Ancient civilisation casting a shadow on modern politics

In the study published in Cell, for the first time, scientists sequenced the genome from an ancient skeleton found in a 4,600-year-old burial site in Rakhigarhi

Roughly 4,000 years ago, a sprawling civilisation of agriculturalists flourished across a wide arc subsuming modern-day Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. Communicating in a still little-language comprising symbols, scribblings and awkward shapes, tens of thousands of people lived in cities with surprisingly modern systems of drainage, towering granaries, and baked brick houses, and used intricate jewellery, impressive seals and standardised weights, competing with the other great civilisations of the era in Mesopotamia and Egypt.

Excavation work at Rakhigarhi, an Indus Valley Civilisation site in Haryana. (Saumya Khandelwal/ HT Archive)