Religion
religion emerged with certainty in the Upper Paleolithic around 50,000 years ago. Upper Paleolithic religion was possibly shamanic, centered on the phenomenon of special spiritual leaders entering trance states to receive esoteric knowledge. These practices are extrapolated from the rich and complex body of art left by Paleolithic artists, particularly the elaborate cave art and enigmatic Venus figurines they produced.
12,000 BC ushered in the Neolithic. Neolithic society grew hierarchical and inegalitarian compared to its Paleolithic forebears, and their religious practices likely changed to suit. Neolithic religion may have become more structural and centralised than in the Paleolithic, and possibly engaged in ancestor worship both of one's individual ancestors and of the ancestors of entire groups, tribes, and settlements. A well-known feature of Neolithic religion is the stone circles in the British Isles and Brittany, of which the most prominent today is Stonehenge.
A particularly notable feature of late-Neolithic through Chalcolithic religion is Proto-Indo-European mythology, the religion of the Proto-Indo-Europeans.
The Proto-Indo-European pantheon includes a number of securely reconstructed deities, since they are both cognates—linguistic siblings from a common origin—and associated with similar attributes and body of myths: such as *Dyḗws Ph₂tḗr, the daylight-sky god; his consort *Dʰéǵʰōm, the earth mother; his daughter *H₂éwsōs, the dawn goddess; his sons the Divine Twins; and *Seh₂ul and *Meh₁not, a solar deity and moon deity, respectively.
Some myths are also securely dated to Proto-Indo-European times, since they feature both linguistic and thematic evidence of an inherited motif: a story portraying a mythical figure associated with thunder and slaying a multi-headed serpent to release torrents of water that had previously been pent up; a creation myth involving two brothers, one of whom sacrifices the other in order to create the world; and probably the belief that the Otherworld was guarded by a watchdog and could only be reached by crossing a river
Blog ancient india
COMPARATIVE STUDY OF INDUS & VEDIC CIVILIZATIONS
The history of ancient India is a glorious one; unfortunately we have very little information on this rich culture. The history divided between civilizations mark their differences as well as the progress /digress of ancient society.
(As said in Vedic Age; pg.100 )– ‘Inspite of its seeming diversity there was a large measure of cultural unity and the goal of political union was never lost sight of. This unity in diversity is the keynote of the tangled history of India and forms the background against which the seemingly complex developments in various aspects of Indian civilization must be viewed’. Civilization can be studied based on the salient features of its periodicity, societal arrangement, its cultural representation, political aspirations, religious beliefs and its rise or decline.
On these broad classifications, we can study two major civilizations of India – Indus and Vedic.
These two civilizations have not only played a major role in the development of ancient India, but have also left a lineage that still continues to shape our present Indian culture.
PERIODICTY: Till 20th century, historians thought that the Vedic society was the earliest civilization of India. However study done by 2 archaeologists–Dayaram Sahani and Raakhaldas Banerjee proved that Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, though 1400 kms apart, were a part of one civilization older than Vedic.
Since the region spanned India across the coastal western belt and along the Indus River, the civilization was called Indus Civilization.
Indus civilization was at its peak around 2500 B.C.E.
After the decline of Indus Civilization, a new civilization grew which was dominated by the Aryans and came to be known as the Vedic Civilization. The period extended from 1500 B.C.E to 500 B.C.E.
The Indus civilization was spread across the Indus valley (river Sindhu). It spread in the North from Harappa in Punjab province (Pakistan) to Bhogtrar in South Gujarat (1400 kms). In the east, there was Alamgir (Meerut) and to its West was Sutkagen Dor in Baluchistan, next to Iran (1600 kms). Thus, the Indus valley spread across 12.15 lac sq.km.