Introduction to the Seriously Underrated Indus Valley / Harappan Civilization

Arista Willis says that when he was sent on a certain mission he saw a country of more than a thousand cities along with villages that had been left deserted because the Indus had abandoned its proper channel. These words were written by the famous Greek geographer Strabo regarding Aristobulus, who was one of Alexander the Great's companions during his conquest of the Akaminid Persian Empire, Aristo Bullis wrote extensively about Alexander's campaigns in Asia and, although his original works are have been lost, fragments of them have been preserved among the words of later writers of antiquity who are often referred to and quoted at length, this particular passage refers to a journey along the Indus River where Aristobulus claims to have seen the ruins of several cities while exploring the area, although he did not know what he was looking at when reading his eyewitness account of them.

Today's abandoned cities make you wonder if you were passing by the remains of one of the truly great

civilization

s of the ancient world. I'm talking specifically about the Indus Valley or the Harappan

civilization

, which built some of the world's first truly planned cities with well-organized streets in a network formation, efficient drainage and sewage systems that were available to everyone, and an average standard of living. for its people which was taller than anything else in the world at the time its traders and merchants traveled across great distances both by land and sea to bring their valuable resources and goods to people as far away as Mesopotamia and Egypt If not further, they also developed one of the world's first written scripts, as well as an innovative system of weights and measures.

Based on what still remains of their cities and towns, the people of the Harappan civilization appear to have lived in a fairly ordered, prosperous and peaceful that at its peak may have been home to some 5 million people, but after more than five centuries of unprecedented progress, the Harappan civilization began to decline rapidly and by the first millennium BC it had already been almost completely forgotten and replaced or absorbed by the societies of new peoples and cultures that had become prevalent in what was once their area of ​​influence. In this video we will cover the history of the Harappan civilization, one of the largest during the Early Bronze Age. some British officers had commented on them earlier in the 1850s Alexander Cunningham, the then director general of the newly created Archaeological Survey of India, visited a few mysterious mounds near the village of Harappa in what was then northwest India.

British, at the time I had no idea. How old the place was or its significance Cunningham thought he was standing atop the ruins of some early medieval fortress while making some notes on some of his finds, including a seal with some unidentified characters on it, he and others didn't think much about it. they. After a brief study of the site abandoned by Cunningham and his staff, he made no recommendations or plans to excavate the mysterious mounds near Harappa, and over the next few decades they were essentially forgotten. The mounds were visited once again in the 1870s, not by archaeologists but by railway contractors. who ransacked the area in search of the old but sturdy bricks hidden within them.

In 1902, a young English archaeologist named John Marshall, later Sir John Marshall, was appointed the new director general of the Archaeological Survey of India. Marshall had read about Cunningham's supposedly unimpressive finds at Harappa, including the rather unusual seal, and decided in 1920 to organize an excavation at the site. Excavations that began the following year not only found him and his team more seals with the same mysterious characters, but also ruins of streets lined with brick houses, drains and various figurines in 1922, around the same time as Harappa, another A site called Mohenjo-daro to the southwest, near the Indus River, was also under excavation by a team of archaeologists led by Rd ​​Banerjee.

At first, Banerjee thought he was excavating the ruins of an ancient Buddhist stupa that may have dated perhaps to the 3rd or 4th century AD, but he soon found seals similar to those discovered in Harappa. Having knowledge of ancient Indian languages, he realized that what was inscribed on these seals was quite different from any version of the Bravni script he would normally have expected to find around some 3rd century ruins, so he concluded that it was Whatever he was unearthing at Mohenjo-daro was much older. It turns out he was right in 1924 after examining the site himself, Sir John Marshall concluded. that both Harappa and Mohenjo-daro were from the same previously unknown Bronze Age civilization, called it the Indus Valley Civilization as the years passed, although ruins of more cities and towns with the same street system were discovered , seals and pottery throughout north-west Britain.

India with some of the main sites quite far from the Indus Valley, so today the term Harappan civilization was adopted, named after the place where it was first discovered, some mainly in India also call it the Indus civilization Saraswati, as Harappa is the most commonly used. term to identify this civilization today I will mainly use that in this program. Scholars have divided the life of the Harappan civilization into three broad periods or phases, the first of which is the early Harappan phase, from approximately 3300 to 2600 BC, was during this time. that major urbanization in the Indus Valley began first the second is the mature Harappan phase which lasted approximately between 2600 and 1900 BC.

This period saw the heyday of Harappan civilization with its development of large well-planned cities like Harappan Mohenjo-daro Kalibangan Dolavira Total and others will also be the period that will focus more on this program finally there is the late Harappan phase of about 1900 to 1300 BC, this is when the Harappan civilization began to decline and many of its large urban centers were abandoned. Today, there are over 2,000 known Harappan archaeological sites of all sizes, spread over a vast area surrounding the Indus Valley. This Harappan zone extends east to the upper Ganges River basin in north central India. To the west of the site. from sutkig in the interior, near the Pakistani border with Iran, smaller but important Harappan settlements were found deep in Afghanistan, and finally to the south, where the southernmost Harappan settlement to date was discovered, just north of the city of Ahmednagar in the state of Maharashtra, is an The area is estimated to cover 1.3 million square kilometers, which is approximately the size of France, Germany and the United Kingdom combined, such as those of ancient Sumeria, Egypt , the Bactria Margiana complex and China.

The Harappan civilization, at least initially, was tied to a major river system or

valley

, in this case. The Indus River and its many tributaries The Indus is a mighty river whose main source is the melting snows in the Himalayan mountains to the northwest, although it is often swelled by the heavy rains of the summer monsoon. Today, water from several undescended tributaries flows through the lowlands. of the Punjab and sinned by emptying into the Arabian Sea near the modern city of Karachi Pakistan another river that 4500 years ago may have been even larger than the Indus was possibly the gagar hakra river with the exception perhaps during the monsoon season It is little more than a dry riverbed for most of the year;

However, the large number of Harappan settlements in its proximity indicates that at one time the volume of fresh water flowing through it was much greater than it is today. Some have theorized that gagar hakra. In reality, it may have been the legendary