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Indus Valley Civilization

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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 and northwest . Flourishing around the basin, the civilization[n 1] primarily centred along the Indus and the Punjab region, extending into the Ghaggar- Hakra River valley[7] and the - 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 , bronze, lead, and . 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 , 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, , Mohenjo-daro (UNESCO World Heritage Site), , Kalibanga, and .

The is not directly attested and its affiliation is uncertain since the 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, , 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 , 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 , 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 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 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, . "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 ( Phase, 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 ( 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 , and extending into modern day Indian states of , , , and Punjab, with an upward reach to Rupar on the upper . 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 near Jammu,[23] India, and at on the Hindon River, only 28 km from [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, , , 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]; consequently, in their opinion, the appellation Indus Ghaggar-Hakra civilisation or Indus-Saraswati civilisation is justified. However, these politically inspired arguments are disputed by other archaeologists who state that the Ghaggar-Hakra desert area has been left untouched by settlements and agriculture since the end of the Indus period and hence shows more sites than found in the alluvium of the Indus valley; second, that the number of Harappan sites along the Ghaggar-Hakra river beds have been exaggerated and that the Ghaggar-Hakra, when it existed, was a tributary of the Indus, so the new nomenclature is redundant.[32] "Harappan Civilization" remains the correct one, according to the common archaeological usage of naming a civilization after its first findspot. Early Harappan

The Early Harappan Ravi Phase, named after the nearby , lasted from circa 3300 BCE until 2800 BCE. It is related to the Hakra Phase, identified in the Ghaggar- Hakra River Valley to the west, and predates the Kot Diji Phase (2800-2600 BCE, Harappan 2), named after a site in northern Sindh, Pakistan, near Mohenjo Daro. The earliest examples of the Indus script date from around 3000 BCE.[33]

The mature phase of earlier village cultures is represented by and Amri in Pakistan.[34] Kot Diji (Harappan 2) represents the phase leading up to Mature Harappan, with the citadel representing centralised authority and an increasingly urban quality of life. Another town of this stage was found at Kalibangan in India on the Hakra River.[35]

Trade networks linked this culture with related regional cultures and distant sources of raw materials, including and other materials for bead-making. Villagers had, by this time, domesticated numerous crops, including peas, sesame seeds, dates, and cotton, as well as various animals, including the water buffalo. Early Harappan communities turned to large urban centres by 2600 BCE, from where the mature Harappan phase started. Mature Harappan

By 2600 BCE, the Early Harappan communities had been turned into large urban centres. Such urban centres include Harappa, Ganeriwala, Mohenjo-Daro in modern day Pakistan, and Dholavira, Kalibangan, Rakhigarhi, Rupar, and Lothal in modern day India. In total, over 1,052 cities and settlements have been found, mainly in the general region of the Indus Rivers and their tributaries.

Cities

Computer-aided reconstruction of coastal Harappan settlement at Sokhta Koh near Pasni, Pakistan

A sophisticated and technologically advanced urban culture is evident in the Indus Valley Civilization making them the first urban centres in the region. The quality of municipal town planning suggests the knowledge of urban planning and efficient municipal governments which placed a high priority on hygiene, or, alternatively, accessibility to the means of religious ritual.

As seen in Harappa, Mohenjo-Daro and the recently partially excavated Rakhigarhi, this urban plan included the world's first known urban sanitation systems: see hydraulic engineering of the Indus Valley Civilization. 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 house-building in some villages in the region still resembles in some respects the house-building of the Harappans.[36]

The ancient Indus systems of sewerage and drainage that were developed and used in cities throughout the Indus region were far more advanced than any found in contemporary urban sites in the Middle East and even more efficient than those in many areas of 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 walls of Indus cities most likely protected the Harappans from floods and may have dissuaded military conflicts.[citation needed]

So-called "Priest King" statue, Mohenjo-Daro, late Mature Harappan period, National Museum, Karachi, Pakistan

The purpose of the citadel remains debated. In sharp contrast to this civilization's contemporaries, Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt, no large monumental structures were built. There is no conclusive evidence of palaces or temples—or of kings, armies, or priests. Some structures are thought to have been granaries. Found at one city is an enormous well-built bath (the "Great Bath"), which may have been a public bath. Although the citadels were walled, it is far from clear that these structures were defensive. They may have been built to divert flood waters.

Most city dwellers appear to have been traders or artisans, who lived with others pursuing the same occupation in well-defined neighbourhoods. Materials from distant regions were used in the cities for constructing seals, beads and other objects. Among the artifacts discovered were beautiful glazed faïence beads. Steatite seals have images of animals, people (perhaps gods), and other types of inscriptions, including the yet un-deciphered writing system of the Indus Valley Civilization. Some of the seals were used to stamp clay on trade goods and most probably had other uses as well.

