Category: Art

The ruins of a pre-Aryan civilization have been discovered at Mohenjodaro (Sind) and Harappa (Montgomery Distt. of Punjab) in Pakistan and, as the places lie in the valley of the river Indus, the discovery has been christened the Indus Valley Civilization.Excavations carried out at Ropar (Punjab-India), Lothal in the Ahmedabad district (Gujarat), Kalibangan in Ganganagar (Rajasthan) and several other places have estab­lished their link with the Indus Valley Civilization. It is 5,000 years old and flourished between 3000 — 1500 B.C.It was a highly developed urban civilization; possessed modern amenities like underground drainage, well laid-out roads, etc. The people had a highly developed artistic sense, which is reflected in their paintings on the vases and the gold ornaments. Their pictorial script has not been deciphered so far. Image Source: upload.wikimedia.org…

The San are the people of southern Africa who traditionally have lived as hunter-gatherer, grouped into small bands of 30 to 100. They have also been called as Bushmen but this designation is now considered pejorative.Today, the only surviving hunter-gatherer (San) is found in Botswana, Namibia and Angola. The San population is estimated at about 50,000 (in 2001). They camp only a few weeks at one place and do hunting and gathering over an area of up to 600 sq. kms around the camp.The term ‘Bushmen’ (Boschimanner) was given in the 17th century by the Dutch settlers to the diminutive hunting peoples of South Africa. Image Source: static.guim.co.uk ADVERTISEMENTS: Today, the Bushmen are mainly confined in the barren inhospitable environment of the desert of Kalahari (Namibia, Botswana, and Angola) and…

Environmental change is a continual process that has been in operation since the earth came into existence about 4,500 million years ago.Since then, dynamic systems of energy and material transfers have operated on a global scale to bring about gradual and sometimes catastrophic transfor­mations of the atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere and biosphere.For most of the earth history, the agents of change have been the natural forces like volcanoes, earthquakes and natural elements of wind, ice, water, plants and animals; all of these have interacted to produce dynamic ecosystems that both controls are controlled by each other (Mannion, 1991). Image Source: minapacific.org ADVERTISEMENTS: About four or five million years ago, however, a new agent of change emerged in the form of hominids (ancestor of ape) culminating in the evolution of Homo sapiens…