It was 5 thousand years ago. The disappearance of the advanced Paleolithic industry was explained by the “homebodying” of ancient people

Where did the main wave of the catastrophe called the “Great Flood” go? What did Sklyarov’s expedition prove? Where did our ancestors live and how were they able to survive this ancient Apocalypse? Why are bones of large ancient animals and remains of trees found in the north of Siberia, in the tundra and permafrost zone? How were the priests of our ancestors able to save their people? where did our ancestors go after the Flood? What other catastrophe befell ancient people 6-5 thousand years BC? (that is, after the “Flood”)? How did the Neva River appear? Who created the civilizations of Sumer, Egypt, Greece (Hellas)? Where did the ruins of cities come from at the bottom of the Black World? Who were the first settlers of Europe and from what territories did they come? Independent researcher, candidate of physical and mathematical sciences Sergei Sall makes a brief excursion into the ancient history of human civilization.

What happened 11 thousand years ago when the flood happened. A satellite fell to Earth. The fragments mostly fell in Pacific Ocean. The main part of the wave went to Central And South America, which the expedition proved Sklyarova. The Eurasian continent got, of course, less. But apparently the wave height there was also under a kilometer, maybe more in some places. Naturally. What destroyed this entire civilization. You know that on northern Siberia A huge number of mammoths and other animals were discovered, all mixed with forest and frozen. Because the belt has moved on 2 thousand kilometers, and it immediately became sharply cold there. That is, at first it was all carried away by a water stream with mud and stones, and then everything froze. And part of this civilization, the Raktids, apparently managed to evacuate. Because the moon Fatta declined for several days and they understood, the priests understood that they had to climb the mountains, apparently part of the civilization managed to climb the mountains, in Siberian mountains. Well, after that, all of Siberia was flooded with water.

New seas have formed Ural ridge was at that time a very long island. Civilization began to move south along these mountain ranges. Where? That's the same one Mountain Shoria, which is currently being explored by the expedition Sidorova, V China, V Tibet. Ancient Arctic civilization, it created Chinese civilization. Well, then conflicts began to arise with the ancestors of modern Chinese. Vedic civilization began to move gradually to the west. Seven or eight thousand years ago he came to the territory East European Plain. She went north and founded that same Hyperborea, that is, on the islands in the White Sea and on the Kola Peninsula.

But somewhere 5 or 6 thousand years ago, according to various estimates, a terrible cataclysm happened on Earth, now it is not entirely clear what it was, in any case, in different areas of the Earth they find the remains of melted stones and destroyed cities, that is, there was some kind of worldwide war, which, apparently, nuclear in nature. As a result, there were the strongest earthquakes at that time, shifts in the earth's crust. At that time the strait Bosphorus And Dardanelles was broken through by the waters of the Mediterranean Sea and the waters of the Mediterranean Sea poured into the Black Sea and in a few months the level of the Black Sea rose by approximately 200 meters.

That is, these are the pyramids that are now found nearby Feodosia, Sevastopol, near Romania these are the remains of the very civilization that existed at the bottom of the ancient sea. Terrible things happened even in our country; in our country, these developments led to the formation of an isthmus in Gulf of Finland. After all, before Ladoga lake was part of the Gulf of Finland. As a result of all these developments, Lake Ladoga rose and began to fill with rainwater. Then these waters broke through the isthmus and this is how the Neva was formed. That is, it is approximately 5 thousand years ago Total. The Neva is approximately 5 thousand years old. As a result of these changes, the flow changed Gulf Stream. At that time, on the Kola Peninsula and in the Black Sea, the waters did not freeze. The climate was fairly mild back then. Which allowed the Hyperborean civilization to exist at that time on the islands in the White Sea and on the Kola Peninsula.

And after these changes there was a very strong cooling. That is Gulf Stream Current, apparently, was stopped or weakened greatly and this Hyperborean civilization went south. This means that the Trypillian culture is the remnants of this civilization, and then they went to Black Sea region and went to South, on Ararian Peninsula, V Egypt. And Egypt was created by representatives of Hyperboria. It is written in Egyptian history that they arrived on ships. They sailed from the Black Sea. The Shemer civilization was created even earlier, this is also a Vedic civilization, so to speak, but which, unfortunately, was poisoned by representatives of the remnants of the satanic Atlantic empire, which remained on the shelf Black Sea. Yes, there was such a mixture of the Vedic worldview and the Shemerian one. But gradually the Shemerian civilization coped with this, but then was destroyed as a result of a new war.