Although some houses were larger than others, Indus Civilization cities were remarkable for their apparent, if relative, egalitarianism. All the houses had access to water and drainage facilities. This gives the impression of a society with relatively low wealth concentration, though clear social levelling is seen in personal adornments.

Science

Further information: Indian mathematics - Prehistory Indus Valley seals,

The people of the Indus Civilization achieved great accuracy in measuring length, mass, and time. They were among the first to develop a system of uniform weights and measures. A comparison of available objects indicates large scale variation across the Indus territories. Their smallest division, which is marked on an ivory scale found in Lothal, was approximately 1.704 mm, the smallest division ever recorded on a scale of the Bronze Age. Harappan engineers followed the decimal division of measurement for all practical purposes, including the measurement of mass as revealed by their hexahedron weights.[37]

These chert weights were in a ratio of 5:2:1 with weights of 0.05, 0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, and 500 units, with each unit weighing approximately 28 grams, similar to the English Imperial ounce or Greek uncia, and smaller objects were weighed in similar ratios with the units of 0.871. However, as in other cultures, actual weights were not uniform throughout the area. The weights and measures later used in Kautilya's Arthashastra (4th century BCE) are the same as those used in Lothal.[38]

Harappans evolved some new techniques in metallurgy and produced copper, bronze, lead, and tin. The engineering skill of the Harappans was remarkable, especially in building docks after a careful study of tides, waves, and currents. The function of the so-called "dock" at Lothal, however, is disputed.

In 2001, archaeologists studying the remains of two men from Mehrgarh, Pakistan, made the discovery that the people of the Indus Valley Civilization, from the early Harappan periods, had knowledge of proto-dentistry. Later, in April 2006, it was announced in the scientific journal Nature that the oldest (and first early Neolithic) evidence for the drilling of human teeth in vivo (i.e., in a living person) was found in Mehrgarh. Eleven drilled molar crowns from nine adults were discovered in a Neolithic graveyard in Mehrgarh that dates, from 7,500-9,000 years ago. According to the authors, their discoveries point to a tradition of proto-dentistry in the early farming cultures of that region.[39]

A touchstone bearing gold streaks was found in , which was probably used for testing the purity of gold (such a technique is still used in some parts of India).[40]

Arts and crafts The " of Mohenjo Daro"

Chanhudaro. Fragment of Large Deep Vessel, circa 2500 B.C.E. Red pottery with red 15 and black slip-painted decoration, 4 /16×6⅛ in. (12.5×15.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum

Various , seals, pottery, gold jewelry, and anatomically detailed figurines in , bronze, and steatite have been found at excavation sites.

A number of gold, terra-cotta and stone figurines of girls in dancing poses reveal the presence of some dance form. Also, these terra-cotta figurines included cows, bears, monkeys, and dogs. The animal depicted on a majority of seals at sites of the mature period has not been clearly identified. Part bull, part zebra, with a majestic horn, it has been a source of speculation. As yet, there is insufficient evidence to substantiate claims that the image had religious or cultic significance, but the prevalence of the image raises the question of whether or not the animals in images of the IVC are religious symbols.[41]

Sir John Marshall is known to have reacted with surprise when he saw the famous Indus bronze statuette of a slender-limbed dancing girl in Mohenjo-Daro:

… When I first saw them I found it difficult to believe that they were prehistoric; they seemed to completely upset all established ideas about early art, and culture. Modeling such as this was unknown in the ancient world up to the Hellenistic age of Greece, and I thought, therefore, that some mistake must surely have been made; that these figures had found their way into levels some 3000 years older than those to which they properly belonged. … Now, in these statuettes, it is just this anatomical truth which is so startling; that makes us wonder whether, in this all-important matter, Greek artistry could possibly have been anticipated by the sculptors of a far-off age on the banks of the Indus.

Many crafts "such as shell working, ceramics, and agate and glazed steatite bead making" were used in the making of necklaces, bangles, and other ornaments from all phases of Harappan sites and some of these crafts are still practised in the subcontinent today.[42] Some make-up and toiletry items (a special kind of combs (kakai), the use of collyrium and a special three-in-one toiletry gadget) that were found in Harappan contexts still have similar counterparts in modern India.[43] Terracotta female figurines were found (ca. 2800-2600 BCE) which had red colour applied to the "manga" (line of partition of the hair).[43]

Seals have been found at Mohenjo-Daro depicting a figure standing on its head, and another sitting cross-legged in what some call a -like pose (see image, the so- called , below).

This figure, sometimes known as a Pashupati, has been variously identified. Sir John Marshall identified a resemblance to the Hindu god, .[44] If this can be validated, it would be evidence that some aspects of predate the earliest texts, the Veda.

