ROOTS OF SUSTAINABILITY IN ANCIENT INDIA

摘要

Archaeology of the "Indus Valley Civilization" (IVC) in the border region between India and Pakistan has revealed a much more extensive pre-existing civilization under the Thar Desert, associated with the once mighty Saraswati river revered in the Rig Veda. Assuming we may now dismiss the primary features of the "Aryan Invasion Theory" for lack of evidence (aside from unresolved linguistic issues), the positive evidence of artifacts from the region, paleoclimatology, hydrology, remote sensing, geophysical studies, and textual interpretation suggest instead that the origins of Vedic philosophy may indeed be indigenous, predating the Classical Vedic period by millennia in a more-or-less continuous proto-Vedic cultural development. The emerging picture is convincing enough to now refer to the "Indus-Saraswati Civilization" (ISC) of Harappan and pre-Harappan times, and to hazard a bold, tentative link between holistic aspects of pre-Vedic philosophy (non-duality) and clearly similar cultural images and designs of the ISC. Exploring the evidence for ancient holism we find its core philosophy to be in remarkable alignment with relational theory (R-theory) and its holon framework, reported previously. The remarkably peaceful, organized, and industrious ISC was apparently sustainable for millennia prior to their decline and diaspora between 1900BC and 600BC, apparently related to climate change. That period also corresponds with the rise of Abrahamic religions and dualistic thinking that spread globally to produce the globally dominant scientific and technological revolution we are in today. Ironically, by delving into dualistic thought we lost the ancient knowledge of whole systems, but gained the technology the ISC perhaps needed to adapt. Unfortunately, that great human experiment is threatening even greater changes today, as we struggle to regain the lost understanding of whole systems. Knowing more about ISC and its culture, speculative as such pre-historic studies must be, may be important in that struggle because it may represent an early and successful test of a sustainable philosophy, if that's what it was, that we may apply to developing a new, more technologically integrated, "Sustainability Science". We recommend an international research agenda for studying "whole systems" in both ancient and modern times. We also suggest a much stronger international effort focused on archaeology of the Indus/Saraswati region, which may be of inestimable importance in the history of Humanity.