New Delhi: Nearly 900 km southwest of New Delhi, an excavation in Prime Minister Modi’s hometown in Gujarat’s Vadnagar unveiled evidence of cultural continuity in the Indian subcontinent since 800 BCE. implying that the “Dark Age” was a myth and that cultures continuously existed in the region without total annihilation during the last 5,500 years.
Conducted by a team of experts from IIT Kharagpur, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), and Deccan College, the study unearthed traces of a human settlement dating back to 800 BCE in the Gujarat town.
“The study also indicates that the rise and fall of different kingdoms during the 3,000-year period and recurrent invasions of India by central Asian warriors were driven by severe change in climate like rainfall or droughts. The findings [have been] just published in a paper titled ‘Climate, human settlement, and migration in South Asia from early historic to medieval period: evidence from new archaeological excavation at Vadnagar, Western India’ in the prestigious Elsevier journal Quaternary Science Reviews,” it said.
“Vadnagar was a multicultural and multireligious (Buddhist, Hindu, Jain and Islamic) settlement. Excavation in several deep trenches revealed the presence of seven cultural stages (periods) namely, Mauryan, Indo-Greek, Indo-Scythian or Shaka-Kshatrapas (AKA ‘Satraps’, descendants of provincial governors of ancient Achaemenid Empires, Hindu-Solankis, Sultanate-Mughal (Islamic) to Gaekwad-British colonial rule and the city endures even today. One of the oldest Buddhist monasteries has been discovered during our excavation. We found characteristic archaeological artefacts, potteries, copper, gold, silver and iron objects and intricately designed bangles. We also found coin moulds of the Greek king Appollodatus during the Indo-Greek rule at Vadnagar,” said ASI archaeologist Dr. Abhijit Ambekar, co-author of the paper, said in an official statement.
The findings imply that the “Dark Age” was a myth and that cultures continuously existed in the region without total annihilation during the last 5,500 years. The period between the collapse of the Indus Valley Civilisation and the appearance of the Iron Age and cities such as Gandhar in present-day Afghanistan and Koshal in present-day Uttar Pradesh in India is referred to as the Dark Age.
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