bq. In the seventh century, Arab armies invaded Persia. Some Zoroastrians were converted to Islam and some preferred to migrate to India, which they did from the early eighth century. They too came to western India where they already had trading contacts, and established large settlements to the north of Mumbai, such as the one at Sanjan. Their descendants founded a community later known as Parsi, reflecting the land of their origin and their language. Some settled in rural areas but close to centres of trade; others were more active in the trading circuits of the time. [from Early India by Romila Thapar]
Now an archaeological dig at Sanjan is providing more information about the first Parsi settlement in India.
bq. The find at Sanjan’s Varoli riverside dig includes six whole skeletons and a few partial ones, coins, pieces of pottery, glass and beads. After being analysed by paleo-anthropologist S.R. Walimbe of Pune’s Deccan College, the skeletons? which were found lying with their hands crossed and legs tied together?will be sent to Oxford University for carbon dating and DNA testing to find out if they are of Parsis.
bq. Knowledge of Parsi history is only from the quasi-historical document, the ‘Kissei-Sanjan’ and from oral tradition. “We know of Parsis living in Sanjan from the 7th century (under the patronage of the Hindu ruler Jadi Rana) to the late 14th century when the place was invaded by a general of Mahmud Tughlak,” said historian Homi Dhalla, who is the president of the WZCG.
bq. “But there has been little evidence to indicate when and how they had come and the events they lived through. We are excited because these finds may provide the proof we need.” Confirming this, Ms Gokhale said that five of the 32 Indian and Persian coins date back to the seventh and eighth centuries. She has also found allusions to a fire altar?the temple where a flame is kept burning as a symbol of the cycle of life and eternal recurrence?on the sole Sassanian coin, which is from the 7th century.
bq. “A one-foot turquoise-blue ceramic vase and a small china celadon dish have been pieced together. Blue pottery was manufactured at Siraf in Iran and at Basra in Iraq in the 7th and 8th centuries and was in use in many Asian countries until the 11th century, when the preference for blue was possibly replaced by the pale green of celadon pottery. But the remains unearthed at Sanjan reveal a continuity in the usage of blue pottery as well as celadon?which probably means that there was a flourishing trade between Iran, Iraq and South Gujarat,” he added. [“Times of India”:http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?msid=43207293]

Bactria, located in Northern Afghanistan between the Hindu Kush mountains and Oxus river, was the eastern province of the Persians before it was conquered by the Greeks. Something that has survived even after the Soviet and Taliban rule is their gold. Now for the first time this ancient gold will be available for the whole world to see.
bq. While other important archaeological sites are plundered or have been ruined by war, the Bactrian gold, discovered by a Soviet team near the northern town of Shiberghan just before the Red Army invasion of 1979, has had a number of narrow escapes, adding to its allure and mystery.
bq. An Afghan official who viewed the Bactrian gold recently in an underground vault in the heavily guarded presidential palace in Kabul described the pieces he saw, including an intricately designed belt and a gold broach, as “priceless”. [“Al Jazeera”:http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/D6A2AC7E-96D1-4CDF-8510-1FD7126CC672.htm]

Two years back there was a news about a satellite photo from NASA showing what looked like a bridge between India and Sri Lanka. The buzz was that we had discovered the bridge that Rama had built in the mythology Ramayana. The "Hindustan Times":http://www.rense.com/general30/nasa.htm had written
bq. The bridge’s unique curvature and composition by age reveals that it is man-made. Legend as well as Archeological studies reveal that the first signs of human inhabitants in Sri Lanka date back to the primitive age, about 1,750,000 years ago and the bridge’s age is also almost equivalent.
But according to the findings at the Centre for Remote Sensing (CRS) of Bharathidasan University, Tiruchi, the "bridge is only 3500 years old":http://www.gisdevelopment.net/news/viewn.asp?id=GIS:N_ytfseizr
bq. Carbon dating of ancient beaches found west of Uchichipuli in Ramanath puram district put their age at 3,500 years. These were clear examples that the sea had receded from Thiruthurai poondi and Kodiyakarai as well as from Ramanathapuram to the west of Unhchipuli, around 3,500 years ago. The sea may have receded to Pamban only during this period. Because of such divergent littoral currents, there remained a current shadow zone between Dhanushkodi and Talaimannar and hence the sand brought by the currents had been dumped in a linear pattern in the current shadow zone. Corals might have accumulated over these linear sand bodies, later on Ramasamy said. So the land bridge is only the sand, which had begun accumulating in the current shadow zone 3,500 years back, and continues to the present day. Therefore, the age of the Adam’s bridge could only be 3,500 years old, he asserted.
Now "floating stones":http://www.webindia123.com/news/showdetails.asp?id=39237&cat=India have been discovered in Rameshwaram.
bq. G. Mohan Das, a local historian and caretaker of the stones in the temple, said that these stones could have been the kind used to build the mythological bridge. "The history of these floating stones is that when Lord Rama made a bridge to trek to Lanka to bring back his consort Sita, these are the same stones used. But today’s educated people do not agree to it. They believe it is a coral which is in Australia, Chennai, in small islands. We believe there is no difference in these stones. Both the stones do not have air in them. The composition is the same and it has 40 kinds of chemicals," he said.

