Wari-Bateshwar ruins: Difference between revisions
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[[File:A student at Wari-Boteshwar Excavation.jpg|right|thumb|200px|A student of the Archaeology department has just got an artefact (pottery).]] |
[[File:A student at Wari-Boteshwar Excavation.jpg|right|thumb|200px|A student of the Archaeology department has just got an artefact (pottery).]] |
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Silver punch-marked coins, different types of earthen pots, rouletted ware, knobbed ware, northern black |
Silver punch-marked coins, different types of earthen pots, rouletted ware, knobbed ware, northern black polished ware, black-slipped ware, common ceramics, semi-precious stone beads. Iron artefacts include blooms, hand-axes, spearheads, knives, nails and slugs, melted pieces of iron. It is also suspected{{By whom|date=February 2012}} that it might be the oldest place in the world which have a money based currency system. |
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==See also== |
==See also== |
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Revision as of 12:57, 4 January 2016
 | You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Bangla. (September 2013) Click [show] for important translation instructions.
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| History of Bangladesh |
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 Bangladesh portal |
The Wari-Bateshwar region (Template:Lang-bn Uari-Bôṭeshshor) in Narsingdi, Bangladesh is the site of an ancient fort city dating back to 450 BC[1] during the era of Maurya dynasty. The 2500-year-old ruins being unearthed near the old course of the Brahmaputra River are a major archaeological discovery in south Asia. It challenges the earlier notions of early urban civilisation in Bengal.
Geography
The site is about 70 km north-east from Dhaka situated at Norshingdi's Belab Upazila and Shivpur Upazila's neighbouring village Wari and Bateshwar
Discovery
Wari-Bateshwar discovery
Wari and Bateshwar are neighbouring villages. In these villages many archaeological things were discovered by digging in the ground. In 1933, in Wari village, some local diggers found a pot full of ancient coins (dating back to 450 BC to 300 BC) while digging in the ground of undiscovered Wari-Bateshwar. A local school teacher, Hanif Pathan collected 20-30 of those ancient coins from there. After that, he made his son Habibulla Pathan aware of this incident. In 1955, Bateshwar village, some diggers left behind two ancient metal-made things. Habibulla Pathan shows those things to his father. Then in 1956, during digging in Wari-Bateshwar, an ancient silver coin storage was discovered which had been buried under the ground. In 1976 Habibulla Pathan collected many archaeological things from Wari-Bateshwar and he submitted those things to the Dhaka National Museum. After many years in 2000 under the order of Jahangir Nagar University's archaeologist Professor Sufi Mostafizur Rahman the digging work of Wari-Bateshwar started and many ancient roads, houses, terracotta, silver coins, metal made things, printed currencies, weapons etc. were discovered.
Religious discoveries
About 4 km away from Wari-Bateshwar in Shivpur Upazila in a village named Mondirbhita one Buddhist temple was found. In another village named Jankhartek a big Buddha temple was found which suggests that the residents of Wari-Bateshwar were Buddhists.
Some other discoveries
Nearly 50 ancient archaeological places have been found around Wari-Bateshwar, with most of the discoveries being villages. Some of them are Rangartek, Sonartula, Kendua, Morjal, Tongirajar Bari, Mondirbhita, Jankhartek, Tongirtek.
History
Prof. Rahman believes that Wari-Bateshwar is the rich, well planned, ancient emporium (a commercial city) "Sounagora" mentioned by Greek geographer, astronomer, mathematician Ptolemy in his book Geographia.[2] The other emporia mentioned in Ptolemy's work include Arikamedu of India, Mantai of Sri Lanka, Kion Thom of Thailand. All of these were the most ancient civilisations in their respective regions, each was a river port, and all of them produced monochrome glass beads. The artefacts found at Wari-Bateshwar bear similarity with those found in the other emporia sites.
Artefacts
According to researchers, the discovery of rouletted ware, knobbed ware, stone beads, sandwiched glass beads, gold-foil glass beads, Indo-Pacific monochrome glass beads and importantly its geographical location indicates to southeast Asiatic and Roman contacts.[3][4]
Excavation also unearthed the presence of pit-dwelling. The discovery of a pit-dwelling is the first of its kind in Bangladesh. People used to live in these small ditches. The pit-dwelling is a Copper Age or Chalcolithic artefact. Similar pit-dwellings have been found in India and Pakistan which are believed to be 4000 years old. The unearthing of a 180-metre long, six-metre wide and 21–35 cm thick road with a by-lane points to very early urbanisation in this area. Before the discovery of this, the widely held view was that urbanisation occurred later than the Wari-Bateshwar ruins indicate.
Silver punch-marked coins, different types of earthen pots, rouletted ware, knobbed ware, northern black polished ware, black-slipped ware, common ceramics, semi-precious stone beads. Iron artefacts include blooms, hand-axes, spearheads, knives, nails and slugs, melted pieces of iron. It is also suspected[by whom?] that it might be the oldest place in the world which have a money based currency system.
See also
References
- ^ MM Hoque and SS Mostafizur Rahman, Wari-Bateshwar, Banglapedia: The National Encyclopedia of Bangladesh, Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, Dhaka, Retrieved: 2012-02-20
- ^ The Daily Star
- ^ Excavation At Wari-Bateshwar: A Preliminary Study. Edited by Enamul Haque. Dhaka, The International Centre for Study of Bengal Art, 2001, ISBN 984-8140-02-6
- ^ Dilip Kumar Chakrabarti, Ancient Bangladesh, Dhaka 1992
External links
- Wari-Bateshwar in Banglapedia