Although it seems that ancient Indian civilization is like a bright pearl now, its light was not discovered until the 1920s. Because its site was first excavated in Halaba, India, it is usually called "Halaba culture"; Because these sites are mainly concentrated in the Indus Valley, they are also called "Indus Civilization". The age of Halaba culture is about 2300 BC to 1750 BC.
The discovery of ancient Indian civilization is closely related to the European invasion of India. During the 14 and 15 centuries, European powers took a fancy to India's gold and jewels and invaded and plundered India. Among them, on the alluvial plain of Ravi River in India Valley, which stretches for 2.5 kilometers, there are ruins and broken mud bricks everywhere. Although the British have occupied this place, no one pays attention to what is buried under these broken mud bricks.
/kloc-At the beginning of the 9th century, an Englishman named James Lewis, with longing for the mysterious East, enlisted in the army of the British East India Company and began his extraordinary trip to India. He has a loose nature and likes to wander. He is not interested in how to suppress the local people and his personal career, but is keen on finding the past and exploring. Unable to stand the rigid life of the army, he simply deserted, fled the army and began his exploration and archaeological career. James Lewis disguised himself as an American engineer, alias Charles Mei Sen, and planned to roam India to realize his long-cherished wish. 1826, Lewis was deeply attracted by the remains on a hill when he crossed Punjab province in Pakistan today. In this irregular rocky highland, despite years of erosion, the abandoned walls of masonry castles are littered with niches of oriental style, and architectural remains can be seen vaguely. Under the setting sun, the ruins sparkled with mysterious light. After carefully examining these broken walls, he intuitively told him that it might be an abandoned ancient city, and the king-priest like Mohenjo Legalist Hero guessed that it might be Sangala, the oriental city once mentioned by ancient Roman historians. He vividly described the ruins of the ancient city in his diary and named it "Halaba". It is his discovery and records that people know the existence of Halaba. However, Lewis is not an archaeologist after all, and his visit to Halaba ends here. Unfortunately, Mei Sen's discovery did not attract much attention at that time.
1 1 years later, another young explorer, Alexander Burns, visited Halaba again. He found nothing new except those bare broken walls. Since then, the British archaeological team in India has visited this area twice in 1853 and 1856, and both agreed that there was an ancient city here, but there was no breakthrough in exploring its age and importance. Mei Sen and Burns' investigation provided important clues for later archaeological excavations. It was not until the 65438+early 1970s that Punjab became the most prosperous agricultural province under the British Empire, and the British government realized that India's underground cultural treasures might be priceless, so it put the archaeological excavation of ancient Indian civilization on the important agenda.
With the increasing enthusiasm for exploring Indian treasures, the British colonial authorities established the Indian Archaeological Institute on 1873. Alexander Cunningham was appointed director of archaeology. He first visited Halaba mentioned in Mei Sen's diary. However, when he came to this ruin, he could never find any remains of the castle. It turned out that in order to build a railway running through this area, the British authorities used most of the exquisite bricks and stones in the Halaba site to pave the way. Cunningham was very sad when he learned about it. In order to save the site, he decided to dig it. Due to the serious damage to the site, the excavation of the unicorn seal progressed slowly and was forced to stop work. His only achievement was to find a stone print. The seal is made of black soapstone, engraved with a bull and six unreadable words. This is a typical object of ancient Indian river civilization in 3000 BC.
It's a pity that Cunningham also missed the halaba culture. At that time, Cunningham made the wrong conclusion that seals were introduced into India from abroad. Nevertheless, previous discoveries, especially the black seal excavated by Cunningham, still provided important clues for later archaeologists.
1902, the ambitious john marshall came to India and succeeded him as the head of Indian archaeological investigation. According to the clues left by Cunningham and others, he commanded the archaeological teams to continue digging in Haraba and other places, but there has been no progress.
Researcher J H fleet turned Marshall's career around. Welfare has a seal in Indus script. He carefully studied the seal script unearthed in Halaba, British Museum, and correctly judged that seal script was by no means a Borneo alphabet system, and it was no different from Sumerian cuneiform in the two river basins. It must be older than people think.
While Marshall and Nisha were digging in Halaba, R.D. Ban Naji also dug up the mountain of death-Mohenjo, a hero in the legal world. The excavation of the two places reveals the same ancient urban civilization, which is what scholars call "Halaba culture".
At this point, Marshall can proudly announce to the world that he and his companions have discovered an extremely ancient and unique great civilization, which originated from the Indus Valley itself.
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