Indian Ocean In Antiquity 0710304358, 9780710304353

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THE INDIAN OCEAN IN ANTIQUITY

THE INDIAN OCEAN IN ANTIQUITY EDITED BY

JULIAN READE

~ ~~o~1~;n~~~up LONDON AND NEW YORK

IN ASSOCIATION WITH

THE BRITISH MUSEUM London

First published in 1996 by Kegan Paul International This edition first published in 2009 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © Kegan Paul International 1996 Transferred to Digital Printing 2009 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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ISBN 10: 0-7103-0435-8 (hbk) ISBN 13: 978-0-7103-0435-3 (hbk)

Publisher's Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent. The publisher has made every effort to contact original copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace.

Foreword While much has been written about the Indian Ocean during the medieval and modem periods, studies of its earlier history have been more fragmented. In convening the 1988 conference at the British Museum, I aimed to bring together scholars who, while working on different periods of time in widely separated parts of the world, would in reality have many interests in common. Speakers were asked to give syntheses of the current state of research in their areas, with discussion of their own most recent work as appropriate. This volume contains papers by those scholars who provided written versions of what they said at the conference itself. There are two additional papers of relevance, and my own introductory chapter. As these papers arrived gradually, between 1988 and 1993, their dates of completion vary, and it has not been possible to upgrade all references. I am indebted to those many scholars who by their advice and encouragement helped create this conference, to The British Academy and the Universities' China Committee in London who by their generosity made it possible to invite speakers from China, India and Indonesia, to the members of staff of the Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities at The British Museum who helped at the conference itself, and to Mrs Mollie Hunter who retyped much of the text on to disk.

Julian Reade London, June 1994

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Contents Conference programme

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Introduction Julian Reade Evolution in Indian Ocean studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

The Environment and Natural Resources Claudio Vita-Finzi Sea-levels and other factors affecting coastal settlement

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B.A. McClure Quaternary climate and landscape of eastern Arabia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Caroline Grigson Early cattle around the Indian Ocean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Jouke S. Wigboldus Early presence of African millets near the Indian Ocean

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The Early Civilizations Juris Zarins Obsidian in the larger context of Predynastic/Archaic Egyptian Red Sea trade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 Burkhard Vogt Bronze Age maritime trade in the Indian Ocean: Harappan traits on the Oman peninsula. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Gregory L. Possehl Meluhha . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 Dominique Collon Mesopotamia and the Indus: the evidence of the seals

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Asko Parpola A Sumerian motif in late Indus seals?

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Jean-Jacques Glassner Dilmun, Magan and Meluhha: some observations on language, toponymy, anthroponymy and theonymy

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The Classical Period Jean-Franrois Salles Achaemenid and Hellenistic trade in the Indian Ocean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251 D.T. Potts The Parthian presence in the Arabian Gulf Steven E. Sidebotham Roman interests in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean

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PoJ. Turner and JoE. Cribb Numismatic evidence for the Roman trade with ancient India

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Alessandro de Maigret New evidence from the Yemenite "turret graves" for the problem of the emergence of the South Arabian states ..

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David Whitehouse Sasanian maritime activity

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Himanshu Prabha Ray Early coastal trade in the Bay of Bengal

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Ian Co Glover The archaeological evidence for early trade between South and Southeast Asia . 0

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Between Africa and China S. C.H. Munro-Hay Aksumite overseas interests

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Roger Blench The ethnographic evidence for long-distance contacts between Oceania and East Africa 0

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M.C. Horton Early maritime trade and settlement along the coasts of eastern Africa

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Claude Allibert and Pierre Verin The early pre-Islamic history of the Comores Islands: links with Madagascar and Africa. .

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Robert E. Dewar The archaeology of the early settlement of Madagascar

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KoA. Adelaar Malagasy culture-history: some linguistic evidence John Carswell The excavation of Mantai

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471 487 501

Yang Qinzhang and Zhang Ruibi Recent discoveries of Christian and Hindu remains in Quanzhou . . . . . . . . . . . . 517

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The Indian Ocean in Antiquity: Programme of the Conference held at The British Museum, 4-8 July 1988 Monday, 4 July 1988: The Environment-Natural Resources Chainnen: C.C. Lamberg-Karlovsky (Harvard), S. Bokonyi (Budapest) K.N. Chaudhuri (London): The Indian Ocean in antiquity: problems and prospects M. Tosi (Rome): Natural resources of the Indian Ocean littoral: trade as a subsistence strategy C. Vita-Finzi (London): Sea-levels and other factors affecting coastal settlement H.A. McClure (Dhahran): Quaternary climate and landscape of eastern Arabia: a perspective C. Grigson (London): The dispersal of domestic animals D. Harris (London): The dispersal of food plants

Tuesday, 5 July 1988: The Early Civilizations Chainnen: M.T. Larsen (Copenhagen), T.C. Young (Toronto) S. Cleuziou and S. Mery (Paris): The archaeological evidence for early Gulf trade J.-J. Glassner (Paris): The cuneiform evidence for early Gulf trade D. Collon (London): Mesopotamia and the Indus: the evidence of the seals A. Parpola (Helsinki): A Sumerian motif in late Indus seals B. Vogt (Ras al-Khaimah): The impact of Bronze Age maritime trade in the Oman mountains G.L. Possehl (Philadelphia): Harappan and post-Harappan maritime interests J. Zarins (Springfield): Prehistoric trade in the southern Red Sea: the obsidian evidence D.M. Dixon (London): Egyptian activity in and beyond the Red Sea to 332 BC

Wednesday, 6 July 1988: The Classical Period Chainnen: S.M. al-Radhi (San 'a), A.M. Gibson (Chicago) A. de Maigret (Rome): The emergence of the South Arabian states J.-F. Salles (Lyon): Achaemenid and Seleucid trade in the Indian Ocean D.T. Potts (Copenhagen): The Parthian presence in the Gulf M.E. Prickett (Kotte): Archaeological evidence for Sri Lanka's foreign trade A. Skj¢lsvold (Oslo): Recent research in the Maldive Islands J.E. Cribb and P. Turner (London): Roman trade with India: the numismatic evidence S.E. Sidebotham (Newark): Roman interests in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean

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Thursday, 7 July 1988: The Sasanian World-The Far East Chairmen: P.O. Harper (New York), K. McPherson (Perth) D.B. Whitehouse (Coming): Sasanian maritime trade H.P. Ray (New Delhi): Early trade in the Bay of Bengal W.J.K. Christensen (Perth): The relationship between South-East Asia and Australia in pre'history I. Glover (London): The archaeological evidence for early trade between South and South-East Asia P.-Y. Manguin (Jakarta): South-East Asian shipping and trading in the Indian Ocean during the first millennium AD Yang Qinzhang (Quanzhou) : New evidence for transmission ofHinduism into Quanzhou

Friday, 8 July 1988: Africa and the Orient Chairmen: H.T. Wright (Ann Arbor), K.N. Chaudhuri (London) M. Horton (Oxford): Pre-Islamic evidence from the eastern coast of Africa C. Allibert (Lyon) and P. Verin (Paris): The early pre-Islamic culture of the Comores Islands-links with Madagascar and the east coast of Africa R.E. Dewar (Storrs): The earliest colonization of Madagascar R. Blench (Cambridge): The ethnographic evidence for long-distance contacts between Oceania and East Mrica K.A. Adelaar (Leiden): The linguistic and culture-historical implications of Malay influence on Malagasy R.McC. Adams (Washington): Concluding remarks

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Introduction

Evolution in Indian Ocean Studies by JULIAN READE

From Atlantic to Pacific, delimiting the southern boundaries of the entire Old World, the beaches of the Indian Ocean stretch in a golden arc. On the lands adjoining this ocean and its inlets, almost every variety of human adaptation is or has been represented, as have the interactions between them. Societies of fishermen and pirates, hunters and gatherers, herdsmen and agrarian farmers, states and urban civilizations based on fanning or trade, all have flourished at one time or another. Yet studies of the systems of the Indian Ocean before the spread of Islam remain in their infancy. This book brings together some of the ideas current among scholars working in this field. Among Indian Ocean societies, the ancient peoples of the shore itself are the most intriguing and the least known. The sea has always offered our species a range of resources which, while sometimes seasonal, are more reliable, less vulnerable to factors like drought and over-exploitation, than those available inland. From deep prehistory up to modem times, many communities have found that gathering food along and off the shore constitutes an entirely viable way of life. Their historical significance has been underrated because of the agrocentric presumptions built into much archaeological thought. This is especially pertinent to the shores of the Indian Ocean and other warm seas. There was no Ice Age here. The effect of rising sea-levels since the polar ice last melted has been to drown or bury, beyond easy recovery, evidence for all but the latest phases of prehistory. That process itself may be reflected in universal myths of deluge, accounts of a perpetual struggle between man and chaos which acquire, in a rational world, alternative explanations. The remains of the last shore-dwellers are visible in intenrunable middens lining the present coast; for the Greeks they were ichthyophagoi, fisheaters. In a remoter past there is no readily discernible limit to this life-style, beyond the Indian Ocean itself up the west coast of Africa towards Europe, and east of Indonesia towards China, once even to the Americas. They settled Australia. The very question of whether they or inland hunter-gatherers were the prime settlers of the New World remains undecided. Inhospitable deserts, mountains, jungles and swamps punctuate the

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Julian Reade coastline, but repeatedly there are the resources of the sea inviting exploitation; at irregular intervals there is always somewhere to live, and always some variety of food, in the next bay, or the next bay, or the next. We have to think of developments not over safe single millennia but over tens of thousands of years. In such circumstances questions of diffusion or independent evolution almost lose their meaning. Societies based on the exploitation offish and shellfish, turtles and marine mammals, have a modest material culture in the archaeological record. We shall never know who developed the first net or net-weight, the first tidal fish-trap or ornamental shell ring. Evidence for the earliest phases should survive, in creeks and estuaries sheltered from the violence of the waves, far below the modem water-table; their identification is a challenge for archaeologists of the future. We may visualize, then, a great number of effectively self-sufficient communities, strung in a long linear fashion along appropriate shores, with little scope for centralization. Presumably there were tribal relationships over limited distances, and adaptive pressures favoured efficiency and sometimes seasonal movement. Ifthe sea is a perennial larder, it still requires intelligent exploitation, particularly some understanding of the migratory habits of fish. We may certainly envisage through millennia, just as we can observe historically, small improvements in fishing techniques and boat-making technology, which made slightly longer trips practicable; but there was no incentive for rapid movement over significant distances, since marine resources were essentially much the same along most neighbOUring shores. Communications along a coast have to be distinguished from serious sea-faring. Nonetheless the linear settlement pattern which geography imposed on fish-eaters, while precluding the evolution of towns, did not prevent the exploitation of land plants and animals, nor did it restrict communication and exchange with people of other lifestyles. A range of interdependent, or mutually supportive, land- and sea-based adaptations still exists here and there: prehistoric archaeological sites inland often produce scraps of evidence for contact with the sea, and there are extraneous finds in middens too. With objects come ideas. Moreover, the hinterland of a fishing community could provide resources which might be desirable for exchange or adoption further afield. Like ideas, skills travel easily: for example, the spread of domesticated plants and animals along the ocean shore, from one coastline to another, and thereafter inland, was theoretically possible as soon as fishing communities had encountered them and decided they might be useful. World-wide, the greatest potential for interaction lies in deltaic and estuarine regions such as those ofEgypt, India, orMexico: rivers have fish too. Large tropical rivers offered the greatest opportunities for fish-eaters to develop something more than tribal associations. In particular, some fifteen thousand years ago, the Persian or Arabian Gulf (the latter term belonged once to the Red Sea) consisted ofdry land or marshes through which