A harp-like instrument depicted on an Indus seal and two shell objects found at Lothal indicate the use of stringed musical instruments. The Harappans also made various toys and games, among them cubical dice (with one to six holes on the faces), which were found in sites like Mohenjo-Daro.[45]

Trade and transportation

The docks of ancient Lothal as they are today Further information: Lothal and

The Indus civilization's economy appears to have depended significantly on trade, which was facilitated by major advances in transport technology. The IVC may have been the first civililzation to use wheeled transport.[46] These advances may have included bullock carts that are identical to those seen throughout South Asia today, as well as boats. Most of these boats were probably small, flat-bottomed craft, perhaps driven by sail, similar to those one can see on the Indus River today; however, there is secondary evidence of sea-going craft. Archaeologists have discovered a massive, dredged canal and what they regard as a docking facility at the coastal city of Lothal in western India (Gujarat state). An extensive canal network, used for irrigation, has however also been discovered by H.-P. Francfort.

During 4300–3200 BCE of the chalcolithic period (copper age), the Indus Valley Civilization area shows ceramic similarities with southern Turkmenistan and northern Iran which suggest considerable mobility and trade. During the Early Harappan period (about 3200–2600 BCE), similarities in pottery, seals, figurines, ornaments, etc. document intensive caravan trade with Central Asia and the Iranian plateau.[47]

Judging from the dispersal of Indus civilisation artifacts, the trade networks, economically, integrated a huge area, including portions of Afghanistan, the coastal regions of Persia, northern and western India, and Mesopotamia.

There is some evidence that trade contacts extended to Crete and possibly to Egypt.[48]

There was an extensive maritime trade network operating between the Harappan and Mesopotamian civilizations as early as the middle Harappan Phase, with much commerce being handled by "middlemen merchants from Dilmun" (modern Bahrain and Failaka located in the Persian Gulf).[49] Such long-distance sea trade became feasible with the innovative development of plank-built watercraft, equipped with a single central mast supporting a sail of woven rushes or cloth.

Several coastal settlements like Sotkagen-dor (astride Dasht River, north of Jiwani), Sokhta Koh (astride Shadi River, north of Pasni), and Balakot (near Sonmiani) in Pakistan along with Lothal in India testify to their role as Harappan trading outposts. Shallow harbours located at the estuary of rivers opening into the sea allowed brisk maritime trade with Mesopotamian cities.

Subsistence

Some post-1980 studies indicate that food production was largely indigenous to the Indus Valley. It is known that the people of Mehrgarh used domesticated wheats and barley [50] , and the major cultivated cereal crop was naked six-row barley, a crop derived from two-row barley (see Shaffer and Liechtenstein 1995, 1999). Archaeologist Jim G. Shaffer (1999: 245) writes that the Mehrgarh site "demonstrates that food production was an indigenous South Asian phenomenon" and that the data support interpretation of "the prehistoric urbanization and complex social organization in South Asia as based on indigenous, but not isolated, cultural developments". Others, such as Dorian Fuller, however, indicate that it took some 2000 years before Middle Eastern wheat was acclimatised to South Asian conditions.

Writing system

Main article: Indus script Between 400 and as many as 600 distinct Indus symbols[51] have been found on seals, small tablets, ceramic pots and over a dozen other materials, including a "signboard" that apparently once hung over the gate of the inner citadel of the Indus city of Dholavira. Typical Indus inscriptions are no more than four or five characters in length, most of which (aside from the Dholavira "signboard") are tiny; the longest on a single surface, which is less than 1 inch (2.54 cm) square, is 17 signs long; the longest on any object (found on three different faces of a mass-produced object) has a length of 26 symbols.

While the Indus Valley Civilization is generally characterized as a literate society on the evidence of these inscriptions, this description has been challenged by Farmer, Sproat, and Witzel (2004)[52] who argue that the Indus system did not encode language, but was instead similar to a variety of non-linguistic sign systems used extensively in the Near East and other societies. Others have claimed on occasion that the symbols were exclusively used for economic transactions, but this claim leaves unexplained the appearance of Indus symbols on many ritual objects, many of which were mass-produced in moulds. No parallels to these mass-produced inscriptions are known in any other early ancient civilizations.[53]

In a 2009 study by P. N. Rao et al. published in Science, computer scientists, comparing the pattern of symbols to various linguistic scripts and non-linguistic systems, including DNA and a computer programming language, found that the Indus script's pattern is closer to that of spoken words, supporting the hypothesis that it codes for an as-yet-unknown language.[54][55]

Farmer, Sproat, and Witzel have disputed this finding, pointing out that Rao et al. did not actually compare the Indus signs with "real-world non-linguistic systems" but rather with "two wholly artificial systems invented by the authors, one consisting of 200,000 randomly ordered signs and another of 200,000 fully ordered signs, that they spuriously claim represent the structures of all real-world non-linguistic sign systems".[56] Farmer et al. have also demonstrated that a comparison of a non- linguistic system like medieval heraldic signs with natural languages yields results similar to those that Rao et al. obtained with Indus signs. They conclude that the method used by Rao et al. cannot distinguish linguistic systems from non-linguistic ones.[57]

