Harking Back: The beginning of Lahore … before the beginning

Last week at the conclusion of the climate change conference in Egypt, a handout was issued about how the first humans left Africa and spread out all over the world, and how their numbers have multiplied today threatening the Earth itself.

This column is just short of 20 years old, and along the way scores of dedicated readers have constantly wished that I dwell on the most ancient origins of Lahore. Let’s say before the beginning. Mind you we must start from the whole picture and then focus, slowly, on our dear city.

The first humans to move into the lands surrounding Lahore were the first nomadic Africans moving up the river banks almost 120,000 years ago. They were East Africans, most likely, for they moved along the coasts on the east. From the Original Australians to the first humans heading northwards in Europe, they spread in every direction.

Over time given comparative sun exposure, climate differences, work varieties, food types, the mingling of tribes, and numerous other factors, different races emerged. But all of them basically hunter-gatherers, who had learnt to live off tree fruits and finally became hunter-gatherers-herders. The nomad had been created.

As these herders and hunters settled down the very first cities of the sub-continent were created. At Mehrgarh in Balochistan the world’s oldest known ‘planned’ city came about almost 12,000 years ago. As these herders moved northwards we see the emergence of Mohanjo Daro almost 7,000-plus years ago. With the availability of land and ample water from the river, agriculture emerged.

Over time we see the emergence of Harappa almost 4,000-plus years ago, with an algorithmic estimated population of 23,000 and huge grain silos. The foundations of settlements were emerging. Along with this we see two major factors that could be attributed to the emergence of Lahore the city on the banks of the River Ravi.

The annual monsoon floods saw the population head towards high mounds which high flood waters could not reach. At least this is the latest theory emerging in Cambridge Archaeology Department where experts have used complex empirical weather data algorithms to predict that the mounds of Lahore fort and old city were perfect places to retire to, places like Harappa and other locations.

The lack of archaeological diggings in Lahore, for which this newspaper has constantly pleaded, have considerably contributed to absence of scientific data about the city’s beginnings. However, two matters certainly do contribute to marking the beginnings.

Firstly, in 1959 the British Archaeological Department dug opposite the Diwan-e-Aam a 180 by 60 feet trench that slowly went down to 50 feet uncovering seven stages of known human dwellings. At the lowest level pottery was discovered which was carbon-dated at 4,500 years. This matches up with what the latest Cambridge Archaeology research, led by Dr Cameron Petrie, speculates. In terms of algorithms it makes perfect sense, as also as carbon-dating data matches it. This report is still marked as ‘Official Secret’. Imagine.

But then there is additional proof of another set of pottery discovered by diggings by traders in Mohallah Maullian inside Lohari Gate, where carbon-dating times them at 3,500 years. So it is clear that the mounds of Lahore were the first places to be inhabited. Even today they remain the highest points of the now expanded city.

Given this major factor in the founding of Lahore, we have another very important factor, and that was the flow of trade to and from the West and mainland sub-continent. There were two main routes for this flow of trade. Firstly, goods headed towards and from numerous ports on the Indian western coast, flowing to and from Africa and the Middle East.

Secondly, goods moved towards the River Ravi, and Lahore’s port of Khzri Darwaza (renamed Sheranwala) on the Ravi where large boats and small ships headed towards Multan and Kolachi (Karachi), which since ancient times has been a very important port for goods to transit.

We see that as the nomads settled on the mounds of Lahore they slowly started collecting seeds to grow plants. This innovation of sorts, certainly led by women, and the availability of ample land and water, the first crop was rice. Once rice was collected it had to be stored, and that needed settlements. What safer place than a settlement on a mound.

This needed a ‘protected’ settlement, which took the shape much later of a walled city, as well as the emergence of the highest mound in the shape of a fort. The once moving camp of the nomad to function required a quasi-military organisation, where individual freedom was restricted. The birth of the ruler, known as a ‘raja’, came about and the origins of the Rajput tribe can be seen here.

This form of collective living needed organising giving birth to the institution of marriage and the family. As the main source of food was the sheep and cow flock, the need to look after them needed a lot of children. Hence we see the emergence of kinship where the male was seen as the source of ancestry.

But then the need to store grains saw the weakening of the nomadic way of life itself. In a way the presence of a settlement also meant that primitive man, more so women, took advantage of nearby forests and pastures. It was the birth of primitive agriculture as nearby land was being cleared. The tribe began to more and more depend on stored food than on hunting, and hence the primitive village, or the origin of Lahore on the mounds, came about.

Cultivation in the sub-continent took two main strands, the first being rice which needed fertile land and ample water supply, and, secondly, wheat which requires much less water and could be grown anywhere along river tracts. For the nomad this was a most suitable crop to depend on. If we look at crop outputs today we see that Punjab and a settlement like Lahore, as also Multan, concentrated on wheat cultivation. We also see that the wandering nomad was settled down in a fixed area, and a union of families and tribes emerged.

The wheat-fed population of Punjab and other cities like Lahore and Multan, bred a ‘comparatively taller’ race, as opposed to the rice-fed populations of Bengal and the eastern portions of the sub-continent. A guaranteed food stock invited theft, and invasions.

Constant invasions by faraway people of Turkish, Persian, Afghan, Caucasians and Central Asians stock like the Mongols, led to them being opposed by a union of the quasi-military clans, whose stories have surely been lost in obscurity. Call it the limits of recorded history.

The earliest such clans were described as having broad noses (platyrhine) just like the Original Australians. These people worshiped purely local ‘godlings’ mostly depicting animals and objects they experienced. These ‘godlings’ could be in the shape of an idol, or a stone, or even a rounded stone all of them daubed in vermillion colour as a mark of reverence. Women offered milk or fruit and sat on these ‘fertility awarding’ stones.

Every settlement had a ‘pipal’ (fig) tree to provide shade from the scorching sun. The river itself was revered, and the earliest civilisation was surely a Dravidian heliolithic one, with the Sun and the Serpent having a special place for them to be worshipped. The Aryan had yet to arrive, and arrive they did to steal the food and wealth of our land, in the process changing the very culture, beliefs and languages of our land and cities. Primitive Lahore had been born.