bq. A Buddhist body here has said it will seek a court order for display of relics of Lord Buddha discovered in a cave in Orissa during excavations in 1985. The relics, comprising a fragment of a charred bone and ashes contained in a gilded stone casket, were found during excavations by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) at Lalitgiri in Jajpur district.
bq. The casket found at Lalitgiri has no inscriptions but it closely resembles caskets discovered by Alexander Cunningham from the Maha Stupa at Sanchi in 1961. Though researchers across India had demanded the display of the relics, the ASI reportedly turned down the request for security reasons. “We don’t know whether ASI has the relics or not. Since they are sacred, they should be given to us for worship,” said Sahu. [“NewIndianExpress”:http://www.newindpress.com/NewsItems.asp?ID=IEQ20040505091605&Page=Q&Title=ORISSA&Topic=0&]
According to another version “I blogged last year”:https://varnam.org/archives/000099.html, Buddha’s bones were discovered in a casket at Vaishaligarh, 35 kilometres from Patna. Then how did they turn up in Orissa ? To add to the mystery, the Chinese are parading what they claim is the “finger of Buddha”:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/05/26/wchina26.xml&sSheet=/portal/2004/05/26/ixportal.html. There was another news item “which explained what all bones”:https://varnam.org/archives/000152.html remained after Buddha’s body was burned. There was no finger in that list.

Coming soon on the big screen is the “movie Troy”:http://troymovie.warnerbros.com/, starring Brad Pitt as Achilles and his heel. But “was there a Trojan war”:http://www.archaeology.org/0405/etc/troy.html ?
bq. According to the archaeological and historical findings of the past decade especially, it is now more likely than not that there were several armed conflicts in and around Troy at the end of the Late Bronze Age. At present we do not know whether all or some of these conflicts were distilled in later memory into the “Trojan War” or whether among them there was an especially memorable, single “Trojan War.” However, everything currently suggests that Homer should be taken seriously, that his story of a military conflict between Greeks and the inhabitants of Troy is based on a memory of historical events–whatever these may have been. If someone came up to me at the excavation one day and expressed his or her belief that the Trojan War did indeed happen here, my response as an archaeologist working at Troy would be: Why not?

This is one of the 35 extraordinary 6th-century Chinese Buddhist statues that were accidentally unearthed in 1996 by workers leveling a school sports field in Qingzhou, a small city in Shandong Province on China’s northeast coast.
bq. Created during a 50-year period straddling the Northern Wei (386 – 534), Eastern Wei (534 – 550) and the Northern Qi (550 – 577) dynasties, the sculptures illustrate dramatic stylistic changes that occurred during that time. The unusual quantity of remaining gilding and vibrant red and green pigments on their surfaces provide a chance for the viewer to experience the impact of brightly decorated sculpture-the norm in ancient China. Many faces are gilded and some retain the remnants of painted mustaches, while the stone mandorlas-or backgrounds of the high relief sculptures-still display vibrant red pigments representing flames of light emanating from the Buddha.
bq. Northern Qi sculptors adopted a different style more akin to the Indian Gupta style. Free-standing figures were modeled wearing light, close-fitting monastic garments revealing the body contours of the wearer. Carved in the round, but with less-detail on the rear, these three-dimensional Northern Qi figures had downcast eyes- encouraging a compassionate exchange between the Buddha and the viewer below. Their low ushnishas furthered the impression that these Buddhas were more “human” and approachable. Iron hooks remaining on some sculptures indicate that independent mandorlas were attached to the statues. [From “Indian Archeology Mailing List”:http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IndiaArchaeology/]