from the memory of man until archaeology began to unearth its impressive remains in the twentieth century A.D.

IV. “1984”-B.C.

LEONARD COTTRELL, who has published in book form his many travel talks over the B.B.C., has in his book Lost Cities the following detailed description of Mohenjo-daro and Harappƒ. Both Amaury de Riencourt and Leonard Cottrell describe in detail the Indus Valley cities which have also been described by the famous archaeologists who originally uncovered the Indus sites and wrote about them. Sir John Marshall, and Sir Mortimer Wheeler, Lost Cities, Robert Hale Ltd., 63 Old Brompton Road, S. W. 7, England, .1957, also published by Pan Books. The reading is the entire chapter on the Indus Valley, pages 108 to 123..

THE VAST SUB-CONTINENT of India-Pakistan contains many once-great cities now in ruins, but the majority of these were built in historical times, far later than those of Egypt and Mesopotamia. In fact, until comparatively recently, nowhere on earth, save China, was there conclusive evidence of any ancient civilization of comparable age to those of Egypt and Sumeria.

But in India, as in ancient Greece, there were traditions. According to Hindu chronicles, the history of India goes back to some three thousand years before the beginning of the Christian era, but there is no archaeological evidence to support this. We know, however, that the first invasion of India was that of the Aryans. They came from the northwest and lived for a time on the southern slopes of the Himalayas before they invaded the great Indo-Gangetic plain and drove back the earlier Dravidian population into the southern part of the sub-continent. Most of our knowledge of them is derived from the Rig Veda, a collection of Hindu hymns which established the antiquity of their origin. They were a civilized people with an established and highly complex religious tradition, and were acquainted with the various arts. They worshipped innumerable deities, who are still venerated today; there must be few people who are not vaguely familiar with some of them-the god Indra, the god Vishnu, the god Shiva and her consort Parvati, and others.

Yet until just over thirty years ago all this information was traditional, based on Hindu myths and legends. Hindu civilization was obviously extremely old, but how old? Whereas in Egypt and Mesopotamia there were cities, monuments and tombs, which, with