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[Diego]

The Indus Valley's Bronze Age civilisation may have developed the world's first sophisticated system of wage labour, financial exchange and measurement, a Canadian mathematician has discovered. According to a new study of clay pots and ceramic tablets discovered almost 70 years ago in Harappa, now in Pakistan, the people of the Indus Valley had a detailed system of commodity value, weights and measures.      Dr Bryan Wells, a researcher based at India's Institute of Mathematical Sciences, said he had begun work on his thesis when he first saw photographs of the clay pots with markings which appeared to be in proportion to their relative size. But he was not able to test his thesis until he visited New Delhi earlier this month where the original pots are stored in one of the city's Mughal era forts. The three pots each had different markings, the smallest with a 'V' to indicate 'measure' and three long strokes. The medium vessel had six strokes and the largest had seven. When he measured them he found they were in proportionate capacity: 3:6:7.      The inscriptions on the pots matched those on bas relief ceramic tablets which he believes are tokens of exchange for fixed measures of grain or other commodities. The size of the pots - the largest is 2.7 metres in circumference, and contains 65 litres - indicates an organised system of exchange for large scale transactions, he said. The bas-relief tablets are "definitely some kind of exchange token. These pots are more than one metre wide. You're not going to be carrying them around. The chits or tablets have representative value and they are being used in an economic context," he said.      In his paper Indus Weights and Measures, to be published in the archeological journal Antiquity next year, Dr Wells suggests the tablets may be the equivalent of 'wage slips' or credits for work representing fixed volumes of food. "It is possible that wages were paid with grains dispersed from a centralised storage facility or in the case of incised tablets material for construction projects and other short-term projects," he wrote. Although older coins and ingots have been discovered from the Mesopotamia, but Dr Wells' findings amount to a more detailed decoding of an ancient value system.Sources: The Hindu (15 November 2009), Telegraph.co.uk (17 November 2009)



Article on Stone Pages News: http://www.stonepage...ves/003607.html

[harry sivertsen]

Diego, on 23 November 2009 - 21:20, said:

The Indus Valley's Bronze Age civilisation may have developed the world's first sophisticated system of wage labour, financial exchange and measurement, a Canadian mathematician has discovered. According to a new study of clay pots and ceramic tablets discovered almost 70 years ago in Harappa, now in Pakistan, the people of the Indus Valley had a detailed system of commodity value, weights and measures.      Dr Bryan Wells, a researcher based at India's Institute of Mathematical Sciences, said he had begun work on his thesis when he first saw photographs of the clay pots with markings which appeared to be in proportion to their relative size. But he was not able to test his thesis until he visited New Delhi earlier this month where the original pots are stored in one of the city's Mughal era forts. The three pots each had different markings, the smallest with a 'V' to indicate 'measure' and three long strokes. The medium vessel had six strokes and the largest had seven. When he measured them he found they were in proportionate capacity: 3:6:7.      The inscriptions on the pots matched those on bas relief ceramic tablets which he believes are tokens of exchange for fixed measures of grain or other commodities. The size of the pots - the largest is 2.7 metres in circumference, and contains 65 litres - indicates an organised system of exchange for large scale transactions, he said. The bas-relief tablets are "definitely some kind of exchange token. These pots are more than one metre wide. You're not going to be carrying them around. The chits or tablets have representative value and they are being used in an economic context," he said.      In his paper Indus Weights and Measures, to be published in the archeological journal Antiquity next year, Dr Wells suggests the tablets may be the equivalent of 'wage slips' or credits for work representing fixed volumes of food. "It is possible that wages were paid with grains dispersed from a centralised storage facility or in the case of incised tablets material for construction projects and other short-term projects," he wrote. Although older coins and ingots have been discovered from the Mesopotamia, but Dr Wells' findings amount to a more detailed decoding of an ancient value system.Sources: The Hindu (15 November 2009), Telegraph.co.uk (17 November 2009)



Article on Stone Pages News: http://www.stonepage...ves/003607.html

[harry sivertsen]

Diego, on 23 November 2009 - 21:20, said:

