Following on from our last interview with Historian Nick Collins where he took us on a journey to Ancient Phoenicia and challenged our perspectives on what the world looked like 5000 years ago, we now travel even further back.
Contrary to what is accepted today, could it be that there were thriving civilisations in India and South East Asia, proficient in maritime trade, going back to just after the last Ice age around 10,000 years ago and possibly even further back than that? It isn't as farfetched as one may think. Humans have always favoured building their cities with access to the sea or large rivers for trade. Even with the advent of air travel, this trend is still noticeable with most major cities today. And with knowledge of great floods, swallowing up large swathes of coastline thousands of years ago and little focus on marine archeology today, it isn't such a leap to say there could be large gaps missing in the story of human civilisation.
Recent discoveries off the coast of Gujurat, in the Gulf of Cambay, suggest cities and ports dating back 9,000 - 10,000 years ago, now underwater. Carbon dating of recently discovered ancient structures, on land, in Indonesia suggest an age of 14,000, possibly even 20,000 years! But we know that in South East Asia alone a land mass the size of India was lost to the seas. What more could be hidden underwater...only time can tell.
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In the below chapter we discuss how the Phoenicians acted as a conduit of trade between India and the Mediterranean. There is much debate about the origins of the Phoenicians, Herodotus believed however they were settlers from Bahrain around 2700 BC, although the height of their power began from around the 16th century BC.
As well as the trade of goods between Phoenicians and Indians, Nick argues that a natural consequence of this is the exchange of ideas and cultural practices .
Indian Ideas to the Ancient Mediterranean Civilisations
Chetan
So when you say that the Phoenicians were important in bringing Indian ideas to Greece, what period of time were these ideas transferred to Greece and which ideas were they?
Nick
The Phoenicians had been trading around the middle east, and into India, probably since they first arrived. But that evidence is pretty difficult to get, but probably since they first arrived. And they've been using Egyptian ports on the red sea for those voyages. And when Egypt broke down politically, in the 9th/10th century BC they needed another port. So, king Hiram of Tyre did a deal with king Solomon of Jerusalem to use his port on the Gulf of Aqaba. A port called Ezion-Geber, it's near where Aqaba is now basically, in Jordan. And here we go into the Bible, and the Bible is very clear about them trading every three years down to India and bringing back ivory and peacock feathers, and, oh….
Chetan
Oh Wow
Nick
All this kind of stuff. Now, they did this for a hundred years until Israel and Judah became very religiously militant and stopped the Phoenicians (making) these voyages. (It was) a few hundred years until Egypt recovered, which was in the seventh century, and then they could start again. They were making these regular voyages. Various books in the Bible, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Kings and Chronicles all basically attest to the same story. And we know that ideas travel with seafaring. So, what ideas could possibly have come? And these come into two sections, one is secular ideas, that is philosophical ideas. And in particular the Jain idea of atomism and atomic theory. Which the Indians were doing before the Greek philosophers latched onto the same idea and they even….
Michael
Atomic theory being what?
Nick
Well, that stuff is composed of atoms.
And they both had these ideas, apparently simultaneously, actually the Indian ideas preceded those, and we can date those. And then the other thing is why did the Hebrews suddenly. Sorry not suddenly, but gradually ditch their Pantheon of gods and elect for the greater God, Yahweh? And then the only God. Why did they go to monotheism? And nobody has satisfactorily answered this question. But when you go to ancient Indian texts, (like) the Bhagavad Gita. As you may know, that’s discussion between Arjuna and the Supreme being, you know, I am the controller, the Supreme controller, the Lord of Lords. And you know what? Great chunks of that book (are) directly quoted in both the Old Testament and the new Testament as well.
Chetan
That's, yeah, that's mind blowing it if that's… wow.
Nick
Even direct quotes. Lord of Lords is, is one that you'll find in, in various books in the Bible and it's in the Baghavad Gita as well.
Michael
It’s a shame they don't have a reference section in the Bible!
