Indus Valley Civilization

Indus Valley Civilization From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Extent of the Indus Valley Civilization Bronze Age This box: • view • talk • edit ↑ Chalcolithic Near East (3300-1200 BCE) Caucasus, Anatolia, Levant, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Elam, Jiroft Bronze Age collapse Europe (3200-600 BCE) Aegean (Minoan) Caucasus Basarabi culture Coț ofeni culture Pecica culture Otomani culture Wietenberg culture Catacomb culture Srubna culture Beaker culture Unetice culture Tumulus culture Urnfield culture Hallstatt culture Atlantic Bronze Age Bronze Age Britain Nordic Bronze Age Italian Bronze Age Indian Subcon tinent (3300- 1200 BCE) China (3000- 700 BCE) Korea (800- 300 BCE) arsenic al bronze writing , literatu re sword, chariot ↓ Iron Age The Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) was a Bronze Age civilization (3300–1300 BCE; mature period 2600–1900 BCE) that was located in the northwestern region[1] of the Indian subcontinent,[2][3] consisting of what is now mainly modern-day Pakistan and northwest India. Flourishing around the Indus River basin, the civilization[n 1] primarily centred along the Indus and the Punjab region, extending into the Ghaggar- Hakra River valley[7] and the Ganges-Yamuna Doab.[8][9] Geographically, the civilization was spread over an area of some 1,260,000 km², making it the largest ancient civilization in the world. The Indus Valley is one of the world's earliest urban civilizations, along with its contemporaries, Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt. At its peak, the Indus Civilization may have had a population of well over five million. Inhabitants of the ancient Indus river valley developed new techniques in metallurgy and handicraft (carneol products, seal carving) and produced copper, bronze, lead, and tin. The civilization is noted for its cities built of brick, roadside drainage system, and multistoried houses. The mature phase of Indus Valley Civilization is known as the Harappan Civilization, as the first of its cities to be unearthed was located at Harappa, excavated in the 1920s in what was at the time the Punjab province of British India (now in Pakistan).[10] Excavation of Harappan sites have been ongoing since 1920, with important breakthroughs occurring as recently as 1999.[11] To date, over 1,052 cities and settlements have been found, mainly in the general region of the Ghaggar- Hakra river and its tributaries. Among the settlements were the major urban centres of Harappa, Lothal, Mohenjo-daro (UNESCO World Heritage Site), Dholavira, Kalibanga, and Rakhigarhi. The Harappan language is not directly attested and its affiliation is uncertain since the Indus script is still undeciphered. A relationship with the Dravidian or Elamo- Dravidian language family is favourited by most accounts.[12] Contents • 1 Discovery and excavation • 2 Chronology • 3 Geography • 4 Early Harappan • 5 Mature Harappan o 5.1 Cities o 5.2 Science o 5.3 Arts and crafts o 5.4 Trade and transportation o 5.5 Subsistence o 5.6 Writing system o 5.7 Religion • 6 Late Harappan • 7 Legacy • 8 Historical context and linguistic affiliation • 9 Developments in July 2010 • 10 See also • 11 Notes and references • 12 Bibliography • 13 External links Discovery and excavation Extent and major sites of the Indus Valley Civilization. The shaded area does not include recent excavations. The ruins of Harrappa were first described in 1842 by Charles Masson in his Narrative of Various Journeys in Balochistan, Afghanistan, and the Punjab, where locals talked of an ancient city extending "thirteen cosses" (about 25 miles), but no archaeological interest would attach to this for nearly a century.[13] In 1856, General Alexander Cunningham, later director general of the archeological survey of northern India, visited Harappa where the British engineers John and William Brunton were laying the East Indian Railway Company line connecting the cities of Karachi and Lahore. John wrote: "I was much exercised in my mind how we were to get ballast for the line of the railway". They were told of an ancient ruined city near the lines, called Brahminabad. Visiting the city, he found it full of hard well- burnt bricks, and, "convinced that there was a grand quarry for the ballast I wanted", the city of Brahminabad was reduced to ballast.[14] A few months later, further north, John's brother William Brunton's "section of the line ran near another ruined city, bricks from which had already been used by villagers in the nearby village of Harappa at the same site. These bricks now provided ballast along 93 miles (150 km) of the railroad track running from Karachi to Lahore"[14]. Excavated ruins of Mohenjo-daro, with the Great Bath in the front In 1872–75 Alexander Cunningham published the first Harappan seal (with an erroneous identification as Brahmi letters).