photo n text credit Harappa Green stone (fuchsite) drinking glass with finely polished exterior surface and sparkling internal crystal facets. Mark Kenoyer writes: One famous stone vessel found at Mohenjo-daro is a tall glass with concave sides that is similar in shape to ritual columns found in Balochistan and Afghanistan. This green stone, called fuchsite, is rare, but it can occur with quartzite which is common throughout Balochistan and Afghanistan. When this fuchsite vessel was first examined by a geologist in the 1930s, the only know source was Mysore State, over 1600 km south of the Indus Valley. Early scholars suggested that the stone was brought to the Indus cities from the south along with gold and ivory, but both of these important raw materials were actually available from nearby sources. Herds of elephants lived in the thick forest of Gujarat or the easter Punjab, so ovory could have been obtained by Indus hunters themselves or traded from tribal communities living on the edge of the Indus plain. Gold was easily obtained from the sands of the upper Indus where it is still panned by itinerant miners. Another source of gold was along the Oxus river valley in northern Afghanistan where a trading colony of the Indus cities has been discovered at Shortughai. Situated far from the Indus Valley itself, this settlement may have been established to obtain gold, copper, tin and lapis lazuli, as well as other exotic goods from Central Asia (Ancient Cities, p. 96).
Posted on: Thu, 10 Jul 2014 16:56:52 +0000
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