Nick
And the very fact that the Hebrews decided to write down their history, their law code and everything else, the old Testament. Why did they do that? The traditional answer is, they were enslaved by the Babylonians, well the Assyrians and then the Babylonian and said, well, we better write down our history. But then lots of people were enslaved by the Assyrians and Babylonians and they weren't similarly minded. So what could it be? It is traveling to India and seeing this rich heritage of literature, which is the world's oldest and most voluminous. (For example) the Manu Smriti is the Indian law code or the one that survives. So, they (the Hebrews) said, oh, well, we better write ours. And they wrote Leviticus, but of course their law code it's not as tolerant as the Manu Smritri
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So if all these ideas have their origins from India and Hindu texts, we should be able to have some evidence of them. Not only that, but they must be extremely old to have been able to influence some of the oldest civilisations of antiquity. In our next chapter, we discuss these texts and the methods used to date them.
Indian Literature
Michael
So the Manu Smritri, how old is that? Do you know, roughly?
Nick
Well parts of it are in the Mahabharata, which I think you can date to somewhere around 1800 BC, but that again is controversial. Some people dated it much later. But the point about Indian literature is that they gathered knowledge, and they are continually taking an old text and then adding to it.
And if you ever read the Kama Sutra, you'll see that the introduction says, I'm specifically adding to the knowledge of many of my forebearers.
Chetan
A citation system. That's, that's really cool. I'm really curious now about this. Do we have well documented, written stuff from India going back. Do we have that and how far back does that go?
Nick
Well, the Rig Veda, supposedly the oldest book, whereas that used to be said that it's, well, 1,500 years old, or 1,500 BC, modern research suggests that this goes back to somewhere around 4,500 BC.
Chetan
Okay.
Michael
Is that because they're based on astrological….?
Nick
Astronomical knowledge. Drawing on astronomical knowledge probably from the eighth millennium B C.
Chetan
I don't quite understand what astronomical knowledge is. Because I'm a lay man, but…
Nick
So, modern scholars have taken movements of the stars way back into ancient history. And then they compare it with the texts, and they say, well, this, this seems to reflect knowledge going back...
Chetan
Oh Okay. And so, in India, people were writing or? Because I know we have a strong oral tradition and my understanding was that everything was still heavily passed on orally until maybe like the 15 hundreds or something. No earlier than that. But of course, I seem to be wrong here. So, is there like actual written scripts from… that people are dating?
Nick
Yes! There's four Vedas and and there's the Shastras. And then you've got the Upanishads. I mean, it's huge. I've read some of them. The Rig Veda is very difficult to read, but the Bhagavad Gita, I think that's pretty simple. The Upanishads is a bit it's easier to read, but it's more difficult to grasp I would say
Michael
They are just songs aren't they?
Nick
It's a philosophy about, oh, there's another link. The Bible used to say, um, I've written this down just because, um, hang on.
In Genesis it used to read “in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth”. And in 1988, a translator came up with another translation, which he said is this “at the beginning of God's creating the heavens and the earth when the earth was wild and waste, darkness over the face of the ocean. Breath of God hovering over the face of the waters. God said, let there be light”. And this was used in the new revised standard version with ocean being changed to the deep and breadth of God, the wind of God. Now two observations I would make here. One, the Hebrews were pastoralists hill tribe. What are they doing looking about the origins of the world as the ocean? Where did they get that from? And the key is because India has the same tradition and the breath of God, or the wind of God, is directly from the Upanishads philosophy.
Chetan
Yeah. Yeah. Wow.
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Now that we have touched upon the Ancient Indian literature and how it may have influenced the civilisations of the Levant and it's neighbours we discuss in greater depth the impact they had. From how the influence of the language of Sanskrit could be felt all the way to England, to how geological activity may have caused the drying up of an ancient mythical river which led to mass migrations from India. More importantly we breakdown the reasons why the concept of Indian influence on the rest of the world had been suppressed and instead replaced with a hypothesis of culture and language being introduced to India by invaders from central Europe.
Influence of Ancient India
Michael
Did you know this before? Was the idea of talking about India as the cradle of civilization, something that you found whilst writing this book, or…?
