Edit: This article is speculating what might be discovered even before the people doing the research have found something:
>... by the time the data collection is over, there would be enough to prove that this date can be pushed back to about 4500BC.
sigh
Edit 2: For context: The era of the proto-indo-european language family is dated to start around 4500 BC somewhere near the Pontic-Caspian Steppe.
4500 BC would imply a culture that co-existed with the Harappa civilization. Such a discovery would have made news all around the world. This newspaper article would not be the first place to mention it.
I'm not convinced by any claim made by this article.
Afaik, it’s still very possible that entire language families that were even older have now gone extinct.
My point was to show how old 4,500BCE was. As you point out, that alone doesn’t rule out a city at Varanasi around 4500BCE.
This type of thing is widespread throughout the world [1] so there’s no reason to doubt it has a much longer history than records can follow.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_destroyed_heritage
The first one is language - in the region I am interested in (the southern parts of India) - primary sources appear in several different languages. It's not sufficient to have passing familiarity with a language - a ton of these ancient writers were poets trying to out-do each other with their skills at crafting verses. To research Indian history, one must learn several languages.
As someone who isn't trying to actively research history, secondary sources suffice for me. But then, one runs into the next big hurdle there. There have been very few authors writing about south Indian history post Independence. In 1928 (if I recall correctly), someone at the University of Madras wrote a PhD thesis on the Pallavas. I haven't been able to find any other material focused on the Pallavas published since then. Oh, and the 1928 PhD thesis - there's only a handful of those copies in the really large libraries around the world. A low quality scan of one of these copies has made it to the internet - and that remains my best source of information on the Pallava dynasty.
Then there are people like the Khalbaras - a bunch of rulers who came out of nowhere and ended up dominating 3 superpowers in that region. Yet, these guys didn't leave behind any historical record and only passing references to them as "the imprisoners of 3 crown princes" remain as tombstones and signposts for a group of rulers who would have to take down armies of war elephants multiple times to get to that point.
There are also open problems of Chronology in several important periods (for example, the era covered by the Sangam literature - Karikala and all those guys). This is basically a group of poems that record history in disconnected joints. (It's not known how much of this is real history and how much is invented by poets). We have the pieces of a puzzle, with possibly some fake pieces, but we don't know how you'd arrange them in a timeline.
And then, there's the wars. Anyone who studies Indian history will quickly realize that Gandhi is an extreme anomaly. In southern India, it was a matter of pride for a king to die in battle. Imagine a culture where the rulers have cultural incentives to be suicidally belligerent (with War Elephants!!!). Now imagine a world where that is the cultural norm for over a thousand years. These rulers were warriors and the literature that they encouraged were mostly poets who wrote verses praising various military exploits. Several of these kingdoms emerge and disappear all the time - and they all chose different languages as the court language, several of them invented their own alphabets (looking at you Pallavas), they all straight up lied in several records. It's a lifetime's task to sort out 300 years of history for an area half the size of Germany.
Then, to make matters worse, almost all historical artifacts from south India were removed from the temples and forts that they have been found and made their way to various collectors and museums in Britan during the Britsh Raj. If you want to study south Indian history, a trip to a museum in London will give you a lot more than walking around endlessly in South India.
Then there's the lack of funding. It's absolutely embarrassing how little the various historians in India earn. Lately, I've been finding more books by historians in America (and even Japan) than those written by people in India.
Then you have the frauds like Sanjeev Sanyal who destroy history by mixing up well established history and his own opinions on history and using the authenticity of the accepted history to add credibility to his baseless opinions.
Studying Indian history is hard.
But the way you write about it makes it sound fascinating, too! Could you recommend a couple good books in English?
Unfortunately, I don't know any that I can recommend as being a "good" book (which is again part of the problem).
There are a couple of really dry academic books that you can read if you're sufficiently motivated -
1. The Cholas by K. A. Nilakanta Sastri https://www.amazon.com/Colas-Most-Comprehensive-Written-Chol...
2. Politics, Kingship and Poetry in Medieval South India by Whitney Cox https://www.amazon.com/Politics-Kingship-Poetry-Medieval-Sou...
3. South India under The Cholas by Y. Subbarayalu https://www.amazon.com/South-India-Under-Cholas-Subbarayalu/...
4. A History of South India: From Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar by K. A Nilakanta Sastri https://www.amazon.com/History-South-India-Prehistoric-Vijay...
> Professor Jack Goody builds on his own previous work to extend further his highly influential critique of what he sees as the pervasive eurocentric or occidentalist biases of so much western historical writing. Goody also examines the consequent 'theft' by the West of the achievements of other cultures in the invention of (notably) democracy, capitalism, individualism, and love.
[1] https://books.google.ro/books?id=jo1UVi48KywC&redir_esc=y
All other reasons people give here are mere technicalities.
0: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/Varanasi-is...
>>> The results that have come from a detailed geo-exploration (exploration conducted through GPS technology) conducted by seven IIT-Kgp departments, tracing the different stages through which civilization progressed, and how Varanasi has been able to maintain continuity as a living civilization, unlike comparable seats of human settlement in the world. The researchers have dug 100-metre-deep boring holes all over Varanasi to conclude that there is evidence of continuous settlement at least till 2000BC. There are enough indications that by the time the data collection is over, there would be enough to prove that this date can be pushed back to about 4500BC.The oldest part of this civilisation has been traced to the Gomati Sangam area of Varanasi, as indicated by the underground layers that have already been tested.