Stone tools from the Howisons Port industry (Grey Rocky) and its successor culture (Reddish Brown and Brown under Yellow Ash).

P. de la Peña, L. Wadley / PLoS ONE, 2017

In South Africa, during the Middle Paleolithic era (approximately 65.8-59.5 thousand years ago), there was a Howiesons Port stone tool industry. About 59.5 thousand years ago it suddenly disappeared and was replaced by another culture - a more primitive one. Scientists from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg believe that the reason for the disappearance of the Howiesons Port industry was the less mobility of ancient people. Since they did not have to carry tools with them during migrations, Paleolithic Africans began to make heavier and less technologically advanced tools. The study was published in PLoS ONE.

Some researchers consider Howiesons Port to be the "high-tech" industry of its time. It anticipated the artifacts that people began to create in the Upper Paleolithic era, about 25 thousand years after its existence. It was characterized by complex objects: prismatic stone blades glued in two parts using heated ocher and tree resin; bone arrowheads and needles, ostrich shells decorated with carvings, shell beads. Approximately 59.5 thousand years ago, the Howiesonsport industry suddenly disappeared and was replaced by more primitive technology characteristic of the Middle Paleolithic. Archaeologists have given various explanations for this, including the influence of natural conditions, or changes in the provision of resources or in the mobility of ancient people.

The authors of a new study tried to clarify this issue: they examined one of the sites of the Howisons Port industry people - the Sibudu Cave, located in the east of South Africa, 15 kilometers from the coast of the Indian Ocean. Scientists analyzed the contents of the last stratigraphic layer, which is associated with the Howiesons Port industry, and several layers with artifacts from the Paleolithic culture that replaced it.

It appeared that the elaborate stone blades of the Howisons Port industry had been replaced by simpler quartzite and sandstone products that could be found near Sibudu Cave. Also, in layers dating back approximately 58 thousand years, numerous millstones appeared, with the help of which the inhabitants of the cave apparently ground ocher and polished animal bones. The texture of the ocher in different layers also changed: the Howiesons Port people used a pigment with a higher clay content, which was convenient to apply to skin or skins, and the inhabitants who replaced them used ocher of a muddy texture, which could be found near the cave and which was easily ground into powder.

After a careful study of artifacts related to the Howiesons Port industry and the culture that replaced it, the authors of the article came to the conclusion that there was no sharp change in cultures. Some Howiesonsport technologies were used in a modified version by people of subsequent cultures. For example, the methods by which stone flakes were obtained passed from one culture to another; The technologies for making prismatic stone blades were preserved, but they were used to a lesser extent than during the existence of the Howiesons Port industry.

Previously, researchers believed that people of the Proto-Aurignacian culture contributed to the extinction of Neanderthals in Northern Italy. They were “neighbors”: ancient people appeared in this region 2-3 thousand years before the extinction of the Neanderthals.

Ekaterina Rusakova

For a long time, scientists have been trying to establish the exact period when homo sapiens began to actively spread across the planet. Archaeological finds have given us some clues, but finding the exact date is a difficult task. We can only guess at the time interval during which anatomically modern man actually began to exist.

1. Mummified remains of people from the Chinchorro culture

People began mummifying the dead long before the ancient Egyptians. The oldest known mummy is from the Chinchorro culture, dating back to 5050 BC, which is about 7 thousand years old. Today, 282 mummies have already been discovered in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, a third of them were preserved naturally, and the rest were made by the hands of fellow tribesmen who removed their organs and stuffed their bodies with vegetables.

2. Monte Verde, an archaeological site in Chile

Monte Verde was discovered in late 1975, and excavations established two different levels: Monte Verde I (MV-I) and Monte Verde II (MV-II). Level MV-II was inhabited by humans in the area between 12,000 and 16,000 years ago. A group of 20-30 people lived here. Archaeologists have even discovered their feces. In addition, a footprint (possibly of a child), stone tools, ropes, cords, as well as seeds and even potatoes were found.