Nick
I just intended to write a book about maritime trade because nobody else had done it. Then I was quite happy, with the cradle of civilization being the middle east, unlikely though it is, because it's a desert, but I was quite happy. But then when I started asking questions that nobody else apparently had, like what was traded, where did it come from? Then it seemed to me that the, that the flow of goods needed to sustain Sumerian and Mesopotamian civilizations must've come from India. From Gujarat, essentially, from the Gulf of Cambay, and had probably done so for, well and here we go back to the ice age, since the ice age or shortly thereafter. Because ports have now been found off India, underneath the ocean in the Gulf of Cambay.
Michael
So basically the more you researched, the further back in time it was clear to you it went?
Nick
Well, you know, India was really the center of this, and there were various pulses of… After all, we all speak in Indo/European languages. Apart from, in Europe, apart from the Basques and Finns
Chetan
And Hungarians I think.
Nick
So how did that happen? Well, partly, that was, again, that's to do with the end of the ice age, I would suggest. That not only did the world warm and the oceans rise, but the glaciers in the Himalayas melted, which created great big drainage channels, especially the Indus and the Sarasvasti. This was where probably 10% of the world's population lived at this time. And they were able to ship stuff to the middle east, and sustain those civilizations.
Chetan
This is something quite interesting that Mike and I mentioned here. Mike and I stumbled across this idea too, that we are now being able to do archeology, like submarine archeology. We have sonar, we can see things are under the water. And of course, speaking of all the ice melting and a lot of the land being flooded, that would have been coastal before, of course this would reshape our image of what the world looked like back then and where the big cities were. Because if we are only doing terrestrial archeology, we will never even come across that information. So I think we're in a time now where we're finding a lot more information than we had before, so we should be opening our minds and trying to update our image of, you know, be open to new information about what the world looked like back then.
Michael
Changing our perceptions.
Chetan
Changing our perceptions yeah. As you know, with evidence, right, that's coming up because of technology.
And so, in Mesopotamia at that time, what did things look like there? I mean, you say it was a desert, was it a greener desert, was it like a Savannah?
Nick
I think so. The desertification of the Sahara seems to have happened in somewhere in the fourth millennium BC. So, it's reasonable to assume that the same thing happened in the middle east. So, around the time of the flood 5,600 BC, it seems that new people from east arrived in Mesopotamia, and they didn't speak the same language. Probably the origin of the tower Babel fable, and the confusion of languages. And they set up these civilizations. So, in 5,600 BC, it was probably a sensible place, even though there wasn't any timber. So, they got there by sea, but the Indians had to supply them with food because they had no timber, and it gradually became more desertified, if that's a word, I suppose along with the Sahara.
Chetan
Super, super interesting. Okay. And I'm just trying to think… I had a question, you know! Mike do you want to fill in the blank, until it comes back to me?
Michael
Well, you were asking about Mesopotamia. I mean the Sahara desertification is also an interesting one because that's changed between going into a desert and being a lusher area as well hasn't it, multiple times throughout history.
And that's something we talked about last time as well in our podcast, how the climate, we have to consider the climate would have been completely different after, the ice age or just after the ice age. So India and Southeast Asia would have been more temperate regions and everywhere north of that, essentially, I think Europe wouldn't have been accessible because it would have been completely locked in ice. So yeah, just imagining India as a temperate place, as well, it sounds a bit odd. But during the time of the Indus Sarasvati would it have been a temperate region as well?
Nick
Probably, well yes, but the climate was changing, and it was becoming warmer. So, of course the Sarasvati (River) disappeared. This has been carbon-dated, but very imprecisely and I can't find out what the imprecision is. I've looked and searched, but I can't find the source of this, but it's somewhere around 1,900 BC
Michael
The time that it dried out?
Nick
That the Sarasvasti dried up, but lots of these rivers in this river basin had changed course because this is where the Indian ocean plate comes up against the Himalayan plate. And so, there were continuously lots of earthquakes happening there, have happened, and these changed the course of rivers. This had been happening throughout ancient history, but this one, or maybe a series of earthquakes diverted the Sarasvasti into the Ganges. And so, the sacredness of the Sarasvasti was transferred to the Ganges.
Michael
In the rig Veda, they talk about the seven rivers and Ganges isn't one of those? So Ganges wasn't, or didn't exist then?
Nick
The Ganges did exist then
Michael Ah, it just got bigger because of the Sarasvati river was channeled into it.
