Outlook, Harappan Satellite dishes, potter's wheels

[Steve Farmer]

I didn't see Michael Witzel's response on the Outlook article
before I
posted mine.

Michael writes, on parallels to mythologized history outside India:

> All of these, plus some very recent comparable gems from Japan, China, and
> Vietnam, have now been conveniently collected by E.Brooks at his web site
> of the Warring States of early China:
> http://www.umass.edu/wsp/method/antiquity/index.html
> (It also includes Steve's world shaking discovery of satellite dishes at
> 2600-1900 BCE !)

I wasn't going to post my satirical piece on Harappan satellite
dishes -- inspired by Rajaram's "horses" and Sethna's "chariots"
and similar things -- but since our friend E. Bruce Brooks posted
it for the Sinologists, and Michael alludes to it, here is the
direct URL:

http://www.safarmer.com/sethna/satellitedish.html

Bruce's whole site is well worth perusal, however. Sinologists
and Indologists and Mesoamericanists, etc., need to collaborate more.

ON HYPOTHETICAL HARAPPAN SPOKED POTTER'S WHEELS -- a topic raised
on this List yesterday:

It's true that spoked potter's wheels are known in *historical*
times in South Asia. But no evidence suggests that they existed
in the Harappan period. In any event, the fact that spoked wheels
like this existed thousands of years after the fall of Indus
Valley civilization doesn't mean that the occasionally vaguely
roundish, or much more often oval, or pointy/oval, objects with
crossed lines on them that we find on Harappan seals are inspired
by such wheels, as is often stated. As Michael suggests
in his Outlook summary, they might be inspired by potter's wheels
or just about anything else. The following syllogism isn't valid:

1.Some potter's wheels are spoked;

2. In the Indus script, some vaguely roundish or oval or oval/pointy
signs have crossed lines in the middle;

3.Vaguely roundish or oval or oval/pointy signs with
crossed lines are inspired by potter's wheels.

The syllogism becomes even less valid when we substitute
"potter's wheels" with "spoked chariot wheels," since evidence suggests
that spoked-wheeled chariots didn't exist anywhere on the planet
in mature Harappan times.

You don't need *either* spoked chariot wheels *or* spoked potter's
wheels to get vaguely roundish, or oval, or oval/pointy symbols with
crossed lines in the middle. Recall, please, the *totally* round
symbols with crossed lines in the middle found in the 2nd millennium
BCE in advanced North American Indian cultures (e.g., Poverty
Point) --
which had neither wheeled transport *nor* spoked potter's wheels.

Recall, also, that the oval or oval/pointy objects with crossed
lines in the center found in Harappan signs also exist in many
variant forms in the Indus script in which those crossed lines
are replaced by other contents (many examples cited
by me in a post yesterday). The suggestion here is that the
variable contents in these objects may be modifying signs
or determinatives of some sort.

Sidelight on the "potter's wheel argument": Curiously, most of
the time the "potter's wheel argument" has been used by Indian
nationalists and supporters (like Elst) to argue that the Rgveda
*doesn't* refer to spoked chariot wheels! (This gives them room
to argue that the RV goes way back to the 3d or 4th or 5th
millennium BCE, thousands of years before the invention of
spoked chariots.) Thus, in an online debate some
months ago, first vs. Kalyanaraman and Elst, and later vs.
S. Talageri, the argument was repeatedly raised that famous RV
hymns like 1.164, which use spoked wheels as cosmological
symbols, allude to "spoked potter's wheels" and not
to chariot wheels. Unfortunately for this view, there are countless
references to fast chariots (which had spoked wheels) in the
RV, and NOT ONE reference to potters or potter's wheels,
so far as I recall. But the "revisionists" (aka "mythologizers")
are fond of the "potter's wheel" argument nonetheless.

But, leaving imaginary Harappan chariots and conjectural
Harappan spoked potter's wheels behind, I would like to
emphasize that I *do* recognize many familiar objects in Harappan
signs. The most important of these, unquestionably, is the
everyday "Harappan Satellite Dish" sign discussed in the
webpage that M. Witzel has noted:

http://www.safarmer.com/sethna/satellitedish.html

Many more major discoveries just this valid are waiting for
enterprising historical "revisionists." The satellite-dish
resemblance is certainly closer to reality than Rajaram's
"horses" or Sethna's "chariots." All that is needed is
a little faith!

Lesson: You can find many things in Harappan signs that aren't there.
If you need more evidence besides the "satellite dish," M. Witzel
and I have scanned in many more suggestive images. Hopefully for
everyone's sanity, we won't have to post them.

Faithfully,
Steve Farmer