INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION

HARAPPA AND MOHENJODARO

Trade through land connections across Afghanistan with eastern Iran and Turkmenistan was noted in the previous cultures. The Indus
Civilization, for the first time, also established overseas trade.
DATES (BCE) MAIN PHASE MEHRGARH PHASES HARAPPAN PHASES POST-HARAPPAN PHASES ERA
Mehrgarh I and Bhirrana Early Food Producing
7000–5500 Pre-Harappan
(aceramic Neolithic) Era

Mehrgarh II–VI
5500–3300 Pre-Harappan/Early Harappan
(ceramic Neolithic)

Harappan 1 Regionalization Era

3300–2800 (Ravi Phase; Hakra Ware)
Early Harappan
c. 3300–2800 (Mughal) Harappan 2
c. 5000–2800 (Kenoyer) Mehrgarh VII (Kot Diji Phase,
2800–2600
Nausharo I)

2600–2450 Harappan 3A (Nausharo II)

Mature Harappan
Integration Era
2450–2200 (Indus Valley Civilisation) Harappan 3B
2200–1900 Harappan 3C
1900–1700 Harappan 4
Cemetery H
Late Harappan Localization Era
1700–1300 Harappan 5 Ochre Coloured Pottery

Painted Grey Ware (1200–600) Regionalization

1300–600 Vedic period (c. 1500–500)

Post-Harappan
Iron Age India
Northern Black Polished Ware (Iron Age) (700–200)
Integration
600–300 Second urbanization (c. 500–200)
Rakhaldas Bandyopadhyay (12 April 1885 –
23 May 1930), also known as R D Banerji,
was an Indian archaeologist and museum
expert. He was the Manindra Chandra
Nandy Professor of Ancient Indian History
and Culture at the Banaras Hindu
University from 1928–30. He is best known
as the discoverer of the antiquity
of Mohenjo-daro, the principal site of
the Indus Valley Civilisation through
excavations.
Sir John Hubert Marshall (19 March
1876, Chester, England – 17 August
1958, Guildford, England) was the Director-
General of the Archaeological Survey of
India from 1902 to 1928. He oversaw the
excavations of Harappa and Mohenjodaro,
two of the main cities that comprise
the Indus Valley Civilization.
Pre-Harappan era:
Mehrgarh
Mehrgarh is a Neolithic (7000 BCE to c.
2500 BCE) mountain site in the Balochistan
province of Pakistan, which gave new insights
on the emergence of the Indus Valley
Civilization.
Early Harappan
Named after the nearby ravi river, lasted
from c. 3300 BCE until 2800 BCE.
It started when farmers from the mountains
gradually moved between their mountain
homes and the lowland river valleys.
Trade networks linked this culture with
related regional cultures and distant sources
of raw materials, including lapis lazuli and
other materials for bead-making.
Numerous crops, including peas, sesame
seeds, dates, and cotton, as well as animals,
including the water buffalo.
Mature Harappan
By 2600 BCE, the Early Harappan
communities turned into large urban centres.
Such urban center
include Harappa, Ganeriwala, Mohenjo-
daro in modern-day Pakistan,
and Dholavira, Kalibangan, Rakhigarhi, Rupar,
and Lothal in modern-day India.
CITIES: The quality of municipal town planning suggests the knowledge
of urban planning and accessibility to the means of religious ritual.
• sanitation systems-
• From a room that appears to have been set aside for bathing-
• Houses opened only to inner courtyards and smaller lanes.
• 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.
• 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. • View of Granary and Great Hall on Mound F in Harappa

• Most city dwellers appear to have been traders or artisans-

AUTHORITY AND GOVERNANCE: There was a single state, given the
similarity in artefacts, the evidence for planned settlements, the
standardized ratio of brick size, and the establishment of settlements near
sources of raw material.
TECHNOLOGIES: The people of the Indus Civilisation achieved great
accuracy in measuring length, mass, and time. Their smallest division,
which is marked on an ivory scale found in Lothal in Gujarat, was
approximately 1.704 mm, the smallest division ever recorded on a scale of
the Bronze Age.

