By: Shreepal Singh
When we learn things and look around us into our present and into our past, images of different hues pass before our eyes about what we have seen over the last 9000 years and what we are seeing today in 21st centuries. It all re-enforces our belief that notwithstanding our difficulties and dangers we are living in a golden age. We are lucky in many ways. Archeologists have dug out an inhabitation of the people living 9000 years ago in a place, which is now called Bhirrana in Hisar district of Haryana State in India. At the lowest level, the most ancient one determined by carbon dating, the people lived there not in built houses like we live in today but in holes dug out in ground. Just imagine their lives in torrential rains and scorching sun, and wild animals and crawling predatores lurking around in day and night! They must have had to devote their entire energy – entire attention – just to be able to survive. We imagine their whole life must had been preoccupied with three concerns: collecting food; warding off attacks by the preying wild animals; and, procreating new life, children for next generations. How an aweful life – life not of somebody else but our very own ancestors!
One more imagery, before we come to the present – our life and concerns in 21st century. Around 3000 years ago – say, 1000 BC – Scythian tribes originated in Central Asian Steppes (or before that in Iran or, according to some opinion in Carparthia : where?) – and then for hundreds of years ravaged the Roman empire, spread through the power of their arms into modern day Russia, Eastern and Central Europe, established kingdom in Taxila (in modern Pakistan) and swayed the interiors of what is known today as India. Scythians were a moving hoards, assembled a vast number of their numerous tribes and fought riding on horse. They had invented a lethal weapon: arrow made of reed, fitted with a bronze trilobe head equipped on sides with barbed plates and socked in the poison of deadly snake: viper. It was a A. K. 47 rifle of that age. There was nobody who could stand to them, not even the Romans with their famed wrestler-swordsmen. The peaceful lives – whatever peaceful that life might have been – of peoples of Asia and Europe were shattered by them. Imagine yourself being there in that age and in that turmoil. Life has never been safe for us.