The messages on the seals have proved to be too short to be decoded by a computer. Each seal has a distinctive combination of symbols and there are too few examples of each sequence to provide a sufficient context. The symbols that accompany the images vary from seal to seal, making it impossible to derive a meaning for the symbols from the images. There have, nonetheless, been a number of interpretations offered for the meaning of the seals. These interpretations have been marked by ambiguity and subjectivity.[57]:69

Photos of many of the thousands of extant inscriptions are published in the Corpus of Indus Seals and Inscriptions (1987, 1991), edited by A. Parpola and his colleagues. Publication of a final third volume, which will reportedly republish photos taken in the 1920s and 1930s of hundreds of lost or stolen inscriptions, along with many discovered in the last few decades, has been announced for several years. For now, researchers must supplement the materials in the Corpus by study of the tiny photos in the excavation reports of Marshall (1931), MacKay (1938, 1943), Wheeler (1947), or reproductions in more recent scattered sources.

Religion

The so-called Shiva Further information: Prehistoric religion and

The religion of Hinduism probably has its roots in the Indus Valley civilisation. and Indus people, both worship a 'mother goddess' her names include and Sakti, and both regard the cow as sacred. Hindus and Indus people both bathe in the River for religious purposes and consider rivers holy.[58]

Some Indus valley seals show swastikas, which are found in other religions (worldwide), especially in Indian religions such as Hinduism, , Jainism. The earliest evidence for elements of Hinduism are alleged to have been present before and during the early Harappan period.[59] Phallic symbols interpreted as the much later Hindu Shiva have been found in the Harappan remains.[60][61]

Swastika Seals from the Indus Valley Civilization preserved at the British Museum.

Many Indus valley seals show animals. One motive shows a horned figure seated in a posture reminiscent of the Lotus position and surrounded by animals was named by early excavators Pashupati (lord of cattle), an epithet of the later Hindu gods Shiva and .[62][63][64]

In view of the large number of figurines found in the Indus valley, some scholars believe that the Harappan people worshipped a Mother goddess symbolizing fertility, a common practice among rural Hindus even today.[65] However, this view has been disputed by S. Clark who sees it as an inadequate explanation of the function and construction of many of the figurines.[66] There are no religious buildings or evidence of elaborate . If there were temples, they have not been identified.[67]

In the earlier phases of their culture, the Harappans buried their dead; however, later, especially in the of the late Harrapan period, they also cremated their dead and buried the ashes in .

It is possible that a temple exists to the East of the great bath, but the site has not been excavated. There is a Buddhist reliquary mound on the site and permission has not been granted to move it.[68] Until there is sufficient evidence, speculation about the religion of the IVC is largely based on a retrospective view from a much later Hindu perspective.[41] Late Harappan

Main article: Late Harappan

Around 1800 BCE, signs of a gradual decline began to emerge, and by around 1700 BCE, most of the cities were abandoned. In 1953, Sir Mortimer Wheeler proposed that the decline of the Indus Civilization was caused by the invasion of an Indo- European tribe from Central Asia called the "Aryans". As evidence, he cited a group of 37 skeletons found in various parts of Mohenjo-Daro, and passages in the referring to battles and forts. However, scholars soon started to reject Wheeler's theory, since the skeletons belonged to a period after the city's abandonment and none were found near the citadel. Subsequent examinations of the skeletons by Kenneth Kennedy in 1994 showed that the marks on the skulls were caused by erosion, and not violent aggression.[69] Today, many scholars believe that the collapse of the Indus Civilization was caused by drought and a decline in trade with Egypt and Mesopotamia.[70] It has also been suggested that immigration by new peoples, deforestation, floods, or changes in the course of the river may have contributed to the collapse of the IVC.[71]

Previously, it was also believed that the decline of the Harappan civilization led to an interruption of urban life in the Indian subcontinent. However, the Indus Valley Civilization did not disappear suddenly, and many elements of the Indus Civilization can be found in later cultures. Current archaeological data suggest that material culture classified as Late Harappan may have persisted until at least c. 1000-900 BCE and was partially contemporaneous with the Painted Grey Ware culture.[72] Harvard archaeologist Richard Meadow points to the late Harappan settlement of , which thrived continuously from 1800 BCE to the time of the invasion of Alexander the Great in 325 BCE.[70]