Chetan
I remember my question now. It was to do with food and language. And because you said that we all speak Indo / European language and is that because India was a great civilization and all the trade and information that passed along influenced other cultures all the way as far as European peoples?
Nick
No I think, thanks for bringing me back to that. I think this is what happened. As the ice age was coming to an end and rivers kept diverting in Northwest India. This encouraged people to start moving west and north to lands previously cold and hostile, and now warming and, and inviting. And this is the origin of some went to Anatolia and stayed there, some moved through Eastern Europe, the Germanic Slavic languages. Then somewhat later, those in Anatolia, they started moving through the Mediterranean. Some went up into Italy and Southern France and some through the straits of Gibraltar. Now these are not the Germanic Slavic languages. These are the what's called the Italo Celtic language. And they branched off and the Italo became romance languages, and the Celtic traveled up the coast of Spain, France…
Chetan
Basques
Nick
(Actually) bypassed the Basques, because they're non-Indo-European speaking, and into the Irish sea and populated Cornwall, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland.
Chetan
Wow.
Nick
Well probably Cornwall, up into, around where Stonehenge is now.
Chetan
So, if I'm getting this correctly, it was languages developed in India and then people from India moving with the rivers and, and then encountering other peoples, I guess, who then adopted the language and then moved themselves. And then this language system passed on…
Nick
Well, because they were farmers, farming communities are to provide for much bigger populations than hunter gatherers.
Chetan
Right
Nick
So, it was the fact that they were farmers. You know, Jared Diamond has done studies in New Guinea, where he looked at farming populations and hunter gatherers. And he, by his figures, are something like 40 to 50 times the tribes doing farming are 40 to 50 times bigger than hunter gatherer tribes.
Michael
So there was displacement?
Nick
There was displacement there was inter-marrying. The evidence worldwide seems to be that hunter gatherer women marry into farming men, never the other way around. So, you can see that that's why that happened. I think
Chetan
Farming is high value.
Mike and I spoke about this before, but there's a contrasting view of this spread of Indo European languages, if I'm not wrong. Which is that the source was somewhere in central Asia, probably somewhere in like, which is now Russia. And, and those were the original tribes, which then spread across to Europe and into India and spread language.
Nick
Yeah. But this is a 19th century racist invention, really. Because, well, you better to call it what it is. Because, you know, whereas in the 18th century, the British came into India without any racial feeling whatsoever. By the late 19th century, evangelical Christianity, and the fact that women could come and join their husbands through the Suez Canal in a matter of weeks, and basically put an end to interracial, marriage, sex, liaisons, white and brown became ever more divergent. And so, the thing was that (the 19th century British thought) these Indians with their superstitious stuff and all this nonsense in the rig Veda. They’ve got to learn Christianity. And they couldn't have invented all this themselves anyway, it must have come from us, us superior "whities" somewhere. Which is all nonsense because, I lay it out in my book in great detail on multiple levels, why this is just a load of old nonsense. But regrettably, we still find people, it's called the Aryan myth, the Aryan invasion of India. Although I would say most sensible historians have consigned this to the dustbin. Now you'll still find linguists studying at university, still trying to find the origin of a pre-Sanskrit, proto-Sanskrit in pre–Indo European studies. P.I.E before. I mean, they're wasting their time. It's a mythical quest, like searching for a unicorn you know.
Chetan
Yeah. I mean, because it seems like that the more and more you paint the picture, the more and more it seems like, okay, yeah, there were melting glaciers, there were rivers and water flowing in India at the time when there wasn't so much else. Everything was either iced-up, or relatively dry. They had timber; they began to farm for this reason. So it makes sense they had bigger populations. More people mean more thinking and of course, more ideas being formed. And then that at that period of time the population carried on spreading, because that's what you do when you're successful. You continue to spread…
Nick
That's right. And this is all been covered up really by, well the Aryan invasion. The evangelical Christians in the late 19th century started uncovering all this archeology in the dry desert middle east, which is also the origin of Christianity, Palestine and all that. And so, the myth that the middle east is the cradle of civilization appeared, and logically it's nonsense. Right?
