430 ANNUAL REPOET SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 3 2 



millenia is bound to add enormously to our knowledge and under- 

 standing. But also the races, religions, and arts of ancient Baluch- 

 istan, of Sumer and Elam, and of other countries still farther afield 

 come into this new circle of illumination. For bit by bit, item by 

 item, the Indus Valley finds, in conjunction with those of Sumer 

 and elsewhere, are revealing the close Imowledge that the ancient 

 peoples of Western Asia had of each other. Indeed, they appear 

 to have traveled from place to place and traded together in a man- 

 ner that the modern world, accustomed to train and car and air- 

 plane, can hardly credit to those who had none of these things, but 

 were dependent on animal transport, primitive wagons, and sail. 



In the various cities of Sumer, notably, at Kish, Ur, and Lagash, 

 seals lost by merchants from the Indus Valley have been found 

 by the excavator well-nigh 50 centuries later. Seals of Sumer- 

 ian workmanship have been unearthed in the north of Syria; and 

 there is evidence that the Sumerians had a trading colony in 

 Asia Minor. In recent years, moreover, other objects than seals, 

 which betray Elamitic, Babylonian, and possibly early Indian in- 

 fluence also, have been found from ancient Egypt on the one hand 

 to as far north as the Caspian Sea on the other. 



The archeological study of the ancient world is rapidly breaking 

 down artificial barriers between culture and culture, and the his- 

 tories of race and race; so that for a proper understanding of the 

 story of the early world, one needs to be more than an Egyptologist 

 only, or Assyriologist, or Sanskrit scholar. Wide flung were the 

 cultures and interrelationships of the ancient peoples of the world; 

 broad in outlook must be our studies of them. 



Before the discovery of Mohenjo-daro, the history of India seemed 

 to begin with the coming of the Aryans, which appears to have 

 taken place during the latter part of the second millenium B. C. 

 But little was known of the Neolithic age, save for a few finds of 

 flint implements and the dolmen burials in southern India ; and the 

 rough Cyclopean walls at Rajagriha in Bihar, which are relics of a 

 high antiquity. The Aryans themselves were apparently semi- 

 nomadic people and unaccustomed to the occupation of dwelling 

 houses. The only material monuments that can be safely ascribed to 

 their early years in India are the burial mounds of Lauriya Nan- 

 dangarh in Bihar, which are tentatively dated to the seventh or 

 eighth century B. C. Their first buildings were probably of wood, 

 a supposition to which support is lent by the obvious imitation of 

 wooden structures in the earliest stone buildings of India, chief 

 among which are the Buddhist stupas and monasteries. The great- 

 est monuments of the early Aryans are, in fact, purely literary — the 

 hymns of the Rigveda, Brahmanas, Puranas, and other Sanskrit 

 writings. 