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Evolution in Indian Ocean Studies the combined waters ofIraqi and Iranian rivers meandered to meet the ocean by the straits of Hormuz. Then, over ten thousand years or so, the sea inexorably rose, even reaching a level higher than today's before it again retreated. The rise separated estuarine communities, but did so in a gradual fashion, so that relationships between people living on both sides of the developing Gulf are likely to have persisted for a long time, with a point of social convergence somewhere not too far upstream ofthe river mouth, wherever that happened to be as it receded. At the same time, from Nile to Indus, and north to the Black and Caspian Seas, the multiplication of competitive agrarian communities with storage facilities was leading ultimately to the evolution of populous states covering broad coherent tracts of cleared land. The emergence of these societies, with their domesticated crops and animals, impinged fitfully on the shoreline communities, but at the head of the Gulf the different life-styles came together in a special variant. Farming of cereals and other crops through rain or irrigation was practised upstream; parts of the river valleys and adjacent steppes and hills were suitable for herding; the domesticated date-palm relied on its own type of irrigation, through channels of fresh water pushed back by the tides; and unfailingly there were fish in the rivers, marshes, and sea. This is the powerful conglomeration of resources which underpinned, in the Ubaid-Uruk periods, between 6000 and 3000 BC, the urbanization of what are now neighbouring areas of southern Iran and south-eastern Iraq. The resultant civilization, whose Gulf associations were to be perpetuated in a myth of primaeval sages emerging from the sea, had in the direction of the Gulf no decisive territorial limits. The emergence of this resilient urban civilization, linked to the other agrarian states of South-West Asia, created a new situation along the shore. Whereas the movement of material goods is never likely to have been substantial in prehistory, there was now a stronger demand for foreign goods, both for practical use and as prestigious luxuries. There was an incentive to make longerjourneys and employ larger ships, derived perhaps from those used for transport on inland waterways. After the prehistoric period, which ends in South-West Asia with the spread of writing during the fourth-third millennia BC, the history of Indian Ocean navigation is divisible into distinct phases. The first, corresponding to the period ofEarly Civilizations, is when northern routes were used between India, Oman and the Gulf, essentially hugging the edges of the Arabian Sea. There is no indication of Egyptian exploration beyond the Horn of Africa at this time; in Mesopotamia there have reportedly been two discoveries, one of East African copal and the other of cloves, which could imply the existence of far wider trading networks in the centuries around 2000 BC, but these require further substantiation. The northern routes fell into desuetude after 1800 BC, when the states which patronized them were in crisis. Mesopotamian ships continued to be active in the Gulf from time to time, as were Egyptian ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, but generally with limited objectives. Mesopotamian and Biblical records of the early first

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Julian Reade millennium refer to the employment ofPhoenician ship-builders for special Gulfand Red Sea expeditions, which implies that local craft were inferior to those of the Mediterranean. During the subsequent Classical period, beginning about the sixth century BC, use ofthe northern routes revived, accompanied by the development ofa central route linking the Red Sea and Hom of Africa with India. This was the system within which, as knowledge of the monsoons spread, the Hellenistic, Roman, and various Semitic and Persian empires competed for hegemony, with corresponding effects on the Indian side. Use of a third, southern route, linking the east coast of Africa with India, Indonesia and perhaps China, by way ofthe Maldives and Sri Lanka, had probably developed before the tum of the era; Austronesians became active in the west, with tropical lands now forming an integral part ofthe system. All these routes were employed during the Islamic period, and were eventually supplemented in recent centuries by a far southern route, adopted by Europeans rounding the Cape bound for the Indies. Since trade is intrinsically two-way, it is not always easy to discern who initiated any particular exchange, but in broad terms we can distinguish two parties, the supplier and the consumer, with a third party sometimes intervening as middleman. Both land and sea routes have their merits and problems, but the greater the distance between supplier and consumer, the greater the relative advantage of the sea. It is manifest that in some circumstances, such as those of the oil states today, "civilization"-if we judge that troublesome concept by population and public works-has depended on the ability to supply goods required by more developed consuming "civilizations" elsewhere, and comparable developments can be suggested for some states touching the pre-Islamic Indian Ocean. This raises questions ofthe degree to which trade may have affected the development of early civilizations, and of how any such process operated. A natural preliminary assumption is that trade was of marginal significance for those agrarian civilizations, whether reliant on cereals or rice, which were essentially self-supporting but for the frequent convenience of importing metal. Since forms of human society are infinitely flexible, the degree to which one or another of them was genuinely self-supporting is arguable. They were all affected by inland neighbours, and the situation becomes further confused with the development of long-distance communications. Nonetheless, without potential consumer demand, few such communications are likely. The suppliers may often have been societies which had previously evolved smallscale statehood, but which changed substantially because of the natural resources they controlled, even acquiring imperial ambitions on occasion. When demand or the ability to supply failed, or competition intervened, these societies either reverted to something approaching their original condition, or developed independently. One example from the period of Early Civilizations is the Oman peninsula. This supplied copper to Mesopotamia and perhaps to the Indus during the third millennium BC: the erratic political

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Evolution in Indian Ocean Studies history of the consumers, shortage of fuel to smelt ore, and outside competition, must have contributed to the drastic social changes which took place in the peninsula during the second millennium. The Indus dependencies of Gujarat, on the other hand, outlived the Indus heartland. Similarly, in the Classical period, the civilization of the South Arabian states was partly linked to the export ofincense, and that ofEthiopia to the export of tropical goods. There is frequently the question of which came first, the chicken or the egg, and environmental changes can be critical, but the simple ability to sell their commodities had demonstrable effects on the material culture of such regions, influencing their social and political organization, and they were liable to be marginalized by market failure. There is a sharp contrast with some states ofSouth-East Asia, which were backed by rice cultivation and a far greater wealth of natural resources and good land available for exploitation as the trees were cut or burned. These places, enriched and transformed through contact with Indians who brought commerce and, in Buddhism, the first missionary religion, proceeded to emulate their prosperous mentors, developing independent civilizations with a momentum and resilience of their own. The middlemen would be civilizations which, while they may indeed have had natural resources, exploited their geographical locations. The best known candidate on the northern fringes of the Indian Ocean in the period of Early Civilizations is Dilmun, corresponding to Bahrain and the adjacent mainland of Arabia. This was a time when sea-going ships were probably still modest in size and reliability, so the distances between middleman and customer were not great, but archaeological evidence including weights, and texts in different scripts, witness amply to the connections of Dilmun, with India, Iran, Mesopotamia, and otherparts ofthe Arabian peninsula, in the centuries before and after 2000 BC. A comparable position, in a much vaster context, linking China with the Mediterranean world, was perhaps occupied in the Classical period by Taprobane, the island ofSri Lanka. Middlemen ofa kind, too, are the ports through which goods were distributed. For the early period it is arguable that the city of Dr owed its extraordinary wealth, hardly the mere consequence of one archaeologist's good fortune, to its crucial position at the head of the Gulf. Questions such as those posed above will continue to occupy historians for a long time, and the answers if any must largely come through archaeological and anthropological research. Yet when one surveys what research has actually been done, one is frequently struck by its disparate, occasionally even random, nature. Sites may be elusive, or inaccessible for a variety ofreasons. The archaeological record may exaggerate the significance ofone particular place or period, or conceal an underlying continuity. Critical factors may be almost invisible: climatic or environmental change; plague or endemic disease; ideology; religious zeal; economic competition; naval rivalry and intervention; nautical technology; the many possible reasons why individuals move or people migrate.

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Julian Reade For the Indian Ocean in antiquity we have little written documentation, of the kind which explains why the ancient Greeks founded settlements in Italy and how it happened that the Portuguese occupied Brazil. To a large extent the problems of the Indian Ocean are addressed by teams and individuals, not many of them, working when they can get permission, gather money and spare the time, in whichever locations have attracted their attention: the work at Mantai is an instructive example. In recent years the closure of some countries and accessibility of others has led to extensive work on the southern shores of the Gulf. What had been an apparent backwater is now recognized as a region of vast potential for studying relationships between west and east at many periods. There has been no comparably intensive effort on the endless coastlines of Africa, India and Indonesia from which tropical goods were exported. Our knowledge of the Classical route between India and the Hom of Mrica is relatively good, because here there is some documentary evidence. But, as for the Austronesian presence in Mrica, we would have to rely on botany and a modest number of anthropological survivals were it not for the incontrovertible presence of an Austronesian language still flOUrishing in safe isolation on Madagascar; it is probable that, without the Malagasy, the very idea of that linguistic dispersal would have been treated with scholarly derision. Human societies and organizations always tend to expand into the domain of those weaker than themselves. Language accompanies expansion. On the Indian Ocean rim we have Semitic languages in and around Ethiopia, the Semitic element in Swahili, the Indo-European languages of Sri Lanka and the Maldives, and most recently the English language in Australia. The Austronesian language of Madagascar remains the most remarkable, however, since it involved the greatest pre-steam voyage from its place of origin and the least obvious advantage. Austronesian ship-building techniques are attested in the Maldives, and an Austronesian presence is suggested in East Mrica before the tum of the era. There is comparable Austronesian exploration of the Pacific, and for the Malagasy there is perhaps a link with the Sumatran empire of Srivijaya. Yet none of this begins to explain why Austronesians should have become involved in Africa in the first place. One direction in which we should perhaps look is towards a particularform ofhuman adaptation, to which the misused term "strategy" for once legitimately applies. This is raiding or piracy. It is commonplace in the history of civilizations that their less sophisticated neighbours, while having their own means of subsistence, acquire a taste for luxury and find themselves strong enough to indulge it, thereby promoting themselves from marginal to dominant status. The fat merchant ships, first of Buddhist India, then of the Hellenistic, Roman and Persian worlds, may have excited among Austronesians the same cupidity as the Levant did among the Sea Peoples of the central Mediterranean round 1200 Be, or the New World among the Spanish around AD 1500. Austronesian expansion westward, like that of the Vikings in northern waters, would then be simply

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Evolution in Indian Ocean Studies a marine equivalent of innumerable land-based expansions throughout history which sometimes did, sometimes did not, result in forms of colonization ranging from elimination of the native population to total assimilation and effective disappearance of the colonizer. On the East African coast, then, the Austronesians were assimilated and disappeared, but not before they had begun to occupy the preViously empty island of Madagascar. If these people were originally pirates, accustomed to draw up their boats unobtrusively, it might help explain why there are not more traces of them on the African mainland. Even linguistic evidence has its limitations, and it will be interesting to know what human genetic evidence, as study of that abused and delicate subject revives, may contribute to the history of movements across the ocean and along its shores. The spread ofdomesticated animals and plants is also a realm ofuncertainty, though here too much work is being done. In considering the difficult evidence for cattle of different varieties, and of crosses between them, we do not know the degree to which wild varieties now extinct or crossbred beyond straightforward recognition may have further complicated the picture. Thus the third-millennium Indus seals apparently show two kinds of cattle, the humped Indian variety and another. Bones from Indus sites have been identified as belonging to the Indian type, and one solution is to interpret the other as "mythological". An alternative, however, is that it was a genuine animal whose distinctive characteristics have not yet been picked out by osteology, and might only be visible at the genetic level. Similarly, there were wild cattle in Arabia, which like the extinct elephant and equine species of the region are likely to have had, again, their own distinctive features. Given the taxonomic doubts surrounding the very definition of an African species, let alone questions over domestication, it is hardly surprising that native Arabian cattle are problematic. It seems, indeed, that both humped and unhumped cattle are represented from an early date in the rock-art of Arabia. While the Afro-Asian landmass obviously provided a main throughway for taurine diffusion, the anomalous appearance of what seem to be Indian buffalo in Mesopotamia for a short period dUring the late third millennium BC (as opposed to their recorded introduction 3000 years afterwards) suggests that animals of considerable size could already be carried by ship. This elucidates the context within which we must accommodate the discovery of sheep/goat bones, in levels of the mid second millennium BC, on the South-East Asian island of Timor. Sheep/goat are generally believed to have been domesticated in the Middle East, and it is hardly likely that these animals tra.velled overland through the dank jungles of South and South-East Asia. While we still await scientific assurance that cloves, a spice of Indonesian origin, have been identified in a level of the early second millennium BC at the Mesopotamian town of Tirqah, there is a strong suggestion here of sea travel across the Bay of Bengal well before 1000 BC. In such circumstances the early appearance in Australia of the dingo, a dog which may too have South-West Asian ancestry, is less problematic than it once appeared.