The Indus Valley's Bronze Age civilisation may have developed the world's first sophisticated system of wage labour, financial exchange and measurement, a Canadian mathematician has discovered. According to a new study of clay pots and ceramic tablets discovered almost 70 years ago in Harappa, now in Pakistan, the people of the Indus Valley had a detailed system of commodity value, weights and measures.      Dr Bryan Wells, a researcher based at India's Institute of Mathematical Sciences, said he had begun work on his thesis when he first saw photographs of the clay pots with markings which appeared to be in proportion to their relative size. But he was not able to test his thesis until he visited New Delhi earlier this month where the original pots are stored in one of the city's Mughal era forts. The three pots each had different markings, the smallest with a 'V' to indicate 'measure' and three long strokes. The medium vessel had six strokes and the largest had seven. When he measured them he found they were in proportionate capacity: 3:6:7.      The inscriptions on the pots matched those on bas relief ceramic tablets which he believes are tokens of exchange for fixed measures of grain or other commodities. The size of the pots - the largest is 2.7 metres in circumference, and contains 65 litres - indicates an organised system of exchange for large scale transactions, he said. The bas-relief tablets are "definitely some kind of exchange token. These pots are more than one metre wide. You're not going to be carrying them around. The chits or tablets have representative value and they are being used in an economic context," he said.      In his paper Indus Weights and Measures, to be published in the archeological journal Antiquity next year, Dr Wells suggests the tablets may be the equivalent of 'wage slips' or credits for work representing fixed volumes of food. "It is possible that wages were paid with grains dispersed from a centralised storage facility or in the case of incised tablets material for construction projects and other short-term projects," he wrote. Although older coins and ingots have been discovered from the Mesopotamia, but Dr Wells' findings amount to a more detailed decoding of an ancient value system.Sources: The Hindu (15 November 2009), Telegraph.co.uk (17 November 2009)



Article on Stone Pages News: http://www.stonepage...ves/003607.html

[harry sivertsen]

Here we have a report on the findings of Dr. Wells, a Harvard Phd who is a researcher for the Institute of Mathematical Sciences at Taramani, India.  Dr. Wells has been examining three pots with specific indicative markings on their sides.  The markings indicate proportion in the volume of the pots. We are in complete agreement with this evaluation, however, the stated volumes of the containers are very approximate and the three units are given as containing volumes of 27.3 litres, 55.64 litres and 65.89 litres. The base unit indicated by the markings is 27.3 /3 or 9.1 litres which is calculated by Dr.Wells to be 9.24 litres where 9.24 litres x 3 = 27.72, 9.24 litres x 6= 55.44 and 9.24 litres x 7 =64.68 litres.  In the larger volumes there are said to be 6 and 7 times this base volume which evaluates to [using the quoted 9.24] 55.44 and 64.68 litres.  Hence Dr. Wells’ statement of approximations which extend to the 9.24 being additionally termed 10 litres.
Why even these simple calculations could not be correctly reported is something of a puzzle.

I have been investigating ancient weights and measures for over 25 years and my evaluation of this is seen below.  This has in fact been added to my work Measurements of the Gods seen with its companion volume Deluge:From Genesis to Atlantis at :-

http://www.completel...com/books/77136

Here both books are available to read in full online and are also for sale at the same location.

The evaluations seen below are very fully explained in the work Measurements [MOTG] and are not to be found in any other publication or paper…yet they, by their very numerous interrelationships, have to be correct.

If we allow for the base unit to be 9.205134548 litres, well within the approximate parameters, we have a volume of 16.2 pints and this surely is the correct evaluation as seen in the numerous connections below.

16.2 pints = 324 ozs.[of water]

This is the equivalent of:-

• 10800 Harrapan base weights
• 333.333333 Lothal base weights
• 1/9 Dilmun Talent
• 6.66666 Dilmun Minas[x 50 = 333.33333 Lothal base weights.]
• 0.72 of a Bath
• ½ Chinese Tan
• 5400 Kot Dijan base weights [x 2 = 10800 Harrapan base weights.]
• 18 Hebrew Logs [1 Log = 300 Kot Dijan base weights = 600 Harrapan base weights; 36 Logs = 1 Chinese Tan; 162 Logs = Dilmun Talent]
• 1.5 Hebrew Hins
• 4 Hebrew Bats
• Roman Modulus / 1.08

Multiplying by three and then doubling for the six multiple gives further obvious connections.


I recommend the two works not only because I am the principal researcher and author but simply because the information is not available elsewhere and I challenge anyone to prove it incorrect. This is a breakthrough in the history of measurement and is reflected in the mythologies of the Genesis Flood and Plato’s Atlantis…much has been hidden via numerical values…and astronomy.  In fact the ancient systems utilised counts of time derived from the skies as basic factorial values.  This is clearly seen in both works.