Indus Valley Civilization

Name : Shivangi Pasricha Class : VI-D Roll No.: 27

Background
The Indus Valley Civilization, also known as Harappan culture, is among the world's earliest civilizations, contemporary to the Bronze Age civilizations of Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt. It peaked around 2500 BCE in the western part of South Asia, declined during the mid-2nd millennium BCE and was forgotten until its rediscovery in the 1920s by R.D. Banerjee.

Location
Geographically, it was spread over an area of some 1,260,000 km, comprising the whole of modern day Pakistan and parts of modern-day India and Afghanistan. Thus there is an Indus Valley site on the Oxus river at Shortughai in northern Afghanistan (Kenoyer 1998:96) and the Indus Valley site Alamgirpur at the Hindon river is located only 28 km from Delhi. At its peak, the Indus Civilization may have had a population of well over five million.

The Drainage System

As seen in Harappa, Mohenjo-daro, and the recently discovered Rakhigarhi, this urban plan included the world's first urban sanitation systems. Within the city, individual homes or groups of homes obtained water from wells. From a room that appears to have been set aside for bathing, waste water was directed to covered drains, which lined the major streets. Houses opened only to inner courtyards and smaller lanes. The ancient Indus systems of sewage and drainage that were developed and used in cities throughout the Indus Empire were far more advanced than any found in contemporary urban sites in the Middle East and even more efficient than those in some areas of modern Pakistan and India today. The advanced architecture of the Harappans is shown by their impressive dockyards, granaries, warehouses, brick platforms, and protective walls. The massive citadels of Indus cities that protected the Harappans from floods and attackers were larger than most Mesopotamian ziggurats.

The Great Bath

Perhaps the most well-known structure from Mohenjo-daro is the 'Great Bath'. The Great Bath is a large sunken structure which was found in the 192526 season. This was a great discovery at the time and still fascinates archaeologists today.

The Great Bath is a very important structure both in terms of its size and construction. The Bath is 12 metres long , 7 metres wide and reaches a depth of 2.4 metres in some places. The structure is made out of baked bricks lined with bitumen indicating that it was meant to hold water. How the Great Bath was actually used remains a mystery. It has been suggested that it was a place for ritual bathing, or religious ceremonies.

Houses & Streets

Houses were one or two stories high, made of baked brick, with flat roofs, and were just about identical. Each was built around a courtyard, with windows overlooking the courtyard. The outside walls had no windows. Each home had its own private drinking well and its own private bathroom. Clay pipes led from the bathrooms to sewers located under the streets. These sewers drained into nearly rivers and streams.

Harappan cities did not develop slowly, which suggests that whoever built these cities learned to do so in another place. As the Indus flooded, cities were rebuilt on top of each other. Archaeologists have discovered several different cities, one built over the other, each built a little less skillfully. The most skillful was on bottom. It would appear that builders grew less able or less interested in perfection over time. Still, each city is a marvel, and each greatly advanced for its time.

Their towns were laid out in grids everywhere (straight streets, well built homes!) These people were incredible builders. The streets of major cities such as Mohenjodaro or Harappa were laid out in a perfect grid pattern, comparable to that of present day New York. The houses were protected from noise, odors, and thieves.

Craft Work
The Indus valley civilization had a rich craft tradition as well as a high degree of technical excellence in the field of pottery making, sculpture (metal, stone and terracotta), jewelry, weaving etc. A lot of material information from excavations at Harappa, Mohen-jodaro etc. substantiate the craft tradition of the Indus valley civilization. The craftsmen not only catered to all the local needs but surplus items were sent to ancient Arabian cultures via ancient sea routes.

Food
Dinner might have been warm wheat bread served with barley or rice. It would appear they were very good farmers. They grew barley, peas, melons, wheat, and dates. Farms raised cotton and kept herds of sheep, pigs, zebus (a kind of cow), and water buffalo. Fish were caught in the river with fish hooks! Each town had a large central storage building for grain. Crops were grown, and the harvest stored centrally, for all in the town to enjoy.

Seals

The main corpus of writing dated from the Indus Civilization is in the form of some two thousand inscribed seals in good, legible conditions. (In case you don't know what seals are, they are used to make impressions on malleable material like clay.) Although these seals and samples of Indus writing have been floating around the scholastic world for close to 70 years, little progress has been made on deciphering this elegant script. However, we should not blame scholars for their lack of progress, for there are some major impediments to decipherment: 1. Very short and brief texts. The average number of symbols on the seals is 5, and the longest is only 26. 2. The language underneath is unknown. 3. Lack of bilingual texts.

Ploughing and Irrigation

There is no evidence of irrigation, but such evidence could have been obliterated by repeated, catastrophic floods. But, According to this hypothesis, cities could not have arisen without irrigation systems capable of generating massive agricultural surpluses. Indus civilization agriculture must have been highly productive. It relied on the considerable technological achievements of the pre-Harappan culture, including the plough. Still, very little is known about the farmers who supported the cities or their agricultural methods. Some of them undoubtedly made use of the fertile alluvial soil left by rivers after the flood season.

Various Tools Found While Excavation

Tools - Made tools out of bronze - Some say tools made from copper and iron too - Clay to make art and tools - Developed a measuring system and tools (first, and most precise of the time) Weapons - Made weapons out of bronze - Not as good as Mesopotamians - Used arrows, but did not have swords - Did not really need advanced weaponry because of isolated geography

Thank You