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Julian Reade Animals can forage for themselves, but the establishment of domesticated plants in a strange environment requires more systematic human effort. While the date-palm was vital to many communities in the GulflRed Sea area, the early history of this plant, like that of cattle, should be associated with land rather than sea communication. African millets, in contrast, could have reached India by sea, but it is symptomatic of the current state of Indian Ocean research that views on the date of this transmission still diverge widely: arguments for the third millennium BC, on the basis of grains identified at Arabian and Indian sites, with possible implications for long-distance human contact at that time, confront the African domestication evidence which implies dispersal thousands of years later. One explanation might be that there was an earlier independent domestication of millet in southern Arabia itself. Another problem concerns the introduction of tropical Indonesian plants to Africa. It makes good sense that Austronesians should have brought the sweet banana to East Africa, where it is well established, during the first centuries BC or AD, and subsequently to Madagascar. But this fails to account for the rival establishment of the plantain, or cooking banana, in West Africa, with possible centres of diffusion on the coast. If botanists are indeed right in identifying this as an introduction from South or South-East Asia, there are apparently two ways in which it might have been dispersed: overland through Africa, not a comfortable process; and by sea round the Cape of Good Hope, either in the Islamic or Portuguese periods, which may be too late, or at an earlier date, in a movement not necessarily connected with that of the Madagascar Austronesians. This last sounds fanciful; yet, given the extraordinary sea voyages already attested, it cannot be rejected out of hand. The voyage would have been no more difficult than that of the Phoenician sailors who, with no modem map to deter them, circumnavigated the continent clockwise about 600 BC. For Europeans, the countries bordering the Indian Ocean were for a long time lands of fable. When a traveller returned with traveller's tales, there was no yardstick by which the audience could distinguish sane observation from preposterous lie. Some of the dottiest stories had more than a grain of truth embedded in them. The historian today, venturing into these perilous waters, has to combine sound and dubious and above all inadequate evidence, creating hypotheses that will range from silly speculation to formidable insight. Without exploration we shall make no progress. It is hoped that the papers in this volume will provide some of the scientific basis for understanding a region of huge importance in world history, both past and future.

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The Environtnent and Natural Resources

Sea-levels and Other Factors affecting Coastal Settlement by CLAUDIO VITA-FINZI

Throughout the world the two or so million years of the Quaternary witnessed changes in sea-level which have had an important effect on the economic value of coastal areas and on their accessibility by sea and overland. The most striking military example is that of Thennopylae; the impact of advances and retreats of the shore on land use and site potential is well illustrated by the Levant coast (Vita-Finzi 1978). Needless to say, the economic and social impact of coastal changes also depends on other environmental factors, notably climate. In the Persian Gulf, for example, the last major period of emergence coincided with great aridity and dune development. Again, the assessment will vary greatly according to viewpoint: loss of land may be offset by improved accessibility. But, if anything, such objections reinforce the need for an independent account of shifts in the shoreline during the period at issue. Some archaeological sites embody the evidence of sea-level fluctuations in the form of displaced harbour works or middens. Other sites are intimately associated with diagnostic geological features such as the fossil beach within the Upper Palaeolithic deposits of Grotta Romanelli in southern Italy. But all too often analysis of the oscillations and their possible effect has to be grounded on indirect evidence. The basis for such inference is usually a generalized curve of eustatic (that is to say global) sea-level changes which, when combined with bathymetric charts and topographic maps, make it possible to trace the emergence or submergence ofthe area around the site. In recent years the process has been refined by the introduction of regional eustatic curves which take account of the crustal deformation caused by glacial advances and retreats and the corresponding unloading and loading of the ocean basins by the release and abstraction of meltwater (Clark, Farrell and Peltier 1978). One implication of the modelling is that, whereas some regions underwent progressive submergence at the end of the last glacial episode, others saw sea-level rise by 2-3 m. above its present position and then fall.

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Claudio Vita-Finzi

EURA PCFC

INDI

o I

km

1000 I

Figure 1 Tectonic setting of Peninsular Malaysia. Plate boundaries (Indian, Eurasian and Pacific) after Weissel, Anderson and Geller (1980). Teeth indicate subduction zones. The marine part of the Sunda Platform is shaded.

Supplemented by detailed mapping of the sea-floor and by an estimate of the extent of erosion and deposition since the site was occupied, such curves have opened the door to productive research. But generalized sea-level curves do not allow for localized earth movements. To be sure, in many parts of the world such movements are trivial when compared with the eustatic oscillations of the Quaternary both in extent and in rate. But there are others where tectonic changes have dominated the coastal record during at least a part of the period of human occupation.

The Sunda Platform The Indian Ocean is bordered by some of the most active tectonic zones in the world. The need for detailed knowledge of local changes in land level would seem to be selfevident on all its coasts. The one possible exception is the Sunda Platform, which embraces the western part of the island of Borneo, the Malaysian Peninsula and much of the Sunda Shelf around them (Figure 1). Many authors believe that the Platform has been tectonically stable since mid-Tertiary times. According to Batchelor (1979), for example, there is no unambiguous evidence for tilting or vertical displacement, rock sequences can be matched over distances of more than 1,000 km, no earthquake epicentres have been reported from Sundaland between 1962 and 1969 or from Peninsular Malaysia in historical times, and the morphology of the Sunda Shelf reflects complete stability at least during the Pleistocene.

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Sea-levels and Other Factors affecting Coastal Settlement In Peninsular Malaysia, sea-level changes have long been ascribed principally to eustatic oscillations. In a paper entitled "Geological and geographical evidence for changes in sea-level during ancient Malayan history and prehistory", Scrivenor (1949) claimed that earth movements were unlikely to have complicated or caused the shifts recorded on the peninsula. In his classic studies of the Kinta valley ofPerak, on the west coast, Walker (1956: 92; see also Burton 1964) concluded that eustatic changes had been mainly responsible for a major alluvial unit-the Old Alluvium-graded to about 66 m. (230 ft) above mean sea-level and the existence of raised beaches on that coast. Much evidence has since been found in support of the eustatic case. Near Singapore, for example, radiocarbon dating of roots and peat at depths of between -75 and +6 m. has yielded a sea-level curve for the past 7,900 years which resembles those of Mauretania and Mozambique. As these two areas are considered tectonically stable, the Strait of Malacca is thought to have undergone no tectonic subsidence or uplift at least during the Holocene (Geyh, Kudrass and Streif 1979; see also Tjia, Fujii and Kigoshi 1977). Nevertheless some authors believe that earth movements may have contributed to the narrative. In his analysis of the raised beaches and elevated alluvial deposits he had observed in Kuantan, on the east coast, Fitch (1952) thus invoked intermittent uplift of the land as it sought to attain isostatic equilibrium. Stability had been upset by erosion, and the movement amounted to more than 17 m. (50 ft) since the Pleistocene ice melted.

The coastal record The most promising source of datable information on the coastal evolution ofPeninsular Malaysia is provided by some ofthe isolated hills that rise above the western coastal plain, for their bases display shell-rich undercuts which appear to be marine in origin. Scrivenor (1949: 112) refers to "an old beach with coral and shells lying against the limestone hills, Gunong Kerian" north-west ofAlor Star in Kedah, on the west coast near the Thai border, and suggests it indicates a fall of the sea by about 14 m. (50 ft) in post-Pleistocene times. Collings (1937) had excavated Gua Bintong, one of the caves at the foot of Buldt Chuping, some 15 km further north, and found an unstratified deposit rich in bone, shell and artifacts. Bukit Chuping is now about 20 km from the sea, too far for habitual shell collecting on a large scale, and Collings finds support for the inference that the sea had retreated in local chronicles which place features now inland on the coast. One such account, tentatively dated to AD 1284, describes Keriang as an island (Pulo Giryang). It is now about 8 km from the sea. Unfortunately we lack infonnation on the extent to which the undercuts are indeed of marine origin and whether any of the shells and corals beneath them represent shoreline deposits rather than food and occupation debris. The deposits have commonly been quarried for fertilizer and the few published carbon dates on shells from such sites are inadequately documented. Similarly the fossil beach ridges described by Fitch (1949) and Nossin (1964) from the east coast will need to be reconsidered before their

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Claudio Vita-Finzi

significance for the archaeological record can be evaluated. In the interim one can test the widely held assumptions about the peninsula's Pleistocene stability by reference to sections inland in areas displaying Tertiary and younger deposits. Jerantut

The Tertiary basins Lying within the zone of the transition between the Sunda Platform and the tectonically turbulent terrains of Indonesia, the Langkawi Islands were affected by Late Tertiary uplift. Parts of Borneo are currently active (Wilford 1967). In PeninsularMalaysia, deformation during the Cainozoic

o

100°

o

km

100

I

,

I

102°

apparently included some uplift and tilting, faulting and downwarping (Stauffer 1973), yet any faulting in Tertiary deposits tends to be ascribed to slumping or to subsidence into depressions created by subsurface solution of limestone, or dismissed as minor and purely tensional (Roe 1953; Tjia, Fujii and Kigoshi 1977; Tjia 1981). Similarly, folds and faults in Pleistocene deposits are said to be localized and lacking any structural pattern (Tjia 1973). Tertiary deposits are confined to a few small basins (Figure 2) and are wholly continental in origin. Faulting and tilting has preViously been observed in two of the basins. The coal-bearing beds of Batu Arang, which contain a modem flora but are notwithstanding ascribed to the Upper Miocene (Roe 1953; Renwick and Rishworth 1966), have long been known to display numerous normal faults, some with throws of 24 m. At Lawin, H.D. Tjia (personal communication, 1986) has reported a major nonnal fault in Tertiary beds striking 210 with a dip of 55° west and a throw of over 15 m. In addition, the Pengeli Fault, which trends north-west to south-east, probably extends into the Pliocene deposits of the Layang-Layang basin (Rajah, in press; Gobbett 1972). The faults at Batu Arang have been explained by subsidence (Tjia 1973). The general antipathy to the idea of late Cainozoic deformation may be gauged from the suggestion that faulting of the Tertiary beds at Layang-Layang is associated with Late Triassic folding (Rajah, in press). Figure 2 Places mentioned in text and major Tertiary basins (black), after Geological Map ofMalaysia, 11500,000, GeologicalSurvey ofMalaysia, Kuala Lumpur (1973) and Gobbett( 1972). The dashed line marks the main watershed.

