5000 yr old Findings in the Burnt City Challenge Mesopotamian Origins Theory

a reply to: tom.farnhill

and we must consider that this area was once green lush land before the desert moved in and these buildings would have been at risk of fire due to everything being tinder dry

Not sure I'd go as far as that but deforestation and dessication were definitely problems with large early communities. I believe a couple in North America went that way — logged themselves into oblivion.

a reply to: Astyanax

Yup. It was one of the factors that led to the demise of the "classical" Mayan period in which many cities in their entirety were abandoned.

a reply to: Blackmarketeer

The history of "animation" in the pottery found at this site goes back a long way, even to ancient cave art;....

Thank you so much for that video, I will look at cave art differently from now on. I was watching a Neil Oliver programme a while ago, about cave art in Scotland and he suggested that rocks were chosen for the drawings because of the shapes they suggested. So rather than carving into the stone, the image would be brought out from the suggestive undulations that the stone offered.
I can easily imagine that torchlight could cause these animals to come to life on the walls, and in fact the drawings start to make more sense when you picture them this way.
Mind=blown, you were right.

a reply to: rebelv

Thanks rebelv, your 2 cents are most welcome

a reply to: beansidhe

Few and far between on ATS are such decent, thoughtful and educational threads such as this one.

My congratulations to each and all of the former posters in this thread

a reply to: Aliensun

Thanks for dropping by Aliensun, and agreed - all the contributors have been fantastic

a reply to: beansidhe

I also LOVE this stuff! There is so much lost from history. I am glad you posted this and it is why I love ATS and people like yourself who will take the time to post and share with all of us.

originally posted by: punkinworks10
a reply to: Astyanax
Maybe dravidian was a poor choice of words, indus/dravidian is a better choice.
If the city wasnt founded by indus/dravidian people, they had trade contacts with them.
The only other source for ebony in that part of the world is west africa or indonesia, so southern(dravidian) india is the best choice.

True today, but do we know this was true then?
I have no idea.

But I agree with you about what the thing looks like. The moment I saw it, I thought it was a comb too.

Combs are at least as useful as rulers, btw. Hard to measure twice, cut once, when those little buggers are crawling around on your scalp.

Harte

a reply to: Blackmarketeer

They look a little bit like combs found very commonly in norse graves.
I do not say they are in anyway connected, but they do look like combs.

Hi!
i'm actually from "zabol"( about 10 km from burnt city or shahr-e sukhte شهر سوخته as we call it) although i didn't grow up there. I've seen the site and it's huge. it's a pity it took sooo long for authorities to make a move to uncover the secrets of this dig site. you know i'm 26 and i remember the time when i was a kid and there was NO archaeological activity or safeguarding the artifacts of there. i'm 100% sure that there are a LOT of stolen things that we will never know about.

additionally, i think the climate change played a big part in abandonment of the city, i dont know if this goes that far back, but now, the 120 days wind of zabol is kind of famous. a season of wind which carries only dust and sand with it and is causing zabol to be inhabitable. the water source of the rigeion is a lake name "chah nime" ( kinda means half well!). it stores the water from the river of "hirmand" which i think in ancient means "waterfull" , and the Greeks called it Erymanthus .
in the past 50 years it became kind of dry , and after the Taliban barred the natural path of water againts the international laws , it became even worse. i think if anything like this happend in those age, that was enough reason for abandonment of the city.
anyway, thanks for sharing this.

a reply to: imanakrami

HI, thank you for your post! It's always good to hear from local folk, who know about the area. Very interesting point about the wind - it is reasonable to wonder if it was the same back then, and basically drove the inhabitants out over time?

Yes I agree, there are most probably a lot of stolen artifacts from that site (and many others) nestled away in private collections. It would be great to have an artifact amnesty one day a year, when all stolen things could be be viewed...but never going to happen!

Thanks again for logging on to share your post,

B x