Recent archaeological excavations indicate that the decline of Harappa drove people eastward. After 1900 BCE, the number of sites in India increased from 218 to 853. Excavations in the Gangetic plain show that urban settlement began around 1200 BCE, only a few centuries after the decline of Harappa and much earlier than previously expected.[70] Archaeologists have emphasized that, just as in most areas of the world, there was a continuous series of cultural developments. These link "the so- called two major phases of urbanization in South Asia".[72] A possible natural reason for the IVC's decline is connected with climate change that is also signalled for the neighbouring areas of the Middle East: The Indus valley climate grew significantly cooler and drier from about 1800 BCE, linked to a general weakening of the monsoon at that time. Alternatively, a crucial factor may have been the disappearance of substantial portions of the Ghaggar Hakra river system. A tectonic event may have diverted the system's sources toward the Ganges Plain, though there is complete uncertainty about the date of this event, as most settlements inside Ghaggar-Hakra river beds have not yet been dated. The actual reason for decline might be any combination of these factors. New geological research is now being conducted by a group led by Peter Clift, from the University of Aberdeen, to investigate how the courses of rivers have changed in this region since 8000 years ago, to test whether climate or river reorganizations are responsible for the decline of the Harappan. A 2004 paper indicated that the isotopes of the Ghaggar-Hakra system do not come from the Himalayan glaciers, and were rain-fed instead, contradicting a Harappan time mighty "Sarasvati" river.[73] Legacy

Main article: Iron Age India

In the aftermath of the Indus Civilization's collapse, regional cultures emerged, to varying degrees showing the influence of the Indus Civilization. In the formerly great city of Harappa, burials have been found that correspond to a regional culture called the Cemetery H culture. At the same time, the Ochre Coloured Pottery culture expanded from Rajasthan into the Gangetic Plain. The Cemetery H culture has the earliest evidence for , a practice dominant in Hinduism till today. Historical context and linguistic affiliation

See also: Substratum in Vedic Sanskrit

The IVC has been tentatively identified with the toponym Meluhha known from Sumerian records. It has been compared in particular with the civilizations of Elam (also in the context of the Elamo-Dravidian hypothesis) and with Minoan Crete (because of isolated cultural parallels such as the ubiquitous goddess worship and depictions of bull-leaping).[74] The mature (Harappan) phase of the IVC is contemporary to the Early to Middle Bronze Age in the , in particular the Old Elamite period, Early Dynastic to Ur III Mesopotamia, Prepalatial Minoan Crete and Old Kingdom to First Intermediate Period Egypt.

After the discovery of the IVC in the 1920s, it was immediately associated with the indigenous Dasyu inimical to the Rigvedic tribes in numerous hymns of the . Mortimer Wheeler interpreted the presence of many unburied corpses found in the top levels of Mohenjo-Daro as the victims of a warlike conquest, and famously stated that "Indra stands accused" of the destruction of the IVC. The association of the IVC with the city-dwelling Dasyus remains alluring because the assumed timeframe of the first Indo-Aryan migration into India corresponds neatly with the period of decline of the IVC seen in the archaeological record. The discovery of the advanced, urban IVC however changed the 19th century view of early Indo-Aryan migration as an "invasion" of an advanced culture at the expense of a "primitive" aboriginal population to a gradual acculturation of nomadic "barbarians" on an advanced urban civilization, comparable to the Germanic migrations after the Fall of Rome, or the Kassite invasion of Babylonia. This move away from simplistic "invasionist" scenarios parallels similar developments in thinking about language transfer and population movement in general, such as in the case of the migration of the Greeks into Greece (between 2100 and 1600 BCE), or the Indo-Europeanization of Western Europe (between 2200 and 1300 BCE).

It was often suggested that the bearers of the IVC corresponded to proto-Dravidians linguistically, the breakup of proto-Dravidian corresponding to the breakup of the Late Harappan culture.[75] Today, the Dravidian language family is concentrated mostly in southern India and northern Sri Lanka, but pockets of it still remain throughout the rest of India and Pakistan (the Brahui language), which lends credence to the theory. Finnish Indologist Asko Parpola concludes that the uniformity of the Indus inscriptions precludes any possibility of widely different languages being used, and that an early form of Dravidian language must have been the language of the Indus people. Proto-Munda (or Para-Munda) and a "lost phylum" (perhaps related or ancestral to the Nihali language)[76] have been proposed as other candidates.

The civilization is sometimes referred to as the Indus Ghaggar-Hakra civilization[4] or the Indus-Sarasvati civilization by Hindutva groups, which is based on theories of Indigenous Aryans and the Out of India migration of Indo-European speakers. Developments in July 2010

Main article: 2010 Pakistan floods

On July 11, heavy floods hit Haryana in India and damaged the archaeological site of Jognakhera, where ancient copper smelting were found dating back almost 5,000 years. The Indus Valley Civilization site was hit by almost 10 feet of water as the Sutlej Yamuna link canal overflowed.[77]

Content from Harappa.com:-

Introduction

The greater Indus region was home to the largest of the four ancient urban civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, South Asia and China. It was not discovered until the 1920's. Most of its ruins, even its major cities, remain to be excavated. The ancient Indus Civilization script has not been deciphered.