0

26

Sea-levels and Other Factors affecting Coastal Settlement The alluvial deposits that overlie the Batu Arang Tertiary rocks are also faulted and deformed (Stauffer 1973; Roe 1953). In parts of Johore the Pleistocene Old Alluvium displays faults with throws of as much as 5 m. as well as folds dipping by up to 40° (Roe 1953; Burton 1964). Raj (1979) has described a normal fault some 45 km north-east of Kuala Lumpur which cuts through bedrock and a series ofunconsolidated deposits whose Quaternary age is attested by their continuity with a 20 m. river terrace along the Sungei Betong. The fault, which has been attributed by others (Tjia 1981) to slumping or the exhumation of an old fault or erosional feature, strikes north-south and has a dip-slip offset of about 1.5 m. with the downthrow on the east. Field observations made by the writer in August 1986 showed that normal faulting at Lawin exceeds a throw of over 28 m. and that it juxtaposes the Tertiary beds of the basin, which elsewhere display dips of 29°-40° (Jones 1970; Burton 1965; 1967), with a gravel deposit identical with the Pleistocene Old Alluvium described in other parts of the peninsula (Burton 1964; Sivam 1969; Walker 1956). The gravels occupy a graben, being bordered on the west by a second north-south normal fault with a dip of 80° and with a throw of at least 3 m. Additional faulting was found within the Tertiary beds, including a normal fault striking 0° with a dip-slip displacement of 4 m. About 0.5 km south of Jerantut an outcrop of Pleistocene boulder beds displays two normal faults with throws of 10 cm and 50 cm whose strike of about 75° is guided by the bedding planes. M.E. Jones (personal communication, 1986) has suggested that the Lawin deposits occupy a pull-apart basin. Burton, who found evidence for major wrench faulting in Malaysia, did not think that Tertiary and Quaternary rocks were involved in the process (see also Ben-Avraham and Emery 1973). He conceded that the Lawin deposits might represent the recrudescence of activity along one of his strike-slip faults, the Bok-Bok Fault (Burton 1965; 1967), but the evidence is contentious (Procter and Jones 1967). The data presented here point to extension normal to an axis trending between north to south and north-north-west to south-south-east. The one reverse fault observed (at Batu Arang) could be a secondary product of rotation (Jackson, King and Vita-Finzi 1982). The available chronological data show that, whatever the origin of the basins, faulting of their deposits postdates the Miocene and may well be confined to the Quaternary. The parallelism between the normal faults and the major Palaeozoic and Triassic structures of the peninsula (Gobbett and Tjia 1973), like that between fault and bedding at Jerantut, points to the reactivation of existing lineaments. Thus, although the lack of significant strike-slip movement argues against the direct influence of shear deformation, it does not preclude the exploitation ofexisting strike-slip faults (Holcombe 1977) by normal faulting.

Discussion The faults imply significant seismic activity dUring the Pleistocene. The tendency has been to assume that any seismic events which are placed on the peninsula by the

27

Claudio Vita-Finzi

teleseismic data (such as that of 1985/4/6) are in error and refer to Sumatra. Ifon the other hand the current quiescence turns out to be genuine it shows that deformation is by large events separated by intervals measured in millennia. Some evidence of episodic deformation is in fact provided by the littoral record especially on the east coast. Fitch (1949) had ascribed a series of elevated caves and rejuvenated valleys, as well as a sequence of beach ridges at 15,6 and 3 m., to successive episodes of uplift. The writer has observed three fossil beach ridges, 5, 1.5 and 0.5 m. above their fossil counterpart, on the south-west coast of Langkawi. Variations in the extent and timing of Holocene submergence are also more consistent with irregular uplift, especially as modelling of eustatic changes predicts no Holocene emergence in these latitudes and 2 m. of emergence at most in the adjoining southern oceans (Clark, Farrell and Peltier 1978). The asymmetrical position of the main watershed (Figure 2), as on the Musandam Peninsula of Oman (Vita-Finzi 1982), coupled with the drowned nature of the west and south coasts, may indicate that, as suggested by Roe (1953), there has been relative tilting towards the south-west. The available radiocarbon dates, which have been interpreted as evidence of a temporary rise in sea-level above its present position during the Holocene transgression, are also consistent with Holocene uplift. To judge from the data presented by Geyh, Kudrass and Streif(1979), our three beach ridges date from the last 6,500 years and were separated by periods of seismic quiescence lasting on average about 2,000 years. In short, the tectonic stability of Malaysia may be an illusion born of defective data. The uncertainty must be as great on many other stretches of the Indian Ocean littoral, and there too its resolution awaits the combined efforts of geologist, prehistorian and archivist.

Acknowledgements I thank C.S. Hutchison, M.E. Jones, I. Metcalfe and H.D. Tjia for advice, A.H. Hussin and R. Malik for help in the field, L. McClue for the maps, and the Hayter Fund and the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia for field support.

References BATCHELOR, B.C.

1979

Discontinuously rising Late Cainozoic eustatic sea-levels, with special reference to Sundaland, Southeast Asia. Geologie en Mijnbouw 58: 1-20. BEN-AvRAHAM, Z. & K.O. EMERY 1973 Structural framework of Sunda Shelf. Bulletin of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists 57: 2323-66. BURTON, C.K. 1964 The Older Alluvium of lohore and Singapore. Journal ofTropical Geography 18: 30-42.

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Sea-levels and Other Factors affecting Coastal Settlement 1965

Wrench faulting in Malaya. Journal of Geology 73: 781-98. CLARK, J.A., W.E. FARRELL & W.R. PELTIER 1978 Global changes in postglacial sea level: a numerical calculation. Quaternary

Research 9: 265-87. COLLINGS, H.D. 1938 An excavation at Buldt Chuping, Perlis. Bulletin ofthe Raffles Museum (Series B)

1: 94-119. GEYH, M.A., H.-R. KUDRASS & H. STREIF 1979 Sea-level changes during the late Pleistocene and Holocene in the Strait of Malacca. Nature 278: 441-3. GOBBETI', D.J. 1972 Geological Map ofMalaysia, 11M. Kuala Lumpur (Geological Society of Malaysia). GOBBETI', D.J. & H.D. TJIA 1973 Tectonic history. In D.J. Gobbett and C.S. Hutchison, editors, Geology ofthe Malay Peninsula: 305-34. New York (Wiley). HOLCOMBE, C.J. 1977 How rigid are the lithospheric plates? Fault and shear rotations in southeast Asia.

Journal of the Geological Society of London 134: 325-42. JACKSON, J.A., G.C.P. KING & C. VITA-FINZI 1982 The neotectonics of the Aegean: an alternative view. Earth Planetary Science

Letters 61: 303-18. JONES, C.R.

1970

The Geology and Mineral Resources ofthe Grik Area, Upper Perak (Geological Survey Department, West Malaysia, Memoir 11): 1-44.

NOSSIN, J.1.

1964 Beach ridges on the east coast of Malaya. Journal ofTropical Geography 18: 111-7. PROCTER, W.D. & C.R. JONES 1967 Wrench faulting in Malaya: a discussion. Journal of Geology 75: 127-8. RAJ, J.K. 1979 A quaternary fault in Peninsular Malaysia. Warta Geologi 5: 3-5. RAJAH, S.S. In press The Geology and Mineral Resources ofGunong Blumut Area, Johore (Geological Map of Malaysia, Memoir for Sheet 125). RENWICH, A. & D.E.H. RISHWORTH 1966 Fuel Resources (Coal, Lignite and Petroleum) in Malaya. Geological Survey Department of West Malaysia. ROE,F.W. 1953

The Geology and Mineral Resources ofthe Neighbourhood ofKuala Selangorand Rasa, Selangor, Federation of Malaya, with an Account of the Batu Arang Coalfield (Geological Survey Department of the Federation of Malaya, Memoir 7): 1-163.

SCRIVENOR, J.B. 1949 Geological and geophysical evidence for changes in sea-level during ancient Malayan history and late pre-history. Journal ofthe Malayan Branch ofthe Royal

Asiatic Society 22: 107-15.

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Claudio Vita-Finzi SIVAM, S.P. 1968

Quaternary alluvial deposits in the north Kinta valley, Perak (M.Sc. thesis, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur). STAUFFER, P.R. 1973 Cenozoic. In OJ. Gobbett and C.S. Hutchison, editors, Geology of the Malay Peninsula: 143-76. New York (Wiley).

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QuaternaryClimate and Landscape of EasternArabia by H. A. McCLURE

Late Tertiary and general Quaternary climate as background Until about the end of the Oligocene, marine conditions prevailed in the eastern part of the Arabian Peninsula. Continental conditions set in about the beginning of Miocene time, and, except for a brief marine incursion in the Burdigalian (Lower Miocene), have been the situation since. The present Arabian Gulf is a very young feature, largely a product of the Flandrian eustatic marine transgression at the end of the Pleistocene. Miocene and Pliocene climates of eastern Arabia were dry and arid, initiating a climate regime that persists today. Increasing aridity and wind activity of intensity sufficient to have emplaced the great aeolian sand deserts of the peninsula characterized the Pleistocene. Periods of the late Pleistocene and Holocene have alternated between hyperaridity, with little or no moisture precipitation, and brief periods of effective precipitation, all, however, still within a basic arid regime. Hyperarid conditions, of course, prevail today and have been characteristic for about the last 6,000 years. Vagaries of southwest summer monsoon activity have apparently played a key role in weather of the late Tertiary of the area, perhaps beginning about the middle of the Miocene. Northward shifts during the late Pleistocene and Holocene can be documented. Minor northward shifts of duration too brief to have left a readily recognizable record may have occurred from time to time and may have had some limited effects as short climatic respites in otheiwise hyperarid conditions. Freak monsoon rainfall of several weeks' duration can be documented in the Rub' al Khali in the summer of 1977.

Quaternary climate of the Rub' al Khali as a model Unique conditions in the Rub' al Khali have preserved evidence of climate in the late Quaternary which serves as an excellent model for the Nafud of northwest Arabia and other parts of the peninsula. Artesian aquifers of eastern Arabia bear radiocarbon dates indicating that they were replenished by rainfall in their outcrop belts about the same

31

H. A. McClure time. This climate regime of the late Quaternary can be considered to have covered most of the peninsula, documented especially well in the great sand bodies and in the sedimentary aquifers of eastern Arabia.

Climate and landscape Late Tertiary tectonic activity and late Tertiary and Quaternary climate have modified the physiography inherited from earlier geologic times to produce a landscape and landform regime in which features such as aeolian dune fields, gravel plains, wadis, sabkhas, and grassland vegetation are prominent. Sea-level fluctuation has shaped coastline configuration and features of the littoral.

Wadis and rivers The three main through-draining great wadi systems of the peninsula, Dawasir, Sahba, and Batin-Rumah, are the product not of climate and sustained precipitation but of late Tertiary tectonic events. Beginning in latest Cretaceous time, accelerating in the later Tertiary, particularly characteristic of the Pliocene, and still going on, the main tectonic event has been intermittent pulses of uplift and northeast tilting of the peninsula as a tectonic plate as it underrides more stable Iran, thrusting up the Zagros as a consequence. This activity, periodically causing sudden baselevel tilt, has resulted in spasmodic and cataclysmic, brief, torrential flow in these drainage systems. Sustained, perennially discharging rivers and streams have most likely never been part of the drainage system, especially in Quaternary time. The great alluvial fans of the distal parts ofWadis Dawasir, Sahba, and Batin-Rumah consist of thin, surface gravel deposits with an igneous/metamorphic component, indicating an episode of final breaching of sedimentary escarpments and input from the shield area of such rocks, probably toward end of the Pliocene. Infill and aggradation, the product of flash flood flow, have been the dominant Quaternary processes since then. Pleistocene aeolian sand presently clogs a great deal of all three wadi systems. That they have been defunct of through-flow of even cataclysmic nature since about the end of the Pliocene (or possibly earliest Pleistocene) is a reasonable conclusion.

Sabkhas Sabkhas are a prominent feature in the landscape of eastern Arabia. They are particularly common along the coast and littoral areas to as far as 60 km inland, but also occur much further inland (e.g. Umm as Samim). A good definition of a sabkha (Arabic, pl. sibakh) is: a coastal or inland saline flat built up from deposition of silt, clay, and/or muddy sand in shallow, brine saturated, often salt encrusted depressions. Sabkhas are, for the most part, concentrated in a narrow belt along the coast from Kuwait to the base of the Qatar Peninsula and along the United Arab Emirate (Trucial) coast. Water table, brine saturated, is nearly always encountered within 1 to 2 m. of the

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Quaternary Climate and Landscape of Eastern Arabia surface of sabkhas. Prolonged evaporation of groundwater fed into a capillary fringe during dry periods concentrates and precipitates salts at or very near the surface to form a hard crust.Water from tidal invasion of sabkhas along the coast and runoff from rainfall of those further inland help recharge the system and also by evaporation contribute to the salt surface. Groundwater, derived in the case of eastern Arabia from the unconfined (non-artesian), near-surface regional Neogene aquifer, is the main feed source for sabkhas. Where this water table is locally exposed in lows at or very near the surface, sabkhas occur. Sabkhas were never living lakes or bodies of standing usable water. Several other obvious clues, in addition to the geological mechanism outlined here, are that fossils indicating sustained bodies of fresh water and/or geochemical deposits typical of playa lakes are never associated with sabkhas. Sabkhas have most likely been prominent features of the landscape since the beginning of aridity in late Tertiary time, becoming more prominent with increasing aridity, and especially characteristic of hyperaridity of later times.

