Ancient skeletons found in India

2/3. The skeletons have been unearthed in India's Haryana state

Archaeologists in India say they have unearthed four human skeletons dating back to the oldest civilisation in the subcontinent.

The ancient Harappan civilisation dates back around 4,000 years and was first discovered at Mohenjo Daro in what is now Pakistan in the 1920s.

The remains recovered from a cemetery in the northern state of Haryana are of two adult males, a female and a child.

Scholars hope the latest find will shed new light on the Harappan people.

Archaeologists and scientists from India and South Korea have been carrying out excavations at the cemetery at Rakhigarhi village in Haryana's Hissar district since 2013.

Archaeologist Ranvir Singh said scientists from South Korea at the site, equipped with advanced technology, would now attempt to reconstruct the DNA of the skeletons.

Nilesh Jadhav, another archaeologist working at the site, told The Hindustan Times that they had also found "some items like pottery with food grains and shell bangles near the skeletons, which enabled us to believe that the settlers believed in reincarnation".

Mohenjo Daro is the world's oldest surviving city and dates back to the pre-Hindu Indus Valley civilisation. bbc.com


Actualización 31-05-15: Archaeological findings in Indus Valley could rewrite Indian identity | The National
NEW DELHI. When Niraj Rai travels to Pune on Wednesday to pick up DNA samples from 4,000-year-old human skeletons, he will set in motion a process that might resolve Indian history’s most fiercely debated question: Who were the ancient Indians?

So far, the archaeological remains of the Indus Valley civilisation, which flourished across north-western India and Pakistan between 3,300 and 1,700BC, have provided few clues about the people who lived there, their ethnic or racial background, the language they spoke, or the religion they followed.

Mr Rai, a geneticist at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad, will be working with samples from four Indus Valley skeletons that are now at Pune’s Deccan College, in its well-regarded archaeology department.

Until they were excavated in January and February, the human remains — two male, one female, and one child — lay in a cemetery not far from the village of Rakhigarhi, in Haryana, about 150 kilometres from Delhi...