Many questions about the Indus people who created this highly complex culture remain unanswered, but other aspects of their society can be answered through various types of archaeological studies.

H arappa was a city in the Indus civilization that flourished around 2600 to 1700 BCE in the western part of South Asia.

Cities and Context

The Harappans used the same size bricks and standardized weights as were used in other Indus cities such as Mohenjo Daro and Dholavira. These cities were well planned with wide streets, public and private wells, drains, bathing platforms and reservoirs. One of its most well-known structures is the Great Bath of Mohenjo Daro .

There were other highly developed cultures in adjacent regions of Baluchistan, Central Asia and peninsular India.

Material culture and the skeletons from the Harappa cemetery and other sites testify to a continual intermingling of communities from both the west and the east. Harappa was settled before what we call the ancient Indus civilization flourished, and it remains a living town today.

The Saraswati River

In fact, there seems to have been another large river which ran parallel and west of the Indus in the third and fourth millenium BCE. This was the ancient Saraswati-Ghaggar-Hakra River (which some scholars associate with the Saraswati River of the Rg Veda).

Its lost banks are slowly being traced by researchers. Along its now dry bed, archaeologists are discovering a whole new set of ancient towns and cities.

Meluhha Ancient Mesopotamian texts speak of trading with at least two seafaring civilizations - Magan and Meluhha - in the neighborhood of South Asia in the third millennium B.C. This trade was conducted with real financial sophistication in amounts that could involve tons of copper. The Mesopotamians speak of Meluhha as a land of exotic commodities. A wide variety of objects produced in the Indus region have been found at sites in Mesopotamia.

This site tells the story of the ancient Indus Civilization through the words and photographs of the world's leading scholars in the US, Europe, India and Pakistan. It starts with the re-discovery of Harappa in the early 19th century by the explorer Charles Masson and later Alexander Burnes, and formally by the archaeologist Sir Alexander Cunningham in the 1870's. This work led to the the first excavations in the early 20th century at Harappa by Rai Bahadur Daya Ram Sahni, and by R.D. Banerji at another Indus Civilization city, Mohenjo Daro .

HARP and Indian excavations

Since 1986, the joint Pakistani American Harappa Archaeological Research Project (HARP) has been carrying out the first major excavations at the site since before independence in 1946. These excavations have the shown Harappa to have been far larger than once thought, perhaps supporting a population of 50,000 at certain periods. These continuing excavations are rewriting assumptions about the Indus Civilization, as is recent work by archaeologists in neighboring India. New facts, objects and examples of writing are being discovered every year in India and Pakistan.

Harappa.com

Almost 600 slides from HARP photographed by Dr. Jonathan Mark Kenoyer [University of Wisconsin, Madison] and Richard H. Meadow [Harvard University] appear on this Website, including the 90 Slide Introduction to the Ancient Indus Civilization. A detailed look at the discoveries from 1995-1998 at the actual site in Punjab describes the comprehensive evidence for a Early Harappan Ravi Phase dating to 3300 BCE. Another 90 slide section covers excavations in 2000-2001. It includes an essay on the early development of Indus arts and technologies. Another section explores the mysterious so-called granary and circular platforms at Harappa. A fifth 90 slide section covers further evidence for the Ravi and Kot Diji phases at the site. A 72 slide series by Sharri Clark [Harvard University] looks at ancient Indus figurines discovered in Harappa. There is also a 103 introduction and image series on Mohenjo Daro, the best known ancient Indus site in Sindh, southern Pakistan. Another 600 slides and essays by a number of other leading scholars of the ancient Indus civilization in India, Pakistan, Europe and America are part of this Website. Many more new facts and theories will be published here in the coming years, for we are only at the beginning of what are likely to be a long series of exciting future discoveries in the Indus and Saraswati river basin.

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Indus Civilization Geography Search

The Largest Bronze Age Urban Civilization

Indus civilization remnants have been discovered from as far south as Mumbai [Bombay], in Maharashtra State, India, and as far north as the Himalayas and northern Afghanistan.

The westernmost sites are on the Arabian sea coast in Baluchistan, Pakistan, right next to the Iranian border.

A thousand miles to the east in India, Harappan settlements have been found beyond India's capital, New Delhi in State. Discoveries in Lothal and and Dholavira in Gujarat State suggest a southern coastal network spanning hundreds of miles.

Cultural Development

Indus culture seems to have gradually spread from west to east, with sites towards central and southern India flourishing after Harappa and Mohenjo Daro had declined. The drying up of the ancient Saraswati or Ghaggar-Hakra River, east of and parallel to the Indus, may also have affected the civilization. There are numerous Indus sites along that river bed.

