Indus Valley Civilization: Discovery and Extent

• The Indus Valley Civilization, the Old World's largest, was pioneering in urban planning and sewage systems.
• The civilization disappeared for thousands of years and remains not fully understood.

Discovery and Extent

• In 1826, a British East India Company explorer found an ancient city (Harappa) around 1,500 years old.
• Within 50 years, its bricks were used for ballast by rail engineers.
• Archaeologists later revealed a civilization larger and older than previously thought, known as the Indus Valley.
• At its height, it covered over 500,000 square miles with 1,500 settlements in northwest India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.

Origins and Development

• It began around 3300 BCE with villages along the Indus and Ghaggar-Hakra rivers.
• The civilization prospered from rich hunting/fishing and high yields of wheat, barley, and cotton.
• Granaries were built to store surplus.
• They established the first overseas trade route across the Arabian Sea and traded with Iran, Afghanistan, and Turkmenistan.
• By 2600 BCE, larger settlements evolved into state-level societies, with smaller settlements as chiefdoms.
• Powerful cities existed as autonomous city-states.

Culture and Society

• Cities were protected by mud-brick and stone walls; conflict played a minor role.
• Their influence was exerted through culture, with standardized systems of urban planning, economy, and society.
• The region was twice the size of Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt.
• The largest settlements (Harappa and Mohenjo-daro) housed up to 50,000 people each.
• Harappa's pre-eminence led to the civilization often being referred to as the Harappan Civilization.
• Shared urban planning principles included a citadel with public buildings on a mound and a residential town.
• Cities were built in a grid, forming parallelograms with thoroughfares, uniformity extended to brick sizes.
• Streets were designed to use wind direction for ventilation.
• Public drains with manholes ran through roads, private mud houses with bathing/toilet facilities connected to public drains.
• Municipalities offered public restrooms.
• Harappa and Mohenjo-daro had large public baths, suggesting a focus on cleanliness and ritual purity.
• Power was decentralized and shared among occupational elites.
• A fluidity of social status existed among priests, warriors, peasants, traders, and artisans.
• Most Indus people received the same funerary rites, but the small cemeteries suggest cremation was also practiced.
• Major cities were centers of culture, trade, and industry while villagers had simpler lives.
• Artisans were skilled in metalwork, lapidary, and ceramics for tools/ornaments. Metalsmiths used copper and bronze to craft various items.
• Textiles were manufactured using high-quality cotton while potters mass-produced wares in kilns.
• Decorated pottery featured red backgrounds with black designs and geometric/naturalistic imagery.
• Beads were crafted from gemstones, gold, and faience.

Script

• Script of 300-700 symbols, many compounds
• Logosyllabic script where each symbol is a syllable
• Written right to left, top down
• Script adorned seals/trade goods, perhaps conveying ownership, information, invocation, or dedication.
• Used for wooden signage
• Rules, sentence structure, and grammar were homogenous.

Art and Beliefs

• Indus residents valued hygiene, with public and private baths in cities
• Lack of fine art, but limestone statues (like the "Priest King") and bronze statues (like the "dancing girl") were found.
• Settlements traded in standardized weights with Oman and Mesopotamia.
• The Mesopotamians imported onions, cotton, hardwoods, pearls, carnelian, peacocks, and monkeys.
• Seals with designs and inscriptions were used by merchants. The most common image was a unicorn.
• Some seals feature a male deity (Shiva Pashupati) surrounded by animals.
• Terracotta figurines of women with exaggerated features symbolized worship of a mother goddess, possibly animistic.
• Fire altars with cattle bones suggest sacrifices.
• Religious ceremonies likely occurred in the open, with decentralized worship at home.

Decline and Legacy

• From 1900 BCE, the civilization declined, with settlements becoming isolated.
• Uniformity decreased; drains fell into disrepair, and houses were poorly built.
• Valuables were buried, and the dead were given unceremonious burials.
• Over 500 years, settlements disappeared, with people moving to Gujarat, Kachi Plain, and east Punjab.
• Indus Valley bead making, metallurgy, ceramic production, glazed faience, and architecture were kept alive.
• Traders still used the Harappan standardized weights with farmers using the same wooden-wheeled ox carts centuries later.
• The Indus writing system remains undeciphered.

Explore the Indus Valley Civilization's discovery, origins, and development. Learn about its vast extent across northwest India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Discover how it prospered through agriculture and established early trade routes.