India trade with Rome
– Photo: Amar Ujala / Himanshu Bhatt
Expansion
Historians till now believed that India’s trade with Europe including Rome is about two thousand years old. In the light of historical facts, scientists believed that trade took place from the southern part of India’s Kerala to many parts of the world including Europe around 300 to 400 AD. But according to a new discovery, this time has become at least 500 years older. New scientific evidence has proved that spices were traded from the Pattanam port and trading center in Kerala around 350 BC. With the new discovery, the need to rewrite many pages of history has been felt.
Skeletons played an important role
Scientist Dr. Neeraj Rai of Mau district of Purvanchal, Uttar Pradesh has played a very important role in this discovery. he/she is currently working as Senior Scientist at Birbal Sahni Institute of Pura Sciences, Lucknow. Dr. Neeraj Rai told Amar Ujala that his/her team was doing research since 2016 at the Pattanam center in Ernakulam district of Kerala. During this, he/she had received skeletons of about a dozen dead bodies from there. Analyzing the remains of these skeletons with the latest DNA technology, it was found that about nine of these skeletons were South Asian, while three skeletons had European genes.
Along with these remains, jars used for storage of goods, jewellery, glass-stone beads, copper-iron industry items, pottery, Chera coins have been found. Along with this, brick walls, a platform made of brick, a circular well, a ghat with pegs and a wooden canoe (boat) about six meters long have been found under the ghat. This proves that even during that period foreign traders used to come to India and trade the spices of Kerala and take them to their country.
Dr. Neeraj Rai told that some remains of bones were in very dilapidated condition. But with the latest DNA technology, it has been possible to establish with complete accuracy that India was connected to different parts of the world through trade even at that time. This research has also been published in the international journal Gene (GENE) coming out of Switzerland.