Chetan
Yeah. Well, now that makes sense because, I think we mentioned this a few times in previous podcasts, interpretation. Like how, important it is to, for people to have a root in something. And there was a big push, especially in 19th century in Europe to kind of connect, especially the UK and these kinds of places, into Greece and, what's considered the origin in Jerusalem and make that the center of the world. And that's led to, I mean, for example, the big bias of the Taj Mahal, short tangent, seen as a national symbol of India, the most amazing building. But that's only because when the British came, they couldn't accept Hindu architecture, which is actually mixed with Greek, but with all the iconography, including sexual iconography. Because the Kamasutra (actually) has a spiritual angle to it, but they didn't see that, they just saw barbarianism or something that they couldn't tolerate so preferred the more conservative Islamic…
Nick
Oh, especially the Taj Mahal fitted right into the kind of pious Victorian family ideals of, uh, of a doting dead husband who is putting up some Memorial to his dead wife. I mean, it's right up their street isn't it?
Chetan
Yeah, exactly. Super interesting. And so then, that makes this creation of an image around the language and spreading the language. And of course, you do have, I think, Sanskrit names of Kings throughout, I think the Hittites as well?
Nick
Yea
Chetan
Is that part of the spread?
Nick
Well, after the Sarasvasti dried up, all the amazing numbers of cities and towns and subsidiary settlements that depended on it, well it also meant huge migration. Much of it to the Ganges. One historian suggests that another lot went to Sri Lanka. Probably the Ramanyana and the Lankapura, it’s probably the origins of that. And other historians suggest that the Kassites, Hittites and the Mitanni were bands of displaced warriors who went through into the Persian Gulf, into the middle east that way. And suddenly they appear, with Vedic gods and chariot races. Ah not chariot racing, chariot warfare. Introduced to the middle east for the first time. The battle of ten Kings, which is described in great detail in the literature, now I think dated to somewhere around 3100 BC, had been going on in India for ages, but now suddenly gets imported into the middle east and is used by the Hittites, Mitanni and an Egyptian have to have to do this as well to counter them both.
Chetan
Oh, wow. Oh, wait. So, this is again, linking to something else that I think Mike was saying. Was there an influence then of India on Egypt as well, or was Egypt (by then) broken down?
Nick
Well around the time of 1500-1600 BC in the conventional chronology, Egypt is invaded by people that are called the Hyksos . And nobody really knows too much about it, but it seems to me that they're probably Mitanni. But they get kicked out after a hundred years. So, their influence on, uh, Egyptian civilization is very little indeed
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As we have just read, there is a lot of evidence that has been around for a while in literature and more recently, archeological evidence for large ancient Indian civilisations. Less well known however are those of South East Asia, which may be even older. We discussed in episode 3 that the majority of flood myths originate from Austronesia, which is coincidentally an area of recurring flooding and exposure due to the shallow Sunda shelf, during great climate shifts. Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and surrounding Islands would have all been connected in one land mass. Such an area could have harboured great populations in a much more forgiving climate, as it would have been then. Is it possible that civilsations origins could actually have it's roots here? We discuss it in the following chapter...
South East Asia
Chetan
So, I've heard of something called the fertile Crescent and that's supposed to be where a lot of the domestication of crops, especially wheat happened. And therefore, that’s just one of the reasons why I thought of it as a cornerstone to civilization, right. Because there was farming happening there. How does the trade in food from India relate to the idea of the fertile Crescent being the center of the domestication of wheat.
Nick
I mean, the origin of farming, it used to be said was in one place and in one place only. That was the fertile Crescent and specifically Eastern Turkey. But these days it appears that it was certainly in India, there is evidence in Sri Lanka and in the new Guinea Highlands. Farming goes back and probably got there from the new Guinea lowlands, which are now under the water because of the flood.
Chetan
Right.
Nick
So, I think we can now, I think it's now more or less accepted, apart from really dyed in the wool traditionalists that farming had multiple sources. Although, turning it really back on its head, is it possible that it really was invented in one place, and that is east Asia in what used to be called Sundaland and then traveled to India? And then, um, I mean, I don't know….
