Giacomo Benedetti

Finding in Djarkutan of cranial trepanation 4000 years ago.

Seals from the bronze age Bactria-Margiana archaeological complex/BMAC or the Oxus civilization depicting performance of fire worship with altar and ritual drinking by seated figures.

West Bengal government formation updates: Suvendu Adhikari meets Bengal Governor, stakes claim to form government share.google/XUJsTu36aIgTBq…

@Light3675 It seems to be one of the oldest representations of horse-riding, together with Ur III Abbakalla seal.

@giac77 No surprise, afaik Kura Araxes also used horses to some capacity. Probably the Steppe migration into Armenia during late mid 3rd millennium BCE brought it there or linked the channel between Caucasus and Steppe

Interesting research about Kunara in Kurdistan, with (mounted?) horses at the end of 3rd millennium and unknown capacity unit, the "gur of Subartu": recherche.pantheonsorbonne.fr/actualite/le-s…

See also: csmc.uni-hamburg.de/publications/m…

@DwivedulaKumar @Vritrahan2014 @gyanc7 Spoked wheels are quite evident also in Harappan terracotta wheels with painted or relief spokes. Mehrgarh amulets however have no place for an axle, they are not proper wheels, likely symbols of the circle of the seasons.

@Vritrahan2014 @giac77 @gyanc7 So the claim that the spoked wheel did not exist in india before the putative “aryans” brought them as chariots and that the chariots that did exist in india before 1500 BCE were ones with solid wheels and so they were less nimble and more like slower carts - all this is wrong?

Copper/Bronze wheel. Part of a toy cart or chariot. From Sankissa, Uttar Pradesh. Approximately 3,000 years old Now preserved at the Shahjad Rai Research Institute, Baraut. This copper wheel is reminiscent of the 6,000-year-old copper spoked-wheel amulet from Mehrgarh. See here: new-indology.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-wh… Photo and Info: Dr. @AmitRaiJain1

@sarvamedha The coloring reminds the Tibetan style, I don't know a parallel in Indian tradition, and village brick houses of the region are not painted like that.

I think there should be more trees here, especially pipal which features prominently in Harappan iconography.

This is a furnace discovered at Malhar, dating approximately from 2000 to 1800 BCE, which is made of iron. All the iron tools recovered from this site belong to the same period or to a time close to it.

@Light3675 Yes, also Hakra ware should be IE. The culture that spread to Indus and Sarasvati valleys was the root of Indo-Aryan, I don't believe it was replaced later.

@giac77 So you don't regard Hakra Ware as IE in your theory? And as I mentioned in 3 other replies, skeletal anthropology is not conclusive and can allow multiple interpretations, we would need aDNA to single out one of them.

“The exact origin of bread wheat (Triticum aestivum) is still a mystery, but researchers believe they are edging closer to the source of one of the most important food staples worldwide. Using genetic studies and ancient plant remains, an international team of scientists has narrowed the location and timeline to the Neolithic period(around 8,000 years ago) in Georgia, in the South Caucasus.” phys.org/news/2026-04-a…

@nrken19 Sabines in fact belonged to the Osco-Umbrian group of languages, so they were cousins of the Umbrians rather than descendants.

“The autochthonous theory says that they had been in the Latium region since Prehistory. In that case, it is possible that, as Dionysius of Halicarnassus believed, their ancestors were the Umbrians, another Italic people of Indo-European language, whose presence there is attested since the second millennium B.C., and who belonged to the same family as the Volsci, Marsians, and Samnites, settled from north to south after a series of migrations along the Apennines, following the Latins.”

@Light3675 Hakra ware is more eastern, but the earliest pottery in Mehrgarh II has western origin. Unfortunately there is no information about the affinities of Mehrgarh II population. We would need aDNA anyway.

@giac77 Technologically Mehrgarh seems to be higher compared to Hakra Ware, so a potential migration is possible from Mehrgarh III / Togau (c. 4000 BCE) which has links with Gomal and Mundigak).

@Light3675 From Mehrgarh III to Harappa there is anthropological continuity, as shown by Lukacs, what is the problem with RV? The loss of earlier oral poetry doesn't mean that they belonged to a different language.

@giac77 Indo-Iranian arrival in Indus Valley as early as 4400 BCE is too early in the non-Steppe framework (if someone argues for RV being 2800 BCE then still understandable but you date it to 2000 BCE so)

@Light3675 Archaeologically, there is continuity from Neolithic Mehrgarh, and anthropologically at least from Chalcolithic Mehrgarh, so there is no support for the arrival of new people in Early Harappan.

@giac77 Furthermore, late introduction aligns with linguistic arguments much better, especially that of Gamkrelidze-Ivanov. You anyway date RV c. 2000 BCE beginning, so older presence in Indus is unnecessary, though material evidence shows continuity from Pre-Harappan to Early Harappan

@Light3675 Hi, the movements look good, but quite late, what is the reason for those dates?

@giac77 Hey Giacomo, I've been recently exploring the non-Steppe route again after reviewing Anatolian genomes. What do you think about this? Not a proper hypothesis yet, but a rough outline

Every West Eurasian genome from 9000 BCE onward carries Iran_N ancestry, the signature of Zagros Neolithic farmers. It shows up in Anatolia Neolithic, in CHG, in the Yamnaya itself via the CHG component, in Indus Periphery individuals, in every modern Iranian, Kurd, Baloch, Gujarati, Brahmin, Tamil. The only population on earth that had Iran_N ancestry before anyone else is the Zagros Neolithic population itself. You don't get more central than being upstream of literally everyone. 4/15 pics👇 p1: Lazaridis_2024 Triangle plots of Yamnaya formation. The CHG vertex is pulling Iran_N ancestry north into the steppe, not the other way around. p2: Formation of South Asian ancestry. Iran_N component is the deepest, oldest, and largest layer in every population. p3: Even the Yamnaya themselves are roughly 50 percent CHG, which is itself downstream of Iran_N. The "steppe" homeland hypothesis depends on ancestry that originated in the Zagros-Caucasus zone.

The Swastika and Śrīvatsa symbols on this 4,500-year-old Harappan seal from Mohenjo Daro, Sindh are easily recognizable to anyone in the Dharmic world and beyond. Although neither is exclusive to Indians, both continue to hold important cultural significance for them even today.