Earlier scholars thought that Indo-Aryan invaders destroyed the Indus cities and pushed the remnant populations into southern India.

This model is no longer supported, but the decline of the Indus people and the language that they spoke is still a subject of study. It is unclear whether the ancient Harappans would have spoken an Indo-Aryan or Dravidian language, or possibly have spoken even other languages such as Mundari.

The existence of the Brahui tribe in Baluchistan, to the west of the Indus, who speak a Dravidian language like Tamil spoken in southeast India, suggests that some migration of people or culture did occur. However, the date for these migrations is not confirmed. The possible endurance of certain Indus signs like the arrow sign is suggestive of some continuity, but this too needs to be studied further.

There also seems to be much greater cultural continuity between ancient Indus times and the era after 1700 BCE until today than earlier archaeologists have tended to recognize. An archaeological look at a contemporary Baluchi fishing village by William Belcher is one such example.

New Research and Writing

From a look at the mysterious ancient flint mines in the Rohri Hills which date to thousands of years before the greater Indus Civilization (2300 BCE) by Dr. Paolo Biagi [University of Venice] to a tour of new discoveries in Baluchistan by Dr. Ute Franke-Vogt [Aachen University], this site covers some of the exciting discoveries in the larger geographical and cultural stratum that gave birth to the Indus and later Indian civilizations. This site also covers the continuing attempts to decipher the ancient Indus signs and what most scholars regard as one of the world's oldest written languages [for exceptions see Steve Farmer, Richard Sproat [University of Illinois], and [Harvard University], The Collapse of the Indus- Script Thesis: The Myth of a Literate Harappan Civilization] .

This includes publishing in 2006 the essay Study of the Indus Script recent paper by Dr. Asko Parpola [University of Helsinki], the dean of Indus script research. In 2006 we published his response to Farmer, et. al. In May 2006 we published India's script expert, Iravatham Mahadevan's report on the possible find of a stone in Tamil Nadu, south India, with ancient Indus signs on it. There is much more work by both these scholars, as well as Pakistan's Ahmad Hasan Dani, who disagrees with the Indus and Dravidian language link. Geoffrey Cooke has an essay which looks at a single unicorn seal find in Mohenjo Daro.

This site also reported the first early Indus script find dating to 3300 BCE in Harappa in 1999, which puts the origin of Indus signs as early as those of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.

Much new research is being undertaken on the ground in India and Pakistan, as well as in Oman and Afghanistan. Radiocarbon chronologies are proving very useful. Satellite imaging is exposing old trade routes. Answers to questions about "Aryan invaders" and the drying up of river beds are likely to be answered in the coming years.

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Ancient Indus Sites Search Harappa

H arappa was an Indus civilization urban center. It lies in Punjab Province, Pakistan, on an old bed of the River Ravi.

The latest research has revealed at least five mounds at Harappa that 3-D renditions of Harappa show to have been surrounded by extensive walls. Two mounds have large walls around them, perhaps as much for trade regulation as defense.

A structure once considered a granary is now thought to have been a large building with ventilated air ducts. A set of working platforms to the south of this structure are also of great interest to archaeologists.

An abundance of terracotta figurines at Harappa provided the first clues in the 19th century to the ancient Indus - often abbreviated as Harappan - civilization. Mohenjo daro

M ohenjodaro is probably the best known Indus site. Mohenjo Daro is in Sindh, Pakistan, next to the Indus River, not far from the very early human flint quarries at Rohri. The Indus may once have flowed to the west of Mohenjo Daro, but it is now located to the east.

Here the Great Bath, uniform buildings and weights, hidden drains and other hallmarks of the civilization were discovered in the 1920's. This is where the most unicorn seals have been found. Due to a rising water table, most of the site remains unexcavated, and its earliest levels have not been reached.

Dholavira

Dholavira is located on Khadir Beyt, an island in the Great Rann of Kutch in Gujarat State, India. It has only been excavated since 1990. As large as Harappa and Mohenjo Daro, it has some of the best preserved stone architecture.

A tantalizing signboard with Indus script has also been discovered.

Dholavira appears to have had several large reservoirs, and an elaborate system of drains to collect water from the city walls and house tops to fill these water tanks.

Lothal

L othal is on the top of the Gulf of Khambat in Gujarat, India, near the Sabarmati River and the Arabian Sea. It is the most extensively researched Harappan coastal site.

A bead factory and Persian Gulf seal have been found here suggesting that like many sites on the Gulf of Khambat, it was deeply into trading.

Rakhigarhi

Rakhigarhi is a recently discovered city in Haryana, India. Partial excavations have revealed that it is as large as Harappa, Mohenjo Daro and Ganweriwala.