Chetan
No, this is fantastic because Sundaland and all these places are, I think our next destination in the conversation. And in any case, we've spoken about it a lot in the last few podcasts. So, we've been talking about India having this large population and all the reasons behind it and how it most likely (could) be the source of many languages, starting civilization going west. But also, in that same period of time, what did Southeast Asia look like, Sundaland especially. And how did they influence India or the west, or…
Nick
Well, we don't know, I think is the easiest answer. We know that when the flood hit India, the ports were drowned, but it has a fairly sharp continental shelf. So very little was, actually flooded, and the ports were rebuilt further up the rivers on the then coast or up inland.
The continental shelf in Southeast Asia was so shallow that it was virtually wiped out. Only a few islands remaining, unlike the west coast of India, where ports have been found underneath the water, nothing much has been found in Asia apart from some rock structures off the Penghu archipelago and off Okinawa. They look as though they're manmade. When they were first discovered, incredulous scientists said no, they can't be man-made, they must be volcanic or a formation with sharp angles. I mean, they just, they are (man-made) and they were drowned by the flood. But there's no evidence so far of ports.
Michael
A lot more land was lost in Southeast Asia compared to India Right? A land mass, the size of India was lost
Nick
That was because the continental shelf was so shallow.
Chetan
I mean, even now, like when we spoke about the new Guinea Highlands and then the lowlands being submerged, but the current New Guinea lowlands are just marshlands. They're flooded, before you get to the mountains. And I think that's true for a lot of islands around Southeast Asia. They still have quite a flat, shallow area of land before you get to various mountains. So, sea levels are still rising. I wonder what that's going to mean for that part of the world going forward in 100 or 200 years.
Michael
Do you think it's possible that we could, do you think any kind of trace of civilization back then, if it's under water, can be found?
Nick
I have no idea. I mean, one has to hope. The thing is that the ocean is vast, isn't it? And we don't know where to look to a certain extent, so…
Michael
But there are on land as well, like, the Mount Padang in Java, which dates back to potentially 20,000 years ago or 14,000 years ago.
Nick
Mount Padang is about 70 miles away from um, the capital of… capital of Indonesia….
Chetan
Jakarta.
Nick
Jakarta! Thank you, (my) mind’s going.
Nick
It was known about for ages and it looks like a pyramid and on top of it is a step pyramid with andesite standing stones. And in 2012, an Australian and Indonesian team had a look at it, and it looks as though the whole mountain is a pyramid. So they've then had a second look a couple of years later with sonar testing. They looked in and tried to scoop in to the burial chambers below and the stuff that they got out carbon dated to between 14,000 BC and 24,000 BC.
Chetan
Whoa, BC. Wow.
Nick
Yeah. So the last glacial maximum, somebody was building this.
Chetan
No, if that's true, that will completely change my perspective of what people were doing that long ago. My goodness.
Nick
Well, when you think about, I mean, people got to Australia by boat roughly, 50,000 or 60,000 BC. So, is it that crazy?
Chetan
Quick linking question, because would it be by boat? Or would they have been able to have crossed the land at that point in time? Because it would have all been…
Nick
Certainly there was no land bridge, but they would have had to cross probably seven or eight, stretches of water.
Chetan
Oh wow, and so yeah, rafts or boats. 60,000 years ago. So it makes sense that like 40,000 years later that they're doing something a bit more advanced my God. And I guess to take a tangent, my mind's drifting now to the big hole in our geography in all of this storytelling, which is China. Do we know what, in this period where Southeast Asia and India were developing, because China also has its sophisticated agriculture has its own language, has its own everything pretty much. So, did it advance a lot later and independently? Or was it also influenced…
Nick
To be honest, I haven't done a lot of research on China because, I mean, I was writing a book on maritime trade, but…
Chetan
Oh, that's true, they weren't maritime.
Nick
China, the coastal areas of China were inhabited by Austronesians called Yu or Yi until, well until the warring states period. Which is around 300 BC, when the Chinese made war against the Yuu and centralized and basically kicked out or ethnically cleansed or integrated the remaining Yuu. Some of who might still have been around, around 700AD, but they were being cleared out.
Chetan
And that was the transition there. Super interesting. Wow.
Thanks for reading!
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