130
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The Mehrgarh excavations near Sibri, Pakistan, changed our understanding of the origins of food production - the use of domesticated plants and animals in a neolithic context - in South Asia. Previously, food production and the entire “village way o f life” were perceived as a single complex, diffused from the W est sometime after 5000 B.C. They, in turn, were followed by the “idea” of civilisation only a few millennia later, then by the Aryan, Greek, Muslim and British invasions. The acceptance of one incidence of cultural diffusion/invasion made the others seem that much more reasonable.

— Jim G. Shaffer

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "The Mehrgarh excavations near Sibri, Pakistan, changed our understanding of the origins of food production - the use of domesticated plants and animals in a neolithic context - in South Asia. Previously, food production and the entire “village way o f life” were perceived as a single complex, diffused from the W est sometime after 5000 B.C. They, in turn, were followed by the “idea” of civilisation only a few millennia later, then by the Aryan, Greek, Muslim and British invasions. The acceptance of one incidence of cultural diffusion/invasion made the others seem that much more reasonable." in the context of "130" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

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Source: Wikiquote: "Jim G. Shaffer" (Quotes, 1990s, The Cultural Tradition and Paleoethnicity in South Asian Archaeology (1995): 1995 Shaffer, J.G. and D.A. Lichtenstein. "The Cultural Tradition and Paleoethnicity in South Asian Archaeology." In The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia: Language, Material Culture and Ethnicity. G. Erdosy, (Ed.). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, pp. 126-154.  Quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app

About Jim G. Shaffer

Jim G. Shaffer (born 1944) is an American archaeologist and professor of anthropology at Case Western Reserve University.