• Archaeological remains of washroom drainage system at Lothal

 ARTS AND CRAFTS: Various sculptures, seals, bronze vessels, pottery, gold HUMAN STATUETTES: the most famous is the lost-wax casting bronze statuette
jewelry. of a slender-limbed Dancing Girl adorned with bangles, found in Mohenjo-daro.
• terracotta, bronze, and steatite have been found at excavation sites • Two other realistic incomplete statuettes have been found in Harappa in
proper stratified excavations, which display near-Classical treatment of the
• toys and games, among them cubical dice human shape: the statuette of a dancer who seems to be male.
• The terracotta figurines included cows, bears, monkeys, and dogs.
• religious symbols.

Cubical weights, standardized throughout the Indus Ram-headed bird mounted on

cultural zone; 2600-1900 BC; chert; British Museum wheels, probably a toy; 2600- Male dancing torso; 2400-1900 BC; limestone; height:
1900 BC; terracotta; Guimet 9.9 cm; National Museum (New Delhi)
Museum (Paris)

Male dancing torso; 2400-

1900 BC; limestone; height:
9.9 cm; National
Museum (New Delhi)
 SEALS: A human deity with the horns, hooves and tail of a bull also
appears in the seals, in particular in a fighting scene with a horned
tiger-like beast.
Thousands of steatite seals have been recovered, and their physical TRADE AND TRANSPORTATION: he Indus Civilization's economy
character is fairly consistent. In size they range from squares of appears to have depended significantly on trade, which was
side 2 to 4 cm (3⁄4 to 1+1⁄2 in). facilitated by major advances in transport technology.

Stamp seals and (right) impressions, some of them with Indus script; probably made of Archaeological discoveries suggest that trade routes between Mesopotamia and the Indus were
steatite; British Museum (London) active during the 3rd millennium BCE
Late Harappan
Around 1900 BCE signs of a gradual decline
began to emerge, and by around 1700 BCE
most of the cities had been abandoned.
Recent examination of human skeletons from
the site of Harappa has demonstrated that
the end of the Indus Civilisation saw an
increase in inter-personal violence and in
infectious diseases
like leprosy and tuberculosis.
City Planning and Organization of
Indus Valley Civilization
• city was divided into two planned areas
• The networks of streets were laid out in neat patterns of straight lines and
right angles
• The buildings along the roads were all constructed of oven-fired clay bricks
• The western mound had several large building and structures that were
used for public gatherings, religious activities or important administrative
activities
• A citadel was built on top of bricks almost 12 meters high for defense
purposes or for diverting floods.
• There were few barrack-like dwellings close to granaries where workers
lived
• At Mohenjo-Daro, close to the granary, there is a great public bathhouse
called Great Bath
There was also an extensive canal network, which diverted the floodwater of Indus River for irrigation. The
uniformity and similarity in the construction and architecture of all the cities in Indus Valley suggest that there
was a strong centralized government that coordinated the organization efforts and laid out standards.
Innovation and exchange
• Fire-baked bricks—which were uniform in size and
moisture-resistant—were important in building baths
and sewage structures and are evidence that
Harappans were among the first to develop a system
of standardized weights and measures.
• Harappans are known for seal carving— the cutting of
patterns into the bottom face of a seal, a small, carved
object used for stamping.
• The Indus River Valley Civilization is considered a
Bronze Age society; inhabitants of the ancient Indus
River Valley developed new techniques in metallurgy—
the science of working with copper, bronze, lead, and Archaeological dig of a water reservoir at Dholavira.
tin.
• The Harappan Civilization may have been the first to
use wheeled transport
• Trade focused on importing raw materials to be used in
Harappan city.

Mold of a seal from the Indus Valley civilization.

Religion, language, and culture
• There is considerable debate about whether it was an encoded language at all and whether it is related to Indo-European
and South Indian language families.
• The Indus script remains indecipherable without any comparable symbols, and is thought to have evolved independently
of the writing in Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt.
• The Harappan religion also remains a topic of speculation. It has been widely suggested that the Harappans worshipped a
mother goddess who symbolized fertility. In contrast to Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations, the Indus Valley
Civilization seems to have lacked any temples or palaces that would give clear evidence of religious rites or specific deities.
• One seal from Mohenjo-daro shows a half-human, half-buffalo monster attacking a tiger. This may be a reference to the
Sumerian myth of a monster created by Aruru—the Sumerian earth and fertility goddess—to fight Gilgamesh, the hero of
an ancient Mesopotamian epic poem. This is a further suggestion of international trade in Harappan culture.