3. Iceman Otzi

On September 19, 1991, two German tourists discovered a body frozen in ice in the Alps. After its extraction, archaeologists determined that Otzi is about 5 thousand years old. This mummy is the oldest in the world where the body was preserved naturally in natural conditions.

4. Bones of an adult and a child from a cave in Ireland

In November 2013, bones were found in a small, inaccessible cave on the slopes of Mount Knocknarea in Ireland. Upon further study of the cave space, other fragments of remains were found. Some of them belonged to a child, and some to an adult. Radiocarbon dating showed that the adult died only about 300 years ago, but the child died as much as 5,200 years ago.

5. Remains in Guar Kepa (Malaysia)

Human bones were discovered during construction work in Guar Kepa, Malaysia. Archaeologists immediately arrived at the area. In fact, excavations had already been carried out here 7 years earlier, as a result of which prehistoric shells, tools, pottery and food were found, but no human remains. Analysis of the bones showed that it was a woman, and the age of the skeleton is 5,700 years.

6. “Traces of Eve” in South Africa

In 1995, geologist David Roberts found three footprints on the shores of Langebaan Lagoon (South Africa). They were abandoned on a sand dune during a heavy rainstorm. Later, the wet tracks were filled with dry sand and crushed shells, which subsequently hardened like cement. The footprints were eventually buried at a depth of about 9 m. They are believed to be the footprints left by a woman and are as much as 117 thousand years old.

7. Drawings of prehistoric people in the Lascaux cave

Lascaux Cave (France) was discovered in 1940 by four teenagers. Having penetrated inside, they saw that the walls of the cave were covered with prehistoric drawings. These were large animals and fauna of the Upper Paleolithic. In total, there are more than 600 such drawings on the interior walls and ceiling, which were created by many generations of prehistoric people. They are estimated to be about 15-17 thousand years old.

8. Skara Brae, a Neolithic settlement

Skara Brae is one of the best-preserved settlements in Scotland, discovered in 1850. The village consisted of eight huts, and about 5 thousand years ago, about 50 people lived in it. Each hut measures 40 sq. m was equipped with a stone hearth for cooking and heating. Carved stone balls and a number of other artifacts made from the bones of animals, birds and fish were also found here.

9. Newgrange, Neolithic crematorium?

8 km from the Irish city of Drogheda there is a structure dating back 5,200 years, making it older than Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids. It is a large circular structure containing stone passages and chambers. The purpose of Newgrange is a mystery that has yet to be solved. By the way, the entrance to it coincides with the rising sun during the winter solstice. Both burnt and unburnt human bones were also found here.

10. Peche Merle, French cave with prehistoric paintings

In the French region of Cabrera there is a cave called "Pech Merle" covered with paintings from the Gravettian culture (about 27 thousand years ago), which proves that people existed already at that time. The cave has seven chambers filled with drawings of prehistoric fauna: spotted and solid-colored horses, mammoths, deer. Archaeologists also discovered human handprints and children's footprints in the clay.

In India, archaeological excavations are underway for an amazing culture that goes back four to five thousand years. Occupying an area of ​​1.3 million square kilometers, this ancient civilization was larger in size than its great contemporaries - Egypt and Mesopotamia combined. Its cities were strictly planned, like the new buildings of our time.

Comfortable homes

Oriental studies as a science originated in the 16th-17th centuries, when European countries embarked on the path of colonial conquest, although Europeans became acquainted with the Arab world many centuries ago. But Egyptology arose much later - the date of its birth is considered to be 1822, when the French scientist Champollion deciphered the system of Egyptian hieroglyphic writing. And only relatively recently, in 1922, archaeologists first began to explore the territory along the banks of the Indus River. And immediately there was a sensation: a previously unknown ancient civilization had been discovered. It was called the Harappan civilization - after one of its main cities - Harappa.

