indus region over an extended period of time, rather than in militant waves. But the Aryan pastoralists may have consciously destroyed or neglected the dikes and canals on which the agrarianlife of the Harappan peoples depended. Extensive cattle raising would thenhave replaced intensive crop cultivation, further undermining the economicbasis of the civilization. That there was a good deal of violent conflict inthis transition cannot be ruled out. Groups of skeletons in postures of flighthave been found on the stairways at some sites. There is evidence ofburned-out settlements and the flight of refugees through the passes into theHimalayas to the north. Thus, a combination of factors brought an end toIndia's first civilization. These factors also gave rise to an extendedtransition period, dominated increasingly by the nomadic Aryan invaders.Analysis: The Legacy Of Asia's First CivilizationsIn their size, complexity, and longevity, the first civilizations todevelop in South Asia and China match and in some respects surpass theearliest civilizations that arose in Mesopotamia and Egypt. But the long-termimpact of the Harappan civilization of the Indus basin and the Shang-Zhoucivilization in north China was strikingly different. The loess zone and northChina plain where the Shang and Zhou empires took hold became the center of acontinuous civilization that was to last into the 20th century A.D., and, manyhistorians would argue, to the present day. Though regions farther south, suchas the Yangtze basin, would in some time periods enjoy political, economic,and cultural predominance within China, the capital and center of Chinesecivilization repeatedly returned to the Yellow River area and the north Chinaplain. The Indus valley proved capable of nurturing a civilization thatendured for over a thousand years. But when Harappa collapsed, the plains ofthe Indus were bypassed in favor of the far more lush and extensive lands inthe basin of the Ganges River network to the east. Though the Indus wouldlater serve, for much shorter time spans, as the seat of empires, the coreareas of successive Indian civilization were far to the east and south.The contrast between the fate of the original geographical centers ofIndian and Chinese civilizations is paralleled by the legacy of thecivilizations themselves. Harappa was destroyed and it disappeared fromhistory for thousands of years. Though the peoples who built the Indus complexleft their mark on subsequent Indian culture, they did not pass on thefundamental patterns of civilized life that had evolved. Their mother goddessand the dancing god of fertility endured, and some of their symbols, such asthe swastika and lingam (usually stone, phallic images), were prominent inlater artistic and religious traditions. Harappan tanks or public bathingponds remain a centralefeature of Indian cities, particularly in the south.Their techniques of growing rice and cotton were preserved by cultivatingpeoples fleeing nomadic invaders, and were later taken up by the newly arrivedIndo-Aryan tribes.Virtually everything else was lost. In contrast to the civilizations ofMesopotamia, which fell but were replaced by new civilizations that preservedand built on the achievements of their predecessors, much of what the Harappanpeoples had accomplished had to be redone by later civilized peoples. Thecities of the Indus civilization were destroyed and comparable urban centersdid not reappear in South Asia for hundreds or, by some scholars' reckoning,thousands of years. Their remarkably advanced standards for the measurement ofdistance and weight ceased to be used. Their system of writing was forgotten,and when rediscovered, it was celebrated as an intriguing but very deadlanguage from the past. Harappan skills in community planning, sewage control,and engineering were meaningless to the nomadic peoples who took control oftheir homelands. The Harappan penchant for standardization, discipline, andstate control was profoundly challenged by the brawling, independent-mindedwarriors who supplanted them as masters of the Indian subcontinent.In contrast to the civilization of the Indus valley, the originalcivilization of China has survived nomadic incursions and natural catastrophesand profoundly influenced the course of all Chinese history. Shang irrigationand dike systems and millet and wheat cultivation provided the basis uponwhich subsequent dynasties innovated and expanded. Shang and Zhou walled townsand villages surrounded with stamped earth have persisted as the predominantpatterns of settlement throughout Chinese history. The founders of the Shangand Zhou dynasty have been revered by scholar and peasant alike asphilosopher-kings who ought to be emulated by leaders at all levels. The Shangand Zhou worship of Heaven and their ancestral veneration have remainedcentral to Chinese religious belief and practice for thousands of years. Theconcept of the Mandate of Heaven has been pivotal in Chinese politicalthinking and organization.Above all, the system of writing that developed in connection with Shangoracles developed into the key means of communication between the elites ofthe many peoples who lived in the core regions of Chinese civilization. Thescholar-bureaucrats who both developed this written language and profited themost from it soon emerged as the dominant force in Chinese culture andsociety. Chinese characters provided the basis for the educational system andbureaucracy that were to hold Chinese civilization together through thousandsof years of invasions and political crises. In contrast to India, many of thekey ingredients of China's early civilizations have remained centralthroughout Chinese history. This persistence has made for a continuity ofidentity that is unique to the Chinese people.It has also meant that China, like the early civilizations ofMesopotamia, was one of the great sources of civilizing influences in humanhistory as a whole. Though the area affected by ideas and institutionsdeveloped in China was less extensive than