[15] It was half a century later, in 1912, that more Harappan seals were discovered by J. Fleet, prompting an excavation campaign under Sir John Hubert Marshall in 1921–22 and resulting in the discovery of the civilization at Harappa by Sir John Marshall, Rai Bahadur Daya Ram Sahni and Madho Sarup Vats, and at Mohenjo-daro by Rakhal Das Banerjee, E. J. H. MacKay, and Sir John Marshall. By 1931, much of Mohenjo-Daro had been excavated, but excavations continued, such as that led by Sir Mortimer Wheeler, director of the Archaeological Survey of India in 1944. Among other archaeologists who worked on IVC sites before the partition of the subcontinent in 1947 were Ahmad Hasan Dani, Brij Basi Lal, Nani Gopal Majumdar, and Sir Marc Aurel Stein. Following the Partition of India, the bulk of the archaeological finds were inherited by Pakistan where most of the IVC was based, and excavations from this time include those led by Sir Mortimer Wheeler in 1949, archaeological adviser to the Government of Pakistan. Outposts of the Indus Valley civilization were excavated as far west as Sutkagan Dor in Baluchistan, as far north as at Shortugai on the Amu Darya (the river's ancient name was Oxus) in current Afghanistan. Chronology Main article: Periodization of the Indus Valley Civilization The mature phase of the Harappan civilization lasted from c. 2600 to 1900 BCE. With the inclusion of the predecessor and successor cultures—Early Harappan and Late Harappan, respectively—the entire Indus Valley Civilization may be taken to have lasted from the 33rd to the 14th centuries BCE. Two terms are employed for the periodization of the IVC: Phases and Eras.[16][17] The Early Harappan, Mature Harappan, and Late Harappan phases are also called the Regionalisation, Integration, and Localisation eras, respectively, with the Regionalization era reaching back to the Neolithic Mehrgarh II period. "Discoveries at Mehrgarh changed the entire concept of the Indus civilization", according to Ahmad Hasan Dani, professor emeritus at Quaid- e-Azam University, Islamabad. "There we have the whole sequence, right from the beginning of settled village life."[18] Date range Phase Era 7000 - 5500 Early Food Producing Mehrgarh I (aceramic Neolithic) BCE Era 5500-3300 Mehrgarh II-VI (ceramic Neolithic) 3300-2600 Early Harappan Regionalisation Era 3300-2800 Harappan 1 (Ravi Phase) 5500-2600 Harappan 2 (Kot Diji Phase, Nausharo I, 2800-2600 Mehrgarh VII) Mature Harappan (Indus Valley 2600-1900 Civilization) 2600-2450 Harappan 3A (Nausharo II) Integration Era 2450-2200 Harappan 3B 2200-1900 Harappan 3C Late Harappan (Cemetery H); Ochre 1900-1300 Coloured Pottery Localisation Era 1900-1700 Harappan 4 1700-1300 Harappan 5 Painted Gray Ware, Northern Black Polished 1300-300 Indo-Gangetic Tradition Ware (Iron Age) Geography The Indus Valley Civilization encompassed most of Pakistan, extending from Balochistan to Sindh, and extending into modern day Indian states of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana, and Punjab, with an upward reach to Rupar on the upper Sutlej. The geography of the Indus Valley put the civilizations that arose there in a highly similar situation to those in Egypt and Peru, with rich agricultural lands being surrounded by highlands, desert, and ocean. Recently, Indus sites have been discovered in Pakistan's northwestern Frontier Province as well. Other IVC colonies can be found in Afghanistan while smaller isolated colonies can be found as far away as Turkmenistan and in Gujarat. Coastal settlements extended from Sutkagan Dor [19] in Western Baluchistan to Lothal [20] in Gujarat. An Indus Valley site has been found on the Oxus River at Shortughai in northern Afghanistan[21], in the Gomal River valley in northwestern Pakistan[22], at Manda on the Beas River near Jammu,[23] India, and at Alamgirpur on the Hindon River, only 28 km from Delhi [24] . Indus Valley sites have been found most often on rivers, but also on the ancient seacoast[25], for example, Balakot[26], and on islands, for example, Dholavira [27] . There is evidence of dry river beds overlapping with the Hakra channel in Pakistan and the seasonal Ghaggar River in India. Many Indus Valley (or Harappan) sites have been discovered along the Ghaggar-Hakra beds.[7] Among them are: Rupar, Rakhigarhi, Sothi, Kalibangan, and Ganwariwala.[28] According to J. G. Shaffer and D. A. Lichtenstein,[29] the Harappan Civilization "is a fusion of the Bagor, Hakra, and Koti Dij traditions or 'ethnic groups' in the Ghaggar-Hakra valley on the borders of India and Pakistan"[7]. According to some archaeologists, over 500 Harappan sites have been discovered along the dried up river beds of the Ghaggar-Hakra River and its tributaries[30], in contrast to only about 100 along the Indus and its tributaries[31];

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