When Indian archaeologists D. R. Sahin and R. D. Banerjee were finally able to look at the results of their excavations, they saw the red-brick ruins of the oldest city in India, belonging to the proto-Indian civilization, a city quite unusual for the time of its construction - 4.5 thousand years ago. It was planned with the greatest meticulousness: the streets were laid out as if along a ruler, the houses were basically the same, with proportions reminiscent of cake boxes. But behind this “cake” shape there was sometimes hidden such a design: in the center there was a courtyard, and around it there were four to six living rooms, a kitchen and a room for ablutions (houses with this layout are found mainly in Mohenjo-Daro, the second big city) . The preserved stairwells in some houses suggest that two-story houses were also built. The main streets were ten meters wide, the network of passages obeyed a single rule: some ran strictly from north to south, and transverse ones - from west to east.

But this monotonous city, like a chessboard, provided residents with amenities unheard of at that time. Ditches flowed through all the streets, and from them water was supplied to the houses (although wells were found near many). But more importantly, each house was connected to a sewerage system laid underground in pipes made of baked bricks and carrying all sewage outside the city limits. This was an ingenious engineering solution that allowed large masses of people to gather in a fairly limited space: in the city of Harappa, for example, at times up to 80,000 people lived. The instinct of the city planners of that time was truly amazing! Knowing nothing about pathogenic bacteria, especially active in warm climates, but probably having accumulated observational experience, they protected settlements from the spread of dangerous diseases.

And ancient builders came up with another protection against natural adversities. Like the early great civilizations born on the banks of rivers - Egypt on the Nile, Mesopotamia on the Tigris and Euphrates, China on the Yellow River and Yangtze - Harappa arose in the Indus Valley, where the soils were highly fertile. But on the other hand, these very places have always suffered from high floods, reaching 5-8 meters in the flat river. To save cities from spring waters, in India they were built on brick platforms ten meters high and even higher. Nevertheless, cities were built in a short time, in a few years. In the best years of the Harappan civilization, smaller villages mushroomed around the cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro - there were about 1400 of them. To date, excavations have cleared only one tenth of the area of ​​​​the two ancient capitals. However, it has already been established that the uniformity of the buildings is being broken in some places. In Dolavir, which lies east of the Indus delta, archaeologists discovered richly decorated gates, arches with colonnades, and in Mohenjo-Daro - the so-called “Great Pool”, surrounded by a veranda with columns and rooms, probably for undressing.

Townspeople

Archaeologist L. Gottrel, who worked in Harappa in 1956, believed that in such barracks cities one could meet not people, but disciplined ants. “In this culture,” the archaeologist wrote, “there was little joy, but a lot of work, and material things played a predominant role.” However, the scientist was wrong. The strength of Harappan society was the urban population. According to the conclusions of current archaeologists, the city, despite its architectural impersonality, was inhabited by people who did not suffer from melancholy, but, on the contrary, were distinguished by enviable vital energy and hard work.

What did the people of Harappa do? The face of the city was determined by merchants and artisans. Here they spun yarn from wool, wove, made pottery - its strength is close to stone, cut bones, and made jewelry. Blacksmiths worked with copper and bronze, forging tools from it that were surprisingly strong for this alloy, almost like steel. They knew how to give some minerals such high hardness by heat treatment that they could drill holes in carnelian beads. The products of the masters of that time already had a unique appearance, a kind of ancient Indian design that has survived to this day. For example, today in peasant houses located in the excavation areas of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, there are things in household use that amazed archaeologists with their “proto-Indian” appearance. This circumstance only emphasizes the words of the founder of the Indian state, J. Nehru: “Throughout five thousand years of history of invasions and coups, India has maintained a continuous cultural tradition.” What is the basis of such constancy? Anthropologist G. Possel from the University of Pennsylvania (USA) came to the conclusion that this is the result of a combination in the character of the ancient Hindus of such qualities as prudence, peacefulness and sociability. No other historical civilization has combined these features together. Between 2600 and 1900 BC. e. the society of merchants and artisans is flourishing. The country then occupies more than one million square kilometers. Sumer and Egypt combined were half that size.