Ganweriwala

Ganeriwala is in Punjab, Pakistan near the Indian border. It was first discovered by Sir Aurel Stein and surveyed by Dr. M. R. Mughal in the 1970s. It spreads over 80 hectares and is almost as large as Mohenjo Daro. It is near a dry bed of the former Ghaggar or , and has not been excavated, yet. Equidistant between Harappa and Mohenjo Daro, Ganweriwala may have been a fifth major urban center.

Smaller Settlements

G ola Dhoro (also known as Bagasara) is a site in Gujarat, India, excavated from 1996 to 2004. A distinctive ancient Indus seal was found there, as well as extensive evidence for the sudden evacuation of this tiny town with well stocked manufacturing facilities.

Daimabad is in Maharashtra near Bombay. Discovered in 1958, it is a controversial site. Some suggest that the pottery and single shard with ancient Indus signs on it is definitive of Harappan settlement; others say the evidence is not sufficient. A unique hoard of exquisite bronze and animals that may or may not be of Indus Civilization style was also found here.

Chanhudaro is 80 miles south of Mohenjo Daro in Sindh. It was a manufacturing center. Various tool, shell, bone and seal-making facilities which involved writing were found. Beads were made using efficiently layered floors. Chanhudaro seems also to have been hastily abandoned.

Sutkagen Dor in Baluchistan is the westernmost known Harappan site located on the Pakistani border with Iran. It is thought to have once been on a navigable inlet of the Arabian Sea. The usual citadel and town are present, as well as defensive walls 30 feet wide. Sutkagen Dor would have been on the trade route from Lothal in Gujarat to Mesopotamia and was probably heavily involved in the fishing trade similar to that which exists today in the coast along Baluchistan. All these sites flourished for various periods between 3500 and 1700 BCE. There are probably many more important Indus sites. Some must have been lost or destroyed by shifting river paths. Others are probably buried under modern towns.

What does seem clear is that the important sites were ancient commercial centers. They are on rivers or near the coast. Various specialized manufacturing facilities suggest that they were heavily involved in trade with each other and far outside the region.

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Hariyupia and the Aryan Invasion of India Search

Hariyupia in the Rg Veda

In aid of Abhyavartin Cayamana, Indra destroyed the seed of Varasikha.

At Hariyupiyah he smote the vanguard of the Vrcivans, and the rear fled frighted.

Rg Veda (VI.27.5) - - -

Is the Hariyupiyah mentioned in this Hymn from the Rg Veda the Harappa of the Indus Civilization?

The Vedas contain the oldest recorded history of the subcontinent. The gap between the demise of Harappa and Vedic history has been traditionally estimated at 1,000 years. Yet new work suggests that the Vedas could be much older. One cannot say if Hariyupia refers to Harappa. The place is never again mentioned in the Rg Veda. According to some commentators, it may refer to a river. Varasika and the Vrichivat are not mentioned again either.

Nevertheless, the Rg Veda presents much relevant information for understanding the Indus Civilization. A number of other ancient texts, from Mesopotamia, China and Greece, can help shed light on what happened to the Harappans.

Aryan Invasion of India?

There is no evidence for an Aryan invasion of the subcontinent, as some old archaeologists once thought. But large amounts of new research need to be done to better understand the complex interactions between the Indus Saraswati river basins and the neighboring areas.

Below is an excerpt on the connection with Hariyupia and a possible Indo-Aryan invasion from an essay by Jonathan Mark Kenoyer in Edwin Bryant's recent book compiling evidence from many scholars Indo-Aryan Controversy: Evidence and Inference in Indian History (Routledge Curzon, 2005). Hariyupia and the Rg Veda by J.M. Kenoyer

"Many scholars have argued that the site of Harappa can possibly be associated with a reference in the Rg Veda (VI.27.4-8) to a place called Hariyupia (Majundar, Raychaudhuri, Datta, 1961; Wheeler 1968; Singh 1995).

In this Vedic reference, there is a description of a battle between two forces, one led by Abhyavartin, son of Chayamana (Puru clan) and the other by Turuvasa (Turuvasa Clan); leader of the Vrichivat, seed of Varasika (Sen 1974; Majumdar, Raychaudhuri, Datta, 1961:25-26).

The batttle was fought at Hariyupiyia, which appears to have been situated to the east of the Yabyabati River (possibly the Ravi). Half of the attacking force was scattered in the west, presumably on the other side of the river, while the other portion was defeated by Abhyavartin, aided by Indra (Singh 1995).

There is no evidence for a battle of conflagration in either the Harappan or later Harappan levels at the site of Harappa, but given the nature of many historical conflicts it is possible that the battle may have taken place outside the city. Since the invading forces were defeated, there is no need to find destruction levels in the city itself and the identification of the place called Hariyupia remains un-resolved."