Sea-level fluctuation The relatively straight present coastline of the Arabian side of the Gulf, broken by the major peninsula of Qatar, some minor peninsulas, the island of Bahrain, and a few nearshore smaller islands, is generally bordered by broad plains composed of sand beaches, stretches of coastal sabkhas, evaporite lagoons, and low dunes, with some old beach lines, old marine terraces, and Pleistocene dunes interspersed. The last marine transgression that significantly altered the coastline was that of Burdigalian age (upper Lower Miocene) about 17,000,000 years ago, when marine beds of the Dam Formation were deposited inland as much as 120 km. No unambiguous Quaternary palaeo-shorelines, marine terraces, or raised beaches can be identified along the coast or for some distance inland that are more than 3 m. above present datum (mean high tide). Several terrace fragments of about this elevation have been radiocarbon dated to about 30,000 years ago and radiocarbon dates at numerous sites along the coast, including the United Arab Emirate (Trucial) portion, indicate sealevel rises of between 1 and 2 m. above present datum within about the last 6,000 years. This is insignificant geologically (but the event may have affected littoral sedentary populations). Sabkha Umm as Samim, far inland in the eastern part of the Rub' al Khali, and erosional (presumed "wave cut") notches on the Shedgum plateau, have been considered by some to indicate marine incursion toward end of the Pliocene of up to 150 m. above present datum. A total lack of clear fossil evidence and deposits that would have accompanied such geographically extensive activity makes this seem unlikely, however. The evidence, if it existed, should be similar to that of the Burdigalian incursion.

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H. A. McClure

Vegetation Proto-savannah habitats were present in Africa and possibly in South America by Middle Miocene time, and true savannah-type habitats were at their maximum in Late Miocene, covering much of the large land masses, including the Middle East, as increased seasonal dryness progressed through the Cenozoic. In eastern Arabia, Miocene coastal savannah habits sustained populations of mastodon, rhinoceros, giraffe, pig and hominoid, with a vegetation dominated by grasses. This habitat, paralleling climate trends as outlined above, disappeared with increasing aridity of the Pliocene and the Quaternary, culminating in the basic vegetation type of dry grassland and true desert conditions of sparse grassland of today. This vegetation may have varied locally from time to time from lush to sparse, depending on precipitation events such as those of the late Pleistocene and Holocene documented in lake beds of the Rub' al Khali and elsewhere in the peninsula. Sparse grassland may be assumed to have characterized the last 6,000 years. Little landscape change has taken place in the last 6,000 years.

Demographic response With the above discussion of late Tertiary and Quaternary climate patterns as background, factors may now be considered that have probably controlled demography in the last 6,000 years. This will be discussed under the following topics: groundwater accessibility; quality of accessible groundwater; local spring discharge; and sea-level fluctuation.

Accessibility of groundwater Groundwater accessibility is controlled basically by depth to water table and, of course, until about this century meant hand-dug holes. In the case at hand, eastern Arabia and the Gulflittoral, the aquifer of concern is ofNeogene age. It is largely an unconfined (nonartesian), open system, dependent for recharge on present day precipitation, with perhaps a few areas of limited local upward leakage from deeper, pressure-confined aquifers (of Eocene age). Depth to Neogene water table is usually on the order of several meters to ten or so, depending on location and local topography, but the water table is generally accessible in hand-dug holes. This accessibility has been one of the basic controls on human populations in the area, especially in the last 6,000 years. As one comes down the west-east topographic and hydrologic gradient toward the coast, depth to the water table gets less. Not surprisingly, populations of about the last 6,000 years have been concentrated along the coast. Quality of groundwater Ready accessibility of water table is of little value to population support if water quality is not suitable. Salinity con tours of the Neogene water in parts per million Total Dissolved Solids indicates that highest values occur nearest the coast, possibly a product of sea

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Quaternary Climate and Landscape of Eastern Arabia 52°

Neogene aquifer salinity ppm TDS

~r.

~

Q

SA

=

''

0

·~ QB 0

0

km

100

Figure 1 Water quality in eastern Arabia (ah = Al Hasa)

water seepage (Figure I). Lowest values are further inland. Normal drinking water is on the order of less than 1,000 ppm TDS, the general limit for human consumption being about 3,000 ppm. Camels under stress will drink water that is as much as 12,000 ppm. Sea water is about 50,000. The Neogene is heterogenous lithologically, as a result of which local pods and lenses of fresh water may occur, fed by surface infiltration from local seasonal rainfall, and more or less independent of the regional characteristics. These may provide a supply of usable water locally for a few seasons or so, but are not generally reliable.

Local spring discharge Another basic control on demography is accessibility of water in local spring discharge. As the Neogene is not a pressured aquifer and surface recharge into it is very little, springs are considered for the most part to be the product oflocal leakage from deeper, regionally pressured aquifers (those of the Eocene). Some down-gradient Neogene seepage might also be present (in which case any significant local rainfall recharge into the Neogene might possibly increase spring output).

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H. A. McClure Water quality varies in discharging springs, but is generally good. Water discharging presently from the Al Hasa springs is about 1,500 ppm.

Sea-level fluctuation Sea-level fluctuation can affect littoral populations in two ways: inundation of habitation sites in the case of sea-level rise (as very likely happened with local 'Ubaid populations round about 6,000 years ago), or by displacing the shoreline outward in the case of sealevel drop, necessitating habitation movement outward if the population affected is dependent on shoreline activities (fishing, maritime trade, etc.). Where land-derived groundwater interfaces with coastal marine seepage, sea-level fluctuation also affects groundwater quality by displacing the sea water/groundwater interface. In a particular locality, low salinity water becomes more saline with sea-level rise and shift of the interface inland, and vice versa.

"Muhallim River" Some attention in the last few years has been given to a "recent river" originating in the Al Hasa oasis and presently discharging into a salt marsh near the coast. This "river", called informally by several names, Muhallim, Aftan, Gherra, or Laris, shows on latest Landsat imagery. The assumption has been made by some that evidence is provided for an ancient river in the area. However, this discharge is strictly the product of an extensive modem controlled and channelled irrigation and drainage system, taking advantage of ancient natural springs at the Al Hasa oasis, and with flow supplemented by numerous recently drilled holes into deeper, pressured aquifers. Historically, the natural spring system discharged in numerous pools in the oasis and seepage into the regional Neogene table fed sabkhas to the north and east. It is highly unlikely that collective output ever occurred in one channel that would have resulted in a perennially discharging river. There are clearly no fossil indications of such. It is true that some ancient sources and maps indicate rivers in the area, but ancient historians and geographers, usually dependent on secondary hearsay sources, probably found it difficult to imagine an area devoid of rivers supporting a population, and possibly confused intermittently flowing wadis with perennially flowing rivers.

Concluding remarks During the Holocene wet phase of the Rub' al Khali, increased grassland and occurrence of playa lakes supported a substantial hunter-gatherer population, attested by prolific occurrence of flint tools and grinding stones. Here, human activity is clearly associated with climate change, but precipitation events of the magnitude of those of the late Pleistocene and Holocene as recorded in the Rub' al Khali and elsewhere in the Arabian Peninsula have not occurred within the last 6,000 years, and a good assumption is that input to the regional Neogene aquifer system has not been sufficient to raise the water

36

Quaternary Climate and Landscape of Eastern Arabia table very much or to significantly increase spring discharge. Seasonal precipitation of today has no readily measurable effect on the Neogene groundwater table. All that has been said above is not meant to sound too dreary. Brief precipitation events difficult to detect may have affected the hydrologic system to some extent. Higher water table and increased spring discharge may have occurred as late as historic times, but the evidence is not easy to document. Sherd fields concentrated along the eastern littoral of Arabia indicate considerable population density in early Islamic times. Might there have been a climate respite not otherwise easily detectable that could have favourably affected the hydrologic system slightly but significantly with respect to populations, and might it be possible to speculate on an "early Islamic wet phase", somewhat similar to the "Roman wet phase" indicated by the North African wheat fields of that time? To what extent have population densities and concentration within the last 6,000 years in the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Gulf areas been controlled by climate and associated palaeoenvironmental fluctuations too brief and/or of too small a magnitude to be readily detectable in the hydrological and geological record, but of sufficient duration and intensity to have affected populations? A challenge for the future is to document lesser climatic respites or periods of ameliorization that may have controlled human populations of the area in the last 6,000 years, but this should be within constraints of a basic hyperarid climate framework that does not include flowing rivers, living lakes, lush vegetation or much rainfall.

Sources Important sources for late Tertiary and Quaternary palaeoclimate and palaeoenvironments for eastern Arabia and the peninsula in general are given in the list of references. Several of the more important that have been the basis for this paper may be singled out: for the flu vial history of the late Tertiary and desert aeolian processes of the Quaternary, the series of USGS geologic and geographic maps and the descriptive texts that accompany them; for Quaternary history in general, the excellent volume by Sayyari and Zotl; for Quaternary history of the Rub' al Khali and other areas of the peninsula, McClure; for Quaternary of the Great Nafud and other areas, Whitney and Garrod; for an excellent general outline of groundwater resources and hydrology, Water Atlas of Saudi Arabia; for aspects of geologic history of the Arabian Gulf, Purser. Aerial stereoscopic photography, 1:60,000 scale, of much of the peninsula is of limited availability. Landsat imagery is, of course, available. Thematic mapping clearly has specific application in the area. However, for better basic information on palaeoenvironment, palaeogeography, and palaeoclimate, documentation in the series of above-mentioned detailed geologic and geographic maps based on low altitude photogrammetry and high degree of ground truth provided by detailed surlace geologic mapping, all available for

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H. A. McClure

a good many years now, is still the best. As an example, the drainage system comprising the three great wad is of Dawasir, Sahba, and Batin-Rumah, the great aeolian sand deserts, and clues to palaeoenvironments that can be derived therefrom, are more clearly documented in this series of maps and their accompanying texts than through any Landsat imagery or remote sensing techniques (including side-scanning radar) presently available. A bit of care might be exercised in jumping on the Landsat bandwagon in this respect.

References AL-SAYYARJ, S.S. & J.G. ZOTL 1978 Editors, Quaternary Period in Saudi Arabia( l.Sedimentological, hydrogeological, hydrochemical, geomorphological, and climatological investigations in central and eastern Saudi Arabia). Wien/New York (Springer Verlag). GARRARD, A.N. & C.P.D. HARVEY 1981 Environment and settlement during the Upper Pleistocene and Holocene at Jubba in the Great Nafud, northern Arabia. Atlal 5: 137-48. McCLURE, H.A.

The Rub' al Khali. In Al-Sayyari and Zotl 1978: 252-63. Late Quaternary palaeoenvironments of the Rub' alKhali (Ph.D.thesis, University of London). McCLURE, H.A. & C. VrrA-FINz1 1982 Holocene shorelines and tectonic movements in eastern Saudi Arabia. Tectonophysics 85: 37-43. 1978 1984

MINISTRY OF AGRICULTIJRE AND WATER

1984 Water Atlas of Saudi Arabia. Jeddah. POWERS, R.W., L.F. RAMIREZ, C.D. REDMOND, & E.L. ELBERG, JR 1966 Geology of the Arabian Peninsula; Sedimentary Geology of Saudi Arabia (USGS. Prof. Paper 560-D). Washington. PURSER, B.H.

1973

Editor, The Persian Gulf(Holocene Carbonate Sedimentation and Diagenesis in a Shallow Epicontinental Sea). New York (Springer). THOMAS, H., s. SEN, M. KHAN, B. BATIAIL & G. LIGABUE 1981 The Lower Miocene fauna of Al-Sarrar (Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia). Atlal 5:109-18. U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY AND ARABIAN AMERICAN OIL Co. 1963 Geologic Map of the Arabian Peninsula, scale 1:2 million (U.S. Geological Survey Map I-270 A). Washington. VAN COUVERING, J.A.H.