It was not by chance that the proto-Indian civilization arose on the banks of the Indus. As in Egypt and Mesopotamia, the river was the basis of life: it brought fertile silt from the upper reaches and, leaving it on the vast banks of the floodplain, maintained the high fertility of the land. People began to engage in agriculture in the ninth to seventh millennia. Now they no longer had to hunt or collect edible greens from morning to night; people had time to think, to make more advanced tools. Stable harvests gave man the opportunity to develop. A division of labor arose: one plowed the land, the other made stone tools, the third traded artisan products in neighboring communities for things his fellow tribesmen did not produce. This Neolithic revolution took place on the banks of the Nile, Tigris and Euphrates, Yellow River and Indus. Archaeologists in India have already excavated its late phase - when Harappa and other cities reached a certain perfection. By this time, people engaged in agricultural work had already learned to cultivate many crops: wheat, barley, millet, peas, sesame (this is also the birthplace of cotton and rice). They raised chickens, goats, sheep, pigs, cows and even zebu, fished and collected edible fruits grown by nature itself.

The prosperity of the Harappan civilization was based on highly productive agriculture (two crops were harvested a year) and cattle breeding. A 2.5 kilometer long artificial canal discovered at Lothal suggests that irrigation was used for agriculture. One of the researchers of Ancient India, Russian scientist A. Ya. Shchetenko, defines this period as follows: thanks to “magnificent alluvial soils, a humid tropical climate and proximity to the advanced centers of agriculture in Western Asia, already in the 4th-3rd millennia BC the population of the Indus Valley was significantly ahead in the progressive development of our southern neighbors."

Riddles of writing

The society of merchants and artisans, apparently, had neither a monarch nor priests at its head: in the cities there are no luxurious buildings intended for those who stand above the common people. There are also no magnificent grave monuments that even remotely resemble the Egyptian pyramids in their scale. Surprisingly, this civilization did not need an army, it had no campaigns of conquest, and it seems that it had no one to defend itself from. As far as the excavations allow us to judge, the inhabitants of Harappa did not have weapons. They lived in an oasis of peace - this is in perfect agreement with the description of the morals of the ancient Hindus given above.

Some researchers attribute the absence of fortresses and palaces in cities to the fact that ordinary citizens also took part in decisions important to society. On the other hand, numerous finds of stone seals with images of all kinds of animals indicate that the government was oligarchic, it was divided among clans of merchants and land owners. But this point of view is to some extent contradicted by another conclusion of archaeologists: in the excavated dwellings they found no signs of wealth or poverty of the owners. So maybe writing can answer these questions? Scholars studying the history of ancient India find themselves in a worse position than their colleagues studying the past of Egypt and Mesopotamia. In the last two civilizations, writing appeared many hundreds of years earlier than in Harappa. But it's not only that. Harappan writings are extremely sparse and, to say the least, laconic; pictorial signs, that is, hieroglyphs, are used in inscriptions in just a few - 5-6 hieroglyphs per text. The longest text was recently found, it has 26 characters. Meanwhile, inscriptions on household pottery objects are found quite often, and this suggests that literacy was not the lot of only the elite. The main thing, however, is that the decipherers still have a long way to go: the language is not known, and the writing system is not yet known.

At the present stage of work, the study of found objects of material culture becomes even more important. For example, an elegant figurine of a dancing woman fell into the hands of archaeologists. This gave reason to one of the historians to assume that the city loved music and dancing. Usually this kind of action is associated with the performance of religious rites. But what is the role of the “Great Pool” discovered in Mohenjo-daro? Did it serve as a bathhouse for residents or was it a place for religious ceremonies? It was not possible to answer such an important question: did the townspeople worship the same gods, or did each group have its own special god? There are new excavations ahead.

