Between 4500 and 2500 BCE, the bodies of a couple, believed to be married, were placed carefully side by side - with the the man's face turned toward the woman - in an ancient burial site of the Harappans, one of the world's earliest civilizations. Thousands of years later, in 2013, a team of Indian and South Korean researchers began excavation work in the necropolis now located in Rakhigarhi in a bid to extract DNA from the skeletal remains.
     Archaeologists believe that the two skeletons, a young male and a female, were buried at the same time in the same grave; experts said evidence points at the couple being buried simultaneously or about the same time.
     Although many settlements and cemeteries have been discovered and investigated, no couple's burials at Harappan cemeteries have been reported till date. Vasant Shinde, corresponding author of the research, and vice chancellor of Deccan College Deemed University, said that archaeologists in India have often debated about the historical meaning of joint burials.
     He also said the Harappans - a civilization that flourished about 4,500 years ago - believed in life after death which explains the pottery and bowls found in the graves. "The pots may have contained food and water for the dead, a custom probably fuelled by the belief that the dead may need them after death. Hence, the contemporary view of life after death may actually be as old as 5,000 years," Shinde added.
     In the past, a Harappan joint burial discovered at Lothal was regarded as a 'probable' instance of a widow's self-sacrifice as an expression of the grief over her husband's death, he said. "Other archaeologists claimed it was difficult to estimate the sexes of the individuals, and they may not have been a couple. Other than the contentious Lothal case, none of the joint burials reported from Harappan cemeteries till date have been anthropologically confirmed to be a couple's grave," he said.
     The manner in which the individuals had been buried - with the male's face towards the female - could commemorate lasting affection even after death. "We can only infer, but those who buried the two individuals may have wanted to imply that the love between the two would continue even after death," he said.
     "A couple's joint grave is not so rare in other ancient civilizations. Yet, it is strange that they were not discovered in Harappan cemeteries till now," Shinde said. The grave had burial pottery and a banded agate bead, probably part of a necklace. It was found near the right collar bone of the woman's skeleton. "It is plausible that two individuals died at the same time or almost the same time, and were buried together in the same grave," Shinde said.
     Both skeletons were brought to the laboratory of the Deccan College for analysis after the field surveys were completed. Each skeleton's sex was determined after studying the pelvic region. Their ages at the time of death have been estimated to be between 21 and 35 years and the man's approximate height as 168 cm and the woman's as 158 cm. Researchers could not find any evidence of trauma or lesions in the skeletons.
     
Edited from The Times of India (9 January 2019), CNN (10 January 2019)