1976

Evolution of Old World grassland fauna. 25th International Geological Congress: 320f. Abstract. WHYBROW, P.J. & H.A. McCLURE 1981 Fossil mangrove roots and palaeoenvironments of the Miocene of the eastern Arabian peninsula. Palaeogeology, Palaeoclimate, Palaeoecology 32: 213-25.

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Quaternary Climate and Landscape of Eastern Arabia P.J., H.A. McCLURE & G.F. ELLIOTT 1987 Miocene stratigraphy, geology and flora (algal) of eastern Saudi Arabia and the adDabtiyah vertebrate locality. Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History): Geology 41 (4): 371-82.

WHYBRow,

WHITNEY, J.W.

Erosional history and surficial geology of western Saudi Arabia (Technical Record USGS-TR-04-1, Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia). 89 pp. WHITNEY, J.W., D.J. FAULKENDER & M. RUBIN 1983 The environmental history and present conditions of the northern sand seas of Saudi Arabia (Open file report, USGS-OF-03-95, Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia). 39 pp. 1983

39

Early Cattle aroundthe Indian Ocean · by CAROLINE

GRJGSON

There are three main types of modem domestic cattle, of which two have specific status: non-humped, taurine cattle (Bos taurus) in Europe and north Africa, and humped cattle or zebu (Bos indicus) in India, the Far East and parts of Africa. The third type, the Sanga cattle of Africa, which are often classified as Bos taurus x Bos indicus, are actually of unknown affinity and origin and of uncertain taxonomic status; it is a suggestion of the present paper that Sanga cattle are of very ancient African origin and of equal status to Bos taurus and Bos indicus (see also Grigson 1991 ). As all three types of cattle are found in countries bordering the Indian Ocean, it would be interesting to know if archaeology can shed any light on the status and likely place and date of origin of each. Unfortunately there is a dearth of information about the early history of cattle in South-East Asia, so the present work is confined to countries bordering, or close to, the Arabian Sea. It is necessary to begin by describing the main features of the two species of domestic cattle; Sanga cattle are discussed in the section on Africa. Taurine cattle used to be confined to Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and probably some of the islands off the east coast of Africa, as well as northern China and Japan, but are now present in most parts of the world. Their skulls are very similar to those of the extinct wild ox (Bos primigenius primigenius) and they are undoubtedly descended from it. Although recently introduced into most parts of the tropical world, zebu cattle were distributed eastwards from eastern Iran, across Pakistan and India to the rest of South-East Asia and southern China, in many parts of Africa, as well as southern Iraq, southern Arabia, Malagasy and the some of the other islands off the east coast of Africa. Their skulls are anatomically close to those of the Indian fossil wild ox (Bos primigenius namadicus) and are clearly largely, if not entirely, derived from them (Grigson 1973; 1985; and in preparation.). Although studies of their protein polymorphism show that the two species are genetically distinct, they are completely interfertile and there is extensive hybridization between them. Bos indicus differs from Bos taurus not only in the presence of a hump, but also in the long, narrow face, long legs, sloping rump, heavy dewlap and often long pendulous ears and upstanding horns (Figure 1). Although typically thoracic the position of the muscular hump is variable and so is the amount of fat that it contains. It is bulbous in 41

Figure 1 Zebu and taurine cattle: left-zebu bull (Bos indicus)on a seal from Mohenjodaro in lndus Valley ( OA 1947-4-16, 1): the protuberant hump, upstanding horns, convex face, sloping rump, and heavy dewlap and prepuce are all typical of zebu cattle; righttypical taurine bull (Bos taurus)from the Standard of Ur in Mesopotamia (WA 121201 ): note the straight back, forward pointing horns, straight face and small dewlap.

fonn and projects upwards; although it is partly supported by the elongated spines of the anterior thoracic vertebrae it can get so heavy that it flops down on one side or the other. The two species can also be distinguished on the basis of many skeletal characters, including the shape of the ridge between the horns, the convexity of the forehead, the less prominent orbits, the persistence of flat orbital rims into old age (Grigson 1980), elongated dorsal spines on the anterior thoracic vertebrae (Grigson, in preparation), bifid dorsal spines on some of the posterior thoracic vertebrae (Stallibrass 1983; Grigson 1984b) and relatively slender limb bones (Grigson, in preparation). Although taurine cattle can tolerate hot climatic conditions, they are less well adapted to hot dry environments than the zebu, whose heat tolerance has been increased by the enlarged surface area for radiation in the form of the dewlap and hump, by more sweat glands and greater efficiency in water metabolism. Epstein (1971) and Epstein and Mason (1984) maintain that there is a sharp distinction between true zebu cattle 'Yith a musculo-fatty hump in the thoracic position, that is over the front part of the chest, and others (particularly Sangas) with a muscular hump in the cervico-thoracic position, that is partially over the neck. As the position of the hump and the proportion of fat and muscle that it contains are variable, this distinction has led to difficulties in the disentanglement of the early history of cattle in, Africa, Iran and the Indian subcontinent, which are discussed further below. Even though strictly speaking humpless, cattle of the species Bos taurus and its predecessor Bos primigenius, may have raised muscular withers, particularly in bulls. On crude or oversimplified figurines and pictures these may be difficult to distinguish

42

Early Cattle around the Indian Ocean

Figure 2 Early cattle of the Indian subcontinent (for zebu see Figure 1, left):leftdepictions on pots from the Kulli culture in Baluchistan, showing typical zebu cattle of thefourth millennium; right-" unicorn" fromMohenjodaro (OA 1947-4-16,2): although rather taurine in appearance, there are reasons for believing that this represents a mythical rather than a real beast.

from true humps, particularly those in the cervico-thoracic position. The present paper is an attempt to use archaeological evidence to discover which kinds of cattle were present in the various parts of the region at different times from the third millennium onwards. The information was taken from animal bone reports on a large number of sites, as well as pictorial data when available.

Southern Asia Eastern Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and North-West India Meadow's (1981; 1984a, b) osteometric analysis of the cattle remains from Mehrgahr shows that domestic cattle were definitely present in Baluchistan at the time of the appearance of pottery and that the same was true at Tepe Yahya and Tepe Gaz Tavila in Eastern Iran in the fifth millennium (Meadow 1986a, c; 1987). The change in size from wild to domestic is so gradual that Meadow believes it occurred locally and where the relevant bones survive they indicate Bos indicus. A figurine of a fine zebu bull from fifth millennium Tepe Yahya is illustrated by Beale (1986: fig. 7.35); it has a prominent, pendulous hump in the cervico-thoracic position. There is no doubt that by the early third millennium and probably much earlier, all the cattle of the area were domestic zebu; this is shown archaeozoologically at Jalilpur Il (Meadow 1984a; 1986b; 1987-8) and Lewan (K. Thomas 1986), as well as at Mehrgarh, and is confirmed by the depictions of cattle on pottery and figurines from Mehrgahr (Meadow 1984b: fig. 6.2b; Jarrige and Meadow 1980), Mundigak (Allchin and Allchin 1968: pl. 7a), Kulli, see Figure 2 (Piggott 1950:

43

Caroline Grigson figs 7-8; Conrad 1968), Shahr-i Sokhta (Caloi and Compagnoni 1981; Tosi 1983: figs 12, 15, 50-51; Tucci 1977: figs 40, 42) and also on the Rana Ghundai bull pottery (Ross 1946; Conrad 1968). Epstein maintains that most of the depictions of cattle at this time show animals with muscular, cervico-thoracic humps rather than the true zebu, illustrating his argument with pictures of bulls on Quetta and Kulli pottery (Epstein 1971 : figs 611,613,622; see also Epstein and Mason 1984), which are now thought to date from the third millennium (Meadow 1973). However, the humps are markedly protuberant as in normal zebu and vary in position from the neck to the thorax, in very stylized depictions, so there seems no valid reason to consider that they represent a different type of cattle. There are no indications of zebu cattle at this early period anywhere further west. The importance of zebu cattle in the Harappan civilization from about the mid-third to the mid-second millennium has been known for a long time, because of their numerous representations on the famous seals. The seals (Figure 1) show highly domesticated zebu with upstanding horns, protuberant humps in the thoracic position, drooping ears and pendulous dewlaps and prepuces; despite the fact that they are clearly typical Indian zebu, Epstein (1971: 511, fig. 612) stated that they had cervico-thoracic humps. Cattle bones from Harappan sites, such as Rupar and Bara (Nath 1968), Balakot (Meadow 1979a; 1986b; 1987) and those from the old excavations at Harappa (Grigson, in preparation) also indicate Bos indicus (Figure 9). The same is true at Shahr-i-Sokhta, where Caloi and Compagnoni (1981) found a bifid vertebra and a skull fragment with a typical indicus sagittal profile. However there is another animal depicted on Harappan seals, the famous unhumped unicorn (Figure 2). There are reasons for believing that this represents some sort of fabulous beast, possibly a chimera and certainly neither Bos taurus nor Bos primigenius (Grigson 1984a), and there are no indications of either of these species in the archaeozoological assemblages. However there are also a few seals and quite a number of figurines depicting unhumped cattle whose significance is problematical; they may indicate some link with Mesopotamia. The apparent absence of equids and camels from Harappan sites raises the question of mobility during that time in the whole wide area of Harappan influence. The many terracotta models of carts pulled by oxen that have been retrieved from Harappan sites indicate that cattle were used in transportation. The use of cattle for draft does not preclude their use as food, and the manner in which the bones found on sites have been broken suggests that they were indeed eaten at this time.

Peninsular India Domestic animals seem to have arrived very late in the rest of India. The important site ofBagor(P. Thomas 1975; Misra 1973) has cattle, but it is not certain whether they were present in the Microlithic level of the fifth to fourth millennia, as well as the third millennium. They are recorded in the late third millennium ash mounds of Kodekal, Mallur (Clason 1977) and Utnur (Shrinivasan 1961), and at Nagarjununakonda (Nath 44

Early Cattle around the Indian Ocean 1963; 1973) and Piklihal (Shrinivasan 1960) and at many Neolithic and Chalcolithic sites from the second millennium (Badam 1984; P. Thomas 1984; Clason 1975; 1977). The only published measurements from these sites (Clason 1977) confirm the domestic status of the cattle, which is also supported by the rock-bruised depictions of zebu cattle at Maski and Piklihal, which are believed to be Neolithic (Allchin 1963a). The Neolithic ashmounds of the southern Deccan were produced by the periodic burning of enormous quantities of cattle dung. Allchin ( 1963b) has suggested that the pens enclosing this dung were used in the process of rounding up wild cattle for domestication (Allchin and Allchin 1974), but penning could equally have been part of the contemporary system of cattle husbandry. As sheep or goats or both were present in the Neolithic sites of Kodekal, Piklihal and Utnur in peninsula India and were present in virtually all sites from the second millennium onwards (Badam 1984; Thomas 1984; Clason 1977) and as they must have been imported, presumably from the Indus Valley, it is likely that cattle came with them. However a comparison of Clason' s ( 1977) measurements of cattle from Kayatha from the first half of the second millennium with the contemporary cattle at Harappa and Balakot, shows that the Kayatha animals were much smaller. This may simply imply a lower standard of husbandry at Kayatha, but could indicate that the cattle there were descended from a different domestic stock. The way in which the cattle bones found on sites in peninsular India have been broken, suggests that here as well they were eaten.