Archaeologists have a rule: to look for traces of its connections with them from the neighbors of the country being studied. The Harappan civilization found itself in Mesopotamia - its merchants visited the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates. This is evidenced by the merchant's indispensable companions - weights. The Harappan type of weights was standardized so that the weights from these sites are similar to labeled atoms. They are found in many places on the coast of the Arabian Sea, and if you move north, then on the shores of the Amu Darya. The presence of Indian merchants here is confirmed by the found seals of Harappan trading people (Doctor of Historical Sciences I. F. Albedil points out this in his book “The Forgotten Civilization in the Indus Valley”). Sumerian cuneiforms mention the overseas country of Meluh, or Meluhha; today's archeology identifies this name with Harappa. In one of the bays of the Arabian Sea, the port city of Lothal, which belonged to the Harappan complex, was recently found during excavations. There was a shipbuilding dock, a grain warehouse and a pearl processing workshop. What goods did proto-Indian merchants transport, for example, to Mesopotamia? Tin, copper, lead, gold, shells, pearls and ivory. All these expensive goods, as one might think, were intended for the ruler's court. Merchants also acted as intermediaries. They sold copper mined in Balochistan, a country lying to the west of the Harappan civilization, and gold, silver and lapis lazuli bought in Afghanistan. Construction timber was brought from the Himalayas by oxen. In the 19th century BC. e. Proto-Indian civilization ceased to exist. At first it was believed that she died from the aggression of the Vedo-Aryan tribes, who plundered farmers and merchants. But archeology has shown that cities liberated from sediment do not show signs of struggle and destruction by barbarian invaders. Moreover, recent research by historians has revealed that the Vedo-Aryan tribes were far from these places at the time of the death of Harappa. The decline of civilization was apparently due to natural causes. Climate change or earthquakes may have altered the flow of rivers or dried them out and depleted the soils. The farmers were no longer able to feed the cities, and the inhabitants abandoned them. The huge social and economic complex disintegrated into small groups. Writing and other cultural achievements were lost. There is nothing to suggest that the decline occurred overnight. Instead of empty cities in the north and south, new settlements appeared at this time, people moved east, to the Ganges valley.

Findings by archaeologists in India and on the territory of modern Pakistan suggest the existence of an ancient civilization stretching from Balochistan in Pakistan to Gujrat in India. This civilization was called the “Indus Valley Civilization” or “Harappan Civilization”, since the first finds were made in the town of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro in British India (at the beginning of the 20th century), in the Indus River Valley. Later, traces of the Harappan civilization were found in Gujarat (Lothal near Ahmedabad and other places)

The first inhabitants of the Indus River Valley were nomadic tribes who gradually settled down and took up farming and cattle breeding. Gradually, conditions were created for urbanization and the emergence of urban culture. Since 3500 BC Large cities with a population of up to 50,000 people appear in the Indian River Valley.

The cities of the Harappan civilization had a strict layout of streets and houses, a sewerage system and were perfectly adapted for life. Their device was so perfect that it did not change for a millennium! In its development, the Indus Valley Civilization was not inferior to the great civilizations of that time. From the cities there was lively trade with Mesopotamia, the Sumerian kingdom and Central Asia, and a unique system of weights and measures was used.

Archaeological finds also indicate a fairly high culture of the “Harappans”. Terracotta and bronze figurines, models of carts, seals, and jewelry were found. These finds are the oldest artifacts of Indian culture.

By the beginning of the second millennium BC, the Indus Valley Civilization fell into decline and disappeared from the face of the earth for unknown reasons.

In the early twenties of the now last century, the Indian scientist R. Sahni led the first expedition to the Indus River delta to find the ruins of a temple that belonged to the most ancient deity - “old Shiva”. The temple was mentioned in many legends of the Ho people, whose possessions in ancient times bordered the territory that belonged to the northern maharajas. Myths told “about mountains of heavenly gold stored in the dungeons of the temple”... So there was still a considerable incentive to rummage through the swampy ground.

Imagine Sahni’s surprise when his people began to dig out from the ground entire city blocks of multi-story buildings, imperial palaces, huge statues made of bronze and pure iron. From under the shovels one could see pavements equipped with deep gutters for carriage wheels, gardens, parks, courtyards and wells. Closer to the outskirts, luxury diminished: here one- and two-story buildings of four to six rooms with a toilet were grouped around central courtyards with wells. The city was surrounded by a wall of rough, unhewn, but very tightly adjacent stones, alternating with adobe brickwork. The citadel was an even taller and stronger stronghold, equipped with several towers. A real and very cleverly designed water supply system was installed in the imperial chambers - and this was three and a half thousand years before the discovery of the laws of hydraulics by Pascal!