that to which the peoples ofMesopotamia bequeathed writing, law, and their other great achievements,contacts with the Chinese led to the spread of civilization to Japan, Korea,and Vietnam. Writing and political organization were two areas in which theearliest formulations of Chinese civilization vitally affected other peoples.In later periods Chinese thought and other modes of cultural expression suchas art, architecture, and etiquette also strongly influenced the growth ofcivilized life.China's technological innovation was to have an impact on civilizeddevelopment on a global scale comparable to that of early Mesopotamia.Beginning with the increasingly sophisticated irrigation systems, the Chinesehave devised a remarkable share of humankind's basic machines and engineeringprinciples. In the Shang-Zhou era they also pioneered key manufacturingprocesses such as sericulture - the manufacture of silk cloth through thedomestication of silkworms.The reasons for the differing legacies of India and China are numerousand complex. But critical to the disappearance of the first and the resilienceof the second were different patterns of interaction between the sedentarypeoples who built the early civilizations and the nomadic herders whochallenged them. In the Indian case, the nomadic threat was remote, perhapsnonexistent for centuries. The Harappan peoples were deficient in militarytechnology and organization. When combined with natural calamities, the wavesof warlike nomads migrating into the Indus region proved too much for theHarappan peoples to resist or absorb. The gap between the nomads' herdingculture and the urban, agriculture-based Harappan civilization was too greatto be bridged. Conflict between them may well have proven fatal to acivilization long in decline.The loess regions of northern China were open to invasions or migrationson the part of the nomadic herding peoples who lived to the north and west.Peoples from these areas were moving almost continuously into the core zonesof Chinese civilization. The constant threat the nomads posed forced thepeoples of the north China plain to develop the defenses and militarytechnology essential to defending against nomadic raids or bids for lastingconquest. Contrasting cultures and ways of life enhanced the sense of identityof the cultivating peoples. The obvious nomadic presence prodded these samepeoples to unite under strong rulers against the outsiders who did not shareChinese culture. Constant interaction with the nomads led the Shang peoples todevelop a culture that was malleable and receptive to outside influences,social structures, and political systems. Nomadic energies reinvigorated andenriched the kingdom of the Shang and Zhou, in contrast to India where theyproved catastrophic for the relatively isolated and unprepared peoples ofHarappa.ConclusionBeginnings And TransitionsThe spread of the Aryan pastoralists into the hills and plains ofnorthern and eastern India between 1500 and 500 B.C. and the establishment anddecline of the Zhou kingdom in the latter half of the same time span markedkey transition phases in the development of civilization in India and China.But in each case a very different sort of transition occurred. LikeMesopotamia, the well-watered Indus valley had given rise to one ofhumankind's earliest civilizations. In contrast to the succession of morelimited civilized centers that arose in Mesopotamia, Harappa extended over thelargest territory of any of the first civilizations, and it existed withoutinterruption for over a millennium. Its longevity invites comparison withEgypt. But Egypt proved more able than either Harappa or individualMesopotamian civilizations to absorb massive invasions of nomadic peoples.Faced with major climatic shifts, the Harappans proved unable to alsowithstand the steady and prolonged pressure of the Aryan incursions. Thus, thedominance of these invaders in the Harappan core regions and much of the restof northern India by 1000 B.C. meant the end of India's first civilization.The Zhou conquest and later the slow disintegration of the Zhou dynastyrepresented a continuation rather than a break in the development ofcivilization in China. Though civilization arose later in China than in theother three original centers in the Eastern Hemisphere, like the others itemerged independently and resulted in a distinctive pattern of development. Inits capacity to endure, China resembled Egypt more than Mesopotamia orHarappa.Perhaps as a result, the Chinese proved the most adept at absorbing andassimilating outside invaders while preserving their own sense of identity andtheir basic beliefs and institutions. The Chinese both originated andperpetuated these key ingredients for thousands of years. The conquering Zhoudid not destroy Chinese society and culture; they were assimilated by them sothoroughly that they became Chinese. Thus, though the Zhou period broughtmajor changes in the nature and direction of civilized development in China,fundamental themes and patterns persisted from the Shang era, and the Zhourulers strove to conserve and build upon the achievements of theirpredecessors.

How do thumbs up assosciate with ancient phallic symbol of masculine virility?

Add your answer:

Were there phallic statues of the god Hermes?

Who is Freyr?

What are facts about the Greek god Hermes?

Indus river valley civilization?

Is the thumbs up a Ancient phallic symbol for masculine virility?

What does this phrase mean.Ancient phallic symbol of masculine virility?

What is a phallic symbol?

Example of Phallic Symbols in ancient and modern religion?

What are the release dates for Phallic The Misadventures of My Phallic Member - 2008?

What does phallic-looking mean?

What is the Greek god Hermes role in Ancient Greece?

What rhymes with aleck?

What actors and actresses appeared in The Phallic Forest - 1970?

What is the opposite of phallic?

What ancient Greek words start with the letter f?

Why phallic worship is done and where?

Resources

Top Categories

Product

Company