The Arabian peninsula As far as archaeozoology is concerned we have to consider the Arabian peninsula in two parts, the eastern coast along the Persian Gulf on the one hand and the western coast along the Red Sea, together with the Yemen, on the other. This is because settlement in the centre of Arabia has been so sparse that there are very few archaeological sites and because those on the south coast do not seem to have yielded any faunal remains, or, if they have, they have not been reported upon. Most modem cattle in Arabia are zebu, but it does not follow that this was the case in the past. Epstein (1971: 345, 513), noting their similarity to cattle in Eritrea and northern Somalia, suggested that they had been introduced into Africa from Arabia; however, the reverse seems more likely as Rouse (1970) states that zebu cattle are imported from East Africa and sold in the market at Riyadh. There are short-horned cattle to this day in the mountains of Yemen and on the island of Socotra (Gwynne 1967), which are probably taurine. It would be interesting to know their relationship with the unhumped cattle of the other islands off the coast of Africa (see below). The east coast of Arabia The earliest sites with faunal remains from the east coast are Ubaid. Most are shell middens, probably dating to the late fifth and the fourth millennia. Not all have remains

45

Caroline Grigson of domestic animals, but in those that do these are of sheep/goats and cattle, with sheep/ goats predominating (Zeder 1974). The only site from which the fauna has been published in anything like adequate detail is Umm an-Nar, an island site during the late third millennium BC, where Hoch ( 1979) has shown that most of the food was obtained from marine and coastal resources. As in other third millennium sites, such as Umm an Nussi and Tell Ramad (Garrard, in Piesinger 1983), sheep and goats predominated over cattle in the domestic assemblage, but the most important finds were numerous camel bones. It seems quite possible that zebu cattle were utilized in Arabia in ancient times, but Uerpmann (personal communication) has looked for signs amongst the animal remains that Bos indicus was present at three third millennium sites in the Oman peninsula (Hili 8, Ras Ghanada and Maysar 22) and has found that only Bos taurus is positively indicated. On the other hand there are a number of important depictions of cattle, which have been discussed by Zarins and al Badr (1988). One (Figure 3) is painted on a pot from Umm an-Nar (Frifelt 1975: fig. 41; Thorvildsen 1962: fig. 23; Bibby 1972: 297) and shows a small, but very definite zebu ox; however, one of the carvings from the same site (Figure 3) shows an unhumped animal (Glob 1960: fig. 4). A seal from Maysar (Weisgerber 1980: 271) shows a humped bull and so does a steatite vessel from Tarot (Pittman 1984: 20, fig. 4). There is of course the problem that both the jar and the seal may have been imported, although I understand that the pottery is distinctly local in style and certainly the bull itself is not like those on pottery from Baluchistan. There seem to be no published reports of fauna from sites of the entire second millennium, but in first millennium sites recently excavated by Carl Phillips in Ras al Kheimah there is the same dominance of sheep and goats (Grigson, in preparation).

The west coast of Arabia and the Yemen Remains oflarge bovids from Upper Pleistocenelakes in western Arabia have been found by McClure ( 1984 ), but it is uncertain whether these were of wild cattle or of one or more of the desert bovids, such as the oryx (Oryx leucoryx) which certainly lived there, the addax (Addax nasomaculatus) which may have done, or even of the hartebeest, which probably lived in Arabia in areas where conditions were moister than today. Although most cattle in the area today are zebu, there are small unhumped cattle in the mountainous part of the Yemen and it is possible that these were once more widely distributed. They are said to resemble the small, unhumped cattle of the islands of Socotra (Gwynne 1967; Naval Intelligence Division 1946) and Comoro and it is quite possible that they were exported there in the distant past. As mentioned above, zebu cattle are to this day imported into Saudi Arabia from East Africa. There are a number of Aceramic Neolithic sites along the southern part of the Red Sea coast and in the Yemen, which are believed to date to the sixth to fourth millennia BC. The few mammalian remains that have been retrieved are very poorly preserved, so

46

Early Cattle around the Indian Ocean

Figure 3 Early cattle on the eastern side of the Arabian Peninsula: abovehumped bull depicted on a pot from Umman-Narinthe U.A.E. (Bibby 1973: the upstanding horns and the protuberant hump suggest the zebu (Bos indicus), but whether humped cattle were actually present at this time in Arabia is uncertain; below-unhumped bull (Glob 1960) ca111edon a stone at Umm an-Nar and probably contemporary with the pot.

47

Caroline Grigson the identifications that have resulted are tentative in terms of taxonomy and domestic status, however both Bokonyi (1990; and in Tosi, forthcoming) and Fedele (1987; 1989; in press) suggest that domestic cattle and sheep/goats were represented in some of the sites, albeit sporadically and in very small numbers. Fourth millenium sites, such as Surdud, SRDl (Bokonyi, in Tosi, forthcoming) have more definite reports of domesticates and at Surdud the assemblage seems to be dominated by cattle. It is important to note that although there are some sites dated to the third millennium in this area, none of these have yielded faunal remains, so this period is a blank in terms of archaeozoology. In the second millennium the domestic fauna in the shell middens at Sihi and at Suhr seems to be dominated by sheep/goats, and cattle have only been doubtfully identified (Grigson et al. 1989; Clutton-Brock, in preparation); however, sheep, domestic cattle and, most surprisingly, pig were present at Wadi Y ana 'im (WYi) (Fedele 1984a, b; see now Fedele 1990). The famous rock-engravings from inland sites are of course an additional source of information about animals. Illustrations published by Anati (1968-1974) and photographs kindly lent to me by Juris Zarins show long-homed, unhumped cattle, remarkably similar to those on engravings from the Hom of Africa, but the domestic status of the cattle and the dates of the engravings are very uncertain in both areas. The historical importance of the kingdoms of southern Arabia and the Yemen from about BC/ AD onwards is well known and so it is unfortunate that there are no reported animal remains from them. However there are quite a number of depictions carved on buildings and in the form of figurines which are helpful (Figure 4). Two of these show unhumped cattle; another has a slight hump, but it seems more like the heavy raised withers found in well-fed taurine bulls, or possibly the cervico-thoracic Sanga hump of African cattle, rather than a true indicus hump.

The Middle East By the fourth millennium most archaeozoological assemblages in the Middle East consist almost entirely of domestic animals, comprising roughly 50% sheep and goats and 25% each of cattle and pigs, all distinguished from their wild forebears by their smaller size. Cattle bones sometimes have malformations thought to indicate use as draught animals. Most early depictions (as in Figure 1, right) show that cattle were unhumped animals with short horns, whose length was probably in simple proportion to body size as in many modem breeds (Grigson 1975). Wherever osteological evidence is forthcoming taurine cattle are indicated (Figure 9), but evidence in the form ofbifid vertebrae (Figure 5) for the presence of zebu cattle as well has been found in the first millennium BC in Jordan (Clason 1978). One of the earliest depictions of a zebu ox found in Mesopotamia is on the Khafaje bowl (Figure 6). However it should not be taken as evidence for the presence of zebu 48

Early Cattle around the Indian Ocean

Figure 4 Early cattle in the Yemen: left-this Sabaean bronz.e bull in the British Museum (WA 135562) of the first century BC to the first century AD is taurine; right-an alabaster bull from the Yemen ( Costa 1978: no. 55): the powerful raised withers suggest a taurine rather than a zebu.

Figure 5 Bifid venebrae in cattle: left-the bifid dorsal vertebral spines from Deir 'Alla, perhaps indicating the presence ofBos indicus in Syria in the first millennium BC ( Clason 1978); right-modern bifid dorsal venebral spine from near the Lake of Homs in Syria, collected by the author: the cattle in the area are unhumped.

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Caroline Grigson

Figure 6 Early cattle in the Middle East: above-the zebu bull on the Khafaje bowl (WA 128887): although this was thought to indicate the presence of zebu cattle in Mesopotamia, the bowl is now believed to have been imported from Baluchistan, where the local cattle were wuloubtedly zebu; below-the humped bull from Chagar Bauir (WA 125500), a possible indication of zebu cattle in the area in the early second millennium: it has a definite dewlap, though the position of the hump right on the neck, coupled with its protuberance, does not seem correct for either a zebu or a cervico-thoracic humped animal.

50

Early Cattle around the Indian Ocean cattle in the area as it is believed to have been imported from Baluchistan (Moorey 1980). Epstein ( 1971) lists this, as well as figurines and depictions on painted pottery from Susa, as cervico-thoracic humped cattle. However, as already discussed for the depictions from Pakistan, the position of the hump is variable. Two of the three illustrations in his fig. 606 have thoracic humps and although the hump on the other does seem to be in the cervicothoracic position it is rather flat and could depict a well-fed taurine bull with raised withers. Both humped and unhumped bulls are portrayed in a very stylized fashion on seals with Harappan script, found at Ur and dated around 2000 BC. The Harappan script on the seals suggests contact between the two areas and the artists' familiarity with both types of cattle. One outstanding depiction of an early humped bull in the Middle East is the figurine from Chagar Bazar (Figure 6) in Syria dated to about 1700 BC. It has a definite dewlap and a marked hump, though its position right on the neck coupled with its protuberance does not seem correct for either a thoracic-humped or a cervico-thoracic humped zebu. Epstein ( 1971 : 518) maintains that taurine cattle have been prevalent in Anatolia and Syria for more than 4,000 years and this seems to be true not only of those countries but also of the rest of the Middle East as well, despite his contention (p. 514) that in southern Babylonia they were replaced by zebu cattle in the third millennium. It is true that there are convincing depictions of cattle with humps in most places at various times, but they do not have other indicus characters such as marked dewlaps and upstanding horns and there are also depictions of taurine cattle, whose presence, as already mentioned, can be confirmed osteologically. The bifid vertebrae from Jordan mentioned above suggest that imported zebu cattle had, at some stage, been crossed with local taurines, and their descendants sometimes developed humps. It is worth mentioning that Mediterranean breeds of cattle which have no humps, do have some genetic affinity with the zebu (I.L. Mason, quoted by Baker and Manwell 1980: l 45t) and that the humpless Damascus cattle, which are classed as Mediterranean, occasionally develop bifid vertebrae, Figure Sb (Grigson, in preparation). Epstein (1971: 513, figs 615,617) illustrates modem thoracic humped cattle from southern Iraq and southern Arabia and says that because they are so similar to shorthomed zebu from Africa they must be ancestral to them. However, as in Arabia, it is quite possible that these are the descendants of zebu imported in modem times from Africa.

Africa According to Epstein ( 1971) and Epstein and Mason ( 1984) there are three main types of cattle in Africa today, although all interbreed to a large extent. Humped cattle, which are virtually identical with the Indian zebu, are distributed along the whole of the eastern seaboard from northern Eritrea and the Hom to South Africa, including Malagasy and the islands of Pemba and Zanzibar, reaching inland as far as the eastern Congo and extending in a narrow belt south of the Sahara to the west coast.

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Caroline Grigson

Figure 7 Two Nilotic Sanga cows (Epstein 1971: fig. 497): note the long horns, directed upwards and outwards, the slight hump, the slight dewlap and the straight facial profile; contrast with the zebu and taurine cattle shown in Figure I.