Considerable surprise was caused by the excavations of huge libraries, represented by repositories of stearine tablets with pictograms that have not yet been deciphered. Images and figurines of animals, which also had mysterious writings, were also kept there. Experts who established some periodicity of the signs came to the conclusion that a rhymed epic or religious prayers in verse were written down here. Among the metal products found were copper and bronze knives, sickles, chisels, saws, swords, shields, arrowheads and spearheads. No iron objects could be found. Obviously, people had not yet learned how to mine it by that time. It came to Earth only with meteorites and was considered a sacred metal on a par with gold. Gold served as a setting for ritual objects and women's jewelry. Sahni's expedition accidentally ended up in the center of the large ancient city of Harappa. Archaeologists have dug up more than a thousand monuments over hundreds of kilometers around. There were large merchant cities, small villages, seaports and border fortresses. Copper weights with ancient Chinese hieroglyphs suggested foreign trade relations.

By the middle of the 20th century, excavations began to decline. However, the curiosity of researchers did not dry up. After all, the main mystery remained - what was the reason for the death of a great and formidable civilization?

About thirty years ago, New York researcher William Fairservice claimed to be able to recognize some Harappan writings found in the capital's library. And seven years later, Indian scientists tried to combine what they “read” with the ancient legends of the peoples of India and Pakistan, after which they came to interesting conclusions. It turns out that Harappa arose long before the third millennium. On its territory there were at least three warring states of different cultures. The strong are weak, so in the end there were only rival countries with administrative centers in Mohend-Daro and Harappa. The long war ended with an unexpected peace, the kings shared power. Then the most powerful of them killed the rest and thereby appeared before the face of the gods. Soon the villain was found killed, and royal power passed into the hands of the supreme ruler. Thanks to contacts with the “highest mind,” the priests passed on useful knowledge to people. In just a couple of years, the inhabitants of Harappa were already making full use of huge flour mills, granaries equipped with conveyors, foundries, and sewers. Carts pulled by elephants moved along the city streets. In large cities there were theaters, museums and even circuses with wild animals! During the last period of Harappan existence, its inhabitants learned to mine charcoal and build primitive boiler houses. Now almost every city dweller could take a hot bath! The townspeople extracted natural phosphorus and used some plants to illuminate their homes. They were familiar with winemaking and opium smoking, as well as the full range of amenities that civilization offered. Which destroyed them.

Until now, no one knows what was the main reason for the death of a developed centralized state. This was explained in different ways: flooding, a sharp deterioration in climate, epidemics, enemy invasions. However, the flood version was soon ruled out, because no traces of the elements were visible in the ruins of cities and soil layers. Versions about epidemics were not confirmed either. Conquest was also excluded, since there were no traces of the use of bladed weapons on the skeletons of the Harappan inhabitants. One thing was obvious: the suddenness of the disaster. And just recently, scientists Vincenti and Davenport put forward a new hypothesis: civilization died from an atomic explosion caused by aerial bombardment!

The entire center of the city of Mohenjo-Daro was destroyed so that no stone was left unturned. The pieces of clay found there looked melted, and structural analysis showed that the melting occurred at a temperature of about 1600 degrees! Human skeletons have been found on the streets, in houses, in basements and even in underground tunnels. Moreover, the radioactivity of many of them exceeded the norm by more than 50 times! In the ancient Indian epic there are many legends about terrible weapons, “sparkling like fire, but having no smoke.” The explosion, after which darkness covers the sky, gives way to hurricanes, “bringing evil and death.” Clouds and earth - all this mixed together, in chaos and madness even the sun began to quickly walk in a circle! Elephants, scorched by the flames, rushed about in horror, the water boiled, the fish were charred, and the warriors rushed into the water to wash away the “deadly dust.”

Researcher R. Furduy believes that such weapons of mass destruction could well have existed among the ancients, who gained knowledge after contacts with “extraterrestrial intelligence.” But, however, what difference does it make to us where this deadly weapon came to Earth from! Isn't the Harappan civilization a terrible omen that our civilization will soon destroy us too!

English explorer D. Davenport He devoted 12 years to studying the excavations of the city. IN 1996 he made a sensational statement that this spiritual center of the Harappan civilization had been destroyed 2000 BC as a result of a nuclear explosion! By studying the ruins of the city's buildings, one can determine the center of the explosion, the diameter of which is about 50 m. At this place everything is crystallized and melted. At a distance of up to 60 m from the center of the explosion, bricks and stones are melted on one side, indicating the direction of the explosion. The stones melt at a temperature of about 2000°C.

