Cultural Beginnings #8

In Cultural Beginnings #6 we reported on chariot tracks being discovered in China that date back perhaps 4,000 years, much earlier than any other wheeled tracks so far unearthed there. Now there are reports of images of domesticated horses on pottery from 3,000 years ago.

"The painted design shows a man herding eight horses. Some of these horses are bucking and some stand quietly; some have tails and some do not. All of the horses have large buttocks, slender waists and thin legs. Surrounded by the eight horses, the wide-shouldered, slender-waisted man is in a long gown. His physique and dress are quite similar to those of ethnic people living in the horse-taming area,said Wang Haidong, Vice Chairman of the Gansu Provincial Painted Pottery Research Institute. The pot, 22 centimeters high and 24 centimeters in diameter, has a pair of symmetrical handles on each side of its body and a sunken bottom."

This is the earliest representation of horses in Chinese art, and indicates a domestication date significantly early than had previously been proven.

At around the same time, three thousand years ago, saltminers of the Hallstatt Culture in northern Austria, were building a wooden staircase deep beneath the earth. It has just been discovered and its state of preservation is remarkable. "The staircase is in perfect condition because the micro-organisms that cause wood to decompose do not exist in salt mines," said Hans Reschreiter, the director of excavations. The wooden staircase is 800 years older than the earliest one previously known in Europe, and may be the oldest known in the world.

Two thousand years earlier, five thousand years ago, the city of Jiroft was the commercial trading centre of Persia, playing a hand in trade throughout the region. As an article in Payvand's Iran News puts it:

"Many great Iranian and foreign experts see the findings in Jiroft as signs of a civilization as great as that of Sumeria and Mesopotamia. Majidzadeh believes that Jiroft is the ancient city of Aratt mentioned in an Iraqi clay inscription as a great civilization ...

Jiroft came into spotlight nearly three years ago when extensive illegal excavations and plundering of the invaluable historical items of the area by local people surfaced. Since 2002, two excavation seasons have been carried out there under the supervision of Majidzadeh, leading to the discovery of a ziggurat with more than four million mud bricks dating back to 2300 B.C.

Based on previous explanations by American Professor Holly Pittman, the handwriting discovered in Jiroft is unlike any other handwriting so far discovered. Its novelty and its being contemporary to the innovation of handwriting by Sumerians lead us to a civilization comparable to the first human civilization and may in the upcoming studies even change the course of human civilization. "

I have to admit to never having heard of Jiroft before reading this article. The past has glorious surprises for us still.

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Previously in this series...