History · Negotiating the Sources
UGC NET December 2024 History
Passage
The regimented cantonment of Harappa may suggest the priest-controlled industries of Sumer. It may even be permissible to propose a priest-king for Mohenjodaro. On the other hand, in such sculptural art as the Indus has produced there is no real affinity with the sculpture of Sumer. No one would mistake a stone carving from Mohenjodaro for one from Tell Asmar or Mari. The Indus terracottas are in a different world from those of Mesopotamia. The art of the Harappan seals has no close parallel in the whole history of glyptic. The particularities are literal, local interchange, while the common generalities are the product of stray seeds readily fertilized in similar historical and geographical settings.
Which historian has argued that the decline in the lapis lazuli trade with Mesopotamia was a factor in the decline of the Harappan civilization?
AM.R. Sahni
BShireen Ratnagar ✓ Correct
CH.T. Lambrick
DM.R. Mughal
Correct answer: (B) Shireen Ratnagar — The answer is Shireen Ratnagar.
Explanation
★The answer is Shireen Ratnagar.
★Shireen Ratnagar argued in 1981 that the decline of the Harappan civilization may have been due to a decline in the lapis lazuli trade with Mesopotamia.
★Lapis lazuli was a prized stone traded westward from the Harappan world.
★A fall in this long-distance trade could have weakened the Harappan urban economy.
★Such arguments cannot be universally accepted with certainty.
★But the lapis lazuli thesis belongs to Shireen Ratnagar.
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