Another mystery for researchers remains the very high level of radiation in the area of ​​the explosion. Also in 1927 archaeologists have found 27 fully preserved human skeletons. Even now, the level of their background radiation is close to the radiation dose that the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki received!

afterword:

Ancient Indian scriptures mention more than 94 types of nuclear weapons called brahmastra. To activate it, you just had to touch the water for purification and, with concentration, say a special mantra. There is a mention of it in the work Mahabharata. Mohenjo-daro could well have been destroyed by this type of weapon.

A new genetic analysis of archaeological finds has revealed that some of Europe's early inhabitants mysteriously disappeared towards the end of the last Ice Age, and were largely replaced by others.

The discovery is confirmed by analysis of dozens of ancient fossil remains collected throughout Europe. The genetic replacement is likely the result of rapid climate change to which Europeans previously failed to adapt quickly enough, says study co-author Cosimo Post, a doctoral student in archaeogenetics at the University of Tübingen in Germany.

The temperature change at that time was "huge compared to climate change in our century", Post said. “Imagine that the environment has changed quite dramatically.”

Intertwined family tree

Europe has a long and complicated genetic heritage. Genetic studies have shown that the first modern humans to pour out of Africa, some 40,000 to 70,000 years ago, soon began mating with local Neanderthals. At the beginning of the agricultural revolution, 10-12 thousand years ago, farmers from the Middle East swept across Europe, gradually displacing local hunter-gatherers. About 5 thousand years ago, nomadic horsemen called Yamnaya emerged from the steppes of what is now Ukraine and mixed with the local population. Additionally, according to a 2013 study published in the journal Nature Communications, another lost group of ancient Europeans has been found that mysteriously disappeared about 4.5 thousand years ago.

Relatively little was known about man's occupation of Europe between his first appearance outside Africa and the end of the last ice age, about 11 thousand years ago. At that time, the huge Vistula Ice Sheet covered much of northern Europe, while glaciers in the Pyrenees and Alps blocked east-west passage across the continent.

Lost Origins

To get a more complete picture of Europe's genetic legacy during the cooling period, Post and his colleagues analyzed mitochondrial DNA, the genetic material passed from mother to daughter, from the remains of 55 different human fossils dating back between 35,000 and 7,000 years ago. from all over the continent, from Spain to Russia. Based on mutations, or changes, in this mitochondrial DNA, geneticists have identified a large number of genetic populations, or super-haplogroups, that share common distant ancestors.

"Basically all modern humans outside of Africa, from Europe to the tip of South America, belong to these two super-haplogroups M and N.", says Post. Currently, every European has the N-mitochondrial haplotype, while the M-subtype is distributed throughout Asia and Australia.

Scientists have discovered that the ancient people of the M-haplogroup prevailed until a certain period about 14.5 thousand years ago, when they suddenly mysteriously and suddenly disappeared. The M-haplotype, which was carried by ancient Europeans (now non-existent in Europe), had a common ancestor with modern carriers of the M-haplotype about 50 thousand years ago.

Genetic analysis also suggests that Europeans, Asians and Australians may be descended from a group of people who emerged from Africa and rapidly spread across the continent no earlier than 55,000 years ago.

Time of upheaval

The team suspects that these upheavals were caused by wild climate fluctuations.

“At the peak of the Ice Age, about 19-22 thousand years ago, people squatted in climate “refugia” or ice-free areas of Europe, such as modern Spain, the Balkans and southern Italy.”, says Post. While the "draft dodgers" survived in a few places further north, their population declined sharply.

“Then, about 14.5 thousand years ago, temperatures underwent a significant jump, the tundra gave way to forest and many iconic animals of that era, such as mammoths and saber-toothed tigers, disappeared from Eurasia.”, - he said.

For some reason, the already small populations belonging to the M-haplogroups were unable to survive these changes in their habitat, and also a new population carrying the N-subtype replaced the deviant Ice Age M-group, the researchers believe.

"Where exactly these replacements took place is still a mystery. But there is a possibility that the new generation of Europeans hailed from southern European refuges that were connected to the rest of Europe after the Thaw.", - Post suggested. "Immigrants from southern Europe were also better adapted to warming conditions in Central Europe.".