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The Article mentions it was on trade routes all over Central Asia. Its name must be mentioned in other languages in other ancient cities. Egypt, Mesopotamia, et

The Article mentions it was on trade routes all over Central Asia. Its name must be mentioned in other languages in other ancient cities. Egypt, Mesopotamia, etc would have mentioned this place by name.

erklik 4y ago
> Unless a written record of its name can be found and deciphered, that name will probably endure. I think this still stands. Even if it has been mentioned, we'll have to find it and decipher. I would argue considering how famous it is in the nation, it'll be real hard to change the name even if the original is found.
thaumasiotes 4y ago
There are Mesopotamian records that refer to various parallel states. But it's not easy to prove that a particular name refers to a particular area. (If I'm remembering correctly, we do suspect a particular group mentioned in Mesopotamian records of being Harappan. It's still impossible to prove; you'd want a lot more evidence than "we think it was these guys" before renaming the culture. There is also no particular reason to believe that the Sumerian word for Harappans was related to the Harappan word for themselves.) EDIT: found it - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meluhha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meluhha
derefr 4y ago
There are often cases where we know a dead civilization exists in the archaeological record in a particular place, but with no surviving texts buried there documenting the place's name; and we know that references to a place that sound like they're talking about that dead civilization, exist in other civilizations' surviving contemporaneous texts; but we can't be sure the references are talking about the particular place/civilization that we've found archaeological records of. One good example: is the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_of_Punt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_of_Punt the same civilization as / continuous with the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Aksum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Aksum ? There's a lot of "circumstantial evidence" for that conclusion, but nothing definitive.

erklik 4y ago

> Unless a written record of its name can be found and deciphered, that name will probably endure. I think this still stands. Even if it has been mentioned, we'll have to find it and decipher. I would argue considering how famous it is in the nation, it'll be real hard to change the name even if the original is found.

thaumasiotes 4y ago

There are Mesopotamian records that refer to various parallel states. But it's not easy to prove that a particular name refers to a particular area. (If I'm remembering correctly, we do suspect a particular group mentioned in Mesopotamian records of being Harappan. It's still impossible to prove; you'd want a lot more evidence than "we think it was these guys" before renaming the culture. There is also no particular reason to believe that the Sumerian word for Harappans was related to the Harappan word for themselves.) EDIT: found it - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meluhha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meluhha

derefr 4y ago

There are often cases where we know a dead civilization exists in the archaeological record in a particular place, but with no surviving texts buried there documenting the place's name; and we know that references to a place that sound like they're talking about that dead civilization, exist in other civilizations' surviving contemporaneous texts; but we can't be sure the references are talking about the particular place/civilization that we've found archaeological records of. One good example: is the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_of_Punt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_of_Punt the same civilization as / continuous with the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Aksum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Aksum ? There's a lot of "circumstantial evidence" for that conclusion, but nothing definitive.