Small, short-horned humpless cattle are distributed along the west coast of Africa from Morocco southwards as far as the western Congo. South of Morocco they are grouped together as variants of the West African shorthorn (Epstein 1971: 266-94), which are generally believed to be brachyceros, that is short-homed taurines. An alternative view is that these are the descendants of North African cattle which were originally large with correspondingly long horns, meaning that they are of Sanga rather than taurine origin. In the course of time, and with their penetration into tropical regions, both body size and horn length have diminished. Their antiquity is attested by their inherent resistance to tsetse and various other African diseases, but not to rinderpest. As already mentioned the island ofSocotradefinitely has unhumped cattle (Gwynne 1967) and some have been imported in the present century into Mauritius (Rouse 1970). The third type of cattle in Africa is the Sanga, whose origin is discussed in more detail by Grigson (1991). Although Sangacattle show varying degrees of zebu influence they can usually be distinguished by one or more characteristics such as a small muscular hump which, though variable in position, is typically cervico-thoracic. It is more prominent in bulls than in cows and may be absent altogether in small animals. When present the dewlap is small and unfolded. Curson (1934) drew the same distinction between the three main types of cattle in Africa, but his account of their osteology is based on a single skull of each type, all of which could have been of mixed origin. He also mistook some age-dependent characters for breed differences. Bearing these problems in mind it is only safe to say that Sanga cattle have long flat faces and straight intercornual ridges. Body and horn ·size are variable, though they are usually large with long horns

52

Early Cattle around the Indian Ocean

(Figure 7). In some breeds the horns are disproportionately long, or stout as well as long, but in general horn length seems to be proportional to body size. Fagan (1967) quotes David Livingstone's description of the local Tonga cattle in Zambia in the nineteenth century as small, short-homed Sangas with cervico-thoracic humps. Modem breeds of Sanga cattle include the Barotse of South Africa, the Nilotic cattle of southern Sudan and probably the Sakalava in Mozambique. Although the distribution of Sanga cattle is now patchy it was probably once continuous and it is likely that they were distributed over most of Africa, except in the equatorial forest zone. There are records of extinct humpless cattle of small size, which may have been San gas rather than taurines; they include the Nuba cattle of the southern Sudan, the AmaXosa cattle in South Africa, and the less certainly recorded humpless cattle on the islands of Comoro, Pemba, Mafia and Malagasy, off the east coast. It is possible that the cattle of the Khoikhoin in southern Africa, which now have humps, were hump less at the time of the earliest European contacts. Jeffreys ( 1953) lists places in many parts of Africa, in which small short-homed cattle have been recorded in historical times, but unfortunately does not state whether the cattle had humps or not. The places include Ovambe in southwest Africa, Malin de on the east coast of Kenya, Mashonaland in Zimbabwe in 1891 and the Comoro Islands in 1771. He argues convincingly that they were eliminated by rinderpest in the nineteenth century. The distinction between zebu cattle with fatty humps in the thoracic position and Sangas with muscular humps in the cervico-thoracic position, postulated by Epstein (1971) and Epstein and Mason (1984 ), may once have been valid in Africa, but continuous hybridization has led to a continuous range of variation in the shape and constitution of the hump. The distinction seems to be largely based on Epstein's own dissections of the humps of various breeds, particularly the Afrikaner. Afrikaner cattle are a good example of the confusion that has arisen as a result of the use of the hump in classification. They resemble zebu in almost every anatomical feature, including convex facial profiles and bifid vertebrae, but because the hump was muscular and situated in the cervico-thoracic position, Epstein classified them as Sanga. So it seems that Afrikaner cattle, at least in their modem form, arose from hybridization with zebu, probably mostly in the nineteenth century. The view that Afrikaner cattle are distinct from Sangas has also been reached, independently, by Elizabeth Voigt (1983; 1986). Manwell and Baker (1980) and Baker and Manwell (1980) have amalgamated the results of numerous studies on protein polymorphism in cattle which show that African and Indian zebu are related and the differences that exist can be explained in terms of outbreeding of African zebu with Sanga cattle. Although their Sanga group is distinct from their taurine group and closer to Bos indicus it is not clear to what extent this is the result of cross-breeding in at least some of the breeds classified as Sangas, particularly the Afrikaner. Thus the results of the study of protein polymorphism could be interpreted

53

Caroline Grigson as meaning that Sanga cattle were originally intermediate between taurines and zebus and that they arose either as the result of crossing between the two main species, or by the domestication in North Africa of the local form of wild cattle (Bos primigenius opisthonomus), or as the result of crossing between taurines imported from the Middle East and the local wild cattle. It is now necessary to see whether information gathered from the archaeological literature in various parts of eastern Africa can shed any light on these problems. Egypt, excluding Nubia As Gautier ( 1984a) and Boessneck ( 1988) have indicated, the four main domestic artiodactyls were already well established in the Nile Valley in the fifth and fourth millennia, at such sites as Merimde-Benisalame, Ma'adi, Toukh, Badari and Hierakonpolis, and had been present, at least in the Fayum and Nile Delta, since the Neolithic. As their wild progenitors are not native to North Africa domestic sheep and goats must have been imported, though wild pigs were probably present in the Nile Valley and wild cattle were widely distributed across North Africa and as far south as northern Sudan. At Hierakonpolis there were about 50% of sheep and goats, 41 % of cattle and 7% of pigs (McArdle 1982). Depictions show that the cattle were unhumped, with a wide variation from long to short horns. There are many problems here. In general there is a direct relationship between body size and horn length: large cattle have long, stout horns, middle-sized cattle have middle-sized horns and small cattle have short horns, so taxonomic distinctions based on horn length usually reflect only body size and are therefore invalid. True longhorn cattle are those with disproportionately long horns, and true shorthorns are those in which bulls, but not castrates or cows, have disproportionately short horns. One problem is that estimates of horn length, and more particularly of homcore length, tend to be subjective. Although complete homcores are rare in normal archaeozoological assemblages and complete skulls are even rarer, complete heads of animals are quite often found in Egyptian tombs and with detailed osteometric study these problems could be resolved. With pictorial representations it is sometimes difficult to judge which type of horn length is indicated, especially when many animals are depicted together; nevertheless, it is clear from Egyptian art that there was a distinct breed of large cattle with long horns (Boessneck 1988), which goes back to at least the fourth millennium, as confirmed by Churcher ( 1984) in his detailed analysis of the animals depicted on the ivory knife handle from Abu Zaiden (Figure 8). Boessneck also discusses medium- and short-homed cattle which he maintains were derived largely from imported taurines. Although giving no details he says that long-, medium- and short-homed cattle were represented in the faunal assemblage at Ma'adi in the early fourth millennium. Burleigh and Clutton-Brock' s (1980) description of an Illahun bull skull, which was complete with homsheaths, confirms that cattle with long horns were present, at least in

54

Earlv Cattle around the Indian Ocean

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Figure 8 Early cattle in Egypt: above-predynastic depictions of cattle on the Abu Zaiden knife handle (Churcher 1984): the cattle in the upper row (AB) have long, outstanding horns and so does one of those in the lower row (BB); the horns of the remainder in B8 seem curved and perhaps shorter; middle-the ivory bull from Egypt (Hornblower 1927), believed to date from the XVI/Ith dynasty: perhaps indicating the presence of zebu cattle; below-cattle depicted in the Tomb of Nebamun at Thebes: some have straight backs, others cervico-thoracic humps as in other cattle of African origin; they have no zebu characters and are certainly not evidence for the presence of the zebu in Egypt.

55

Caroline Grigson the Twelfth Dynasty (early second millennium BC), but there is nothing to indicate that the horns or homcores were disproportionately long. The same is true of Boessneck and von den Driesch' s ( 1987) detailed description of the "Munich Ox", a mummy from early Ptolemaic times (late first millennium BC). Polled cattle are also sometimes depicted in Egyptian paintings. Boessneck (1988) believed that they were derived from long-homed cattle. As Naville (1898; 1906) pointed out, the depictions of Queen Hatshepsut's expedition to the land of Punt in the mid-second millennium show both long- and short-homed cattle. Apparently the records stated that 3,300 long-homed bulls were included in the spoil. Whilst it was perfectly feasible to transport animals as large as cattle by boat, transporting 3,000 long-homed cattle is another matter and it is likely that these were driven overland. Close re-examination of the depictions shows that cattle with horns of medium length were also present; they are shown grazing under frankincense trees in the garden of Ammon. More importantly, in the long-homed animals, the horns were directed sideways rather than upwards, in a manner which suggests artificial distortion, similar to that found on cattle skulls in the C-group cemetery at Faras (ea. BC/ AD) which are described below and, even more intriguingly, to that practised into modem times by the Nuer in southern Sudan (Evans-Pritchard 1940). The second point of interest with Egyptian cattle is the possible presence of zebu, in addition to unhumped cattle, from the late second millennium onwards. Pictorial evidence shows that the vast majority of cattle in Egypt were unhumped, and so they are to this day. It has been claimed by Carrington (1972) that zebu cattle predominated in Egypt in New Kingdom times, but this is simply untrue. What we do have are occasional pictures of cattle that can, with some reservations, be described as humped. Hornblower ( 1928) was the first person to draw attention to depictions of humped cattle in Egypt and his examples have been widely quoted, usually without acknowledgement to him (Figure 8). Although Zeuner (1963) agrees that these are zebu, in my view they are not humped in the same sense as Bos indicus: they do not have the same protruding fleshy humps, the upstanding lyrate horns, sloping rumps and pendulous dew laps that characterize true zebu cattle. Epstein ( 1971) and Epstein and Mason ( 1984 ), in their monumental works on the origin of domestic animals, overcame this problem by stating that the majority of these Egyptian depictions show cattle with cervicothoracic, not thoracic, humps; here, though not in many other instances, I think that they were correct. There are one or two more convincing depictions of zebu cattle from Egypt in the late second millennium BC. One is an ivory figurine (Figure 8), taken from Hornblower ( 1928). It may be significant that it shows an ox lying down, in which position the shoulder musculature might be pushed upwards. One or two cattle with cervico-thoracic humps, but no zebu features, are depicted with a large number of unhumped cattle in the Tomb of Nebamun at Thebes (Figure 8; Davis and Faulkner 1947).

56

Early Cattle around the Indian Ocean There is no osteological evidence for either the presence or the absence of zebu cattle in Egypt, not I suspect because it does not exist, but because it has not been looked for. When describing the "Munich Ox" Boessneck and von den Driesch ( 1987) did not invoke many of the features which Grigson (1974-1980) found could be used to distinguish indicus and taurus, nor are all the measurements which they took comparable with hers. However, their account of the skeletal morphology is detailed enough to show that the Egyptian longhorn was quite unlike indicus and though closer to taurus was quite distinct from that tax on as well. The same is true of the skulls from Saqqara, Giza, Tell el Amarna, the Baqaria and the Bucheum (Durst 1899; Jackson 1934), the cow skeletons from the Baqaria (Jackson 1934) and the numerous complete cattle skeletons from Saqqara and Abousir, described in detail by Lortet and Gaillard ( 1903; 1905) as a different tax on, Bos africanus. Although this is probably not a valid taxonomic category, the fact that they invoked it does emphasize the marked difference between Egyptian cattle, taurines and zebu. They state that Egyptian longhorns are the same as the modem cattle living on the plains of the Upper Nile, which they also refer to as Bos africanus. Boessneck and von den Driesch (1987) do not state whether any of the vertebral spines of the Munich ox were bifid, but presumably if they had been they would have said so. None of those illustrated by Lortet and Gaillard (1903) or by Jackson (1934) are bifid. Figure 9 shows that the metapodials of early cattle from India, Pakistan and Iran (zebu) are narrower than those from Middle Eastern sites (taurines). Addition of the available metacarpal measurements from Egypt and Nubia (Figure 9A)-from the Munich ox (Boessneck and von den Driesch 1987), the Baqaria and the Bucheum (Jackson 1934), Elephantine (Boessneck and von den Driesch 1982) and Qasr Ibrim (Grigson, in preparation)-shows that they are very long and slender, usually even more so than those of indicus; this is also true of the metatarsals (Figure 9B ), although for this bone the indicus sample is very small. The possibility that true zebu cattle were occasionally imported into Egypt cannot be ruled out. But certainly, as Epstein (1971: 513) points out, they can have had little or nothing to do with the subsequent appearance of zebu cattle in most of sub-Saharan Africa, which is discussed below. The situation has recently become more complicated because Muzzolini (1983) has argued for an autochthonous origin of zebu cattle in Africa, on the basis of his analysis of Saharan rock paintings and engravings. In his view, whilst most of these show unhumped cattle, a few depict thoracic-humped animals, in contrast to those in Egypt which he also considers to have had cervico-thoracic humps. However all the pictures of cattle from the Sahara that he shows to illustrate his thesis also lack all the zebu characters listed above and the humps are variable in position (Figure I 0). My own conclusion is that these and some other early cattle in Africa had raised withers or cervicothoracic humps, but most had neither.

57

Caroline Grigson

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