china and india

1. Ancient Civilisations China, India and Southeast Asia

16. Indus traders travelled to Bahrain and Mesopotamia to trade by boat along the river Indus

30. Besides the strikingly beautiful funerary objects , the excavation also yielded large numbers of human bones . These were the bones of sacrificial victims who had either allowed themselves to be buried alive or were killed outright at the time of the king's burial . Those who apparently died voluntarily included soldiers, ceremonial attendants and the king's servants , but most frightful was the discovery of the bones of at least fifty-nine people who had been decapitated like cattle on the southern ramp of the tomb as part of the burial ceremonies. After the central structure had been buried, the ramps leading to it were gradually filled in with layers of earth and groups of decapitated victims were buried in each layer ; the heads of all the victims were collected and finally buried in the uppermost layer. The victims were separated according to age, with youths between fifteen and twenty years of age in the lower layers and adults in the middle and upper layers . It is possible that these people were prisoners of war captured by the Shang king on a campaign against the Ch'iang nomad tribe of the northwest, who were the traditional enemies of the Shang. In all, at least 164 sacrifical victims were found in various parts of the tomb , an indication of the awesome grandeur of a Shang king's funeral.

33. Skeletons in lane between Houses XVIII and XXXIII', VS area, Mohenjodaro, Archaeological Survey of India, 1925-'26,