The Harappans

I have been wondering who were the ancient peoples of India(Harappans) and what did they look like. I would also like to know what race are Indians. Can someone help me out on this?

Like most places, they probably looked like the people that are there now. Since 'race' doesn't exist, at least on the biological level, its something of a none question.

Come to think of it, I am not familiar with any depictions of the people of harrapa that let us know what they looked like. They aren't thought to have spoken sanskrit, and, if one is loose enough with the evidence, you could say that perhaps they were somewhat different than the people that are there now. its -thought- that, if anythign, the harrapa script is 'elamo-dravidian', ie african/semetic. The modern 'dravidan' languages or dravidian derived languages are, from what I understand, exclusively spoken in south india and ceylon. Its questionable however if one can go from that to a physical similarity between the harrapanans and south indians. I tend to think of it that way though, however, for example, there are blacks who speak english, and aren't 'anglos'. Or the orignal central asiatic 'Turks' probably wouldn't be recognizable as 'turks' in modern day turkey.

Hows that for a non answer?

Generally, it can be said that most of the cultures that we refer to, like the Harappan, are nothing more than that: cultures. Ethnicity is something else. A really good example of what I mean is the Celtic culture that dominated central and western Europe for centuries. These people had a general cultural commonality without necessarily being ethnically distinct.

Middle Eastern cultures are much the same. One group moving in and conquering the one that came before, but adopting much of the subjugated group's culture.

So, there is no reason, really, to assume that all Harappans looked the same. (And that is all ethnicity is really, isn't it? Looks.)

[edit on 2-12-2004 by on a fast camel]

I don't think we have deciphered their writing yet.

My understanding of it is that the writing, while not deciphered, is thought by a least a few r3esearchers in the field to resemble/be roughly similiar to the elamite language, and that this is part of the basis for the existence of an elamite-dravidian languistic family.

There was an excellent National Geographic magazine article on this a while back...read it in a doctor's office...hehe...

You might want to google on "National Geographic" and "Harappa" to see if you can find the article. It had some beautiful art (which caught my eye) to depict what they think it looked like then...

I saw an article in National Geographic a while back too, maybe it was the same one? As far as I remember it was June 2000. It's a long time since I read it, but I think it said that they would have to re-write history books, because previously we have been told that the Sumer Valley was the oldest civilisation, but they have found coins of the Sumer Valley in Harrapa and Mohendojaro and vice versa, proving that the two areas existed concurrently and actively trading with each other. There was a lot more interesting information in it.

Can someone tell me how to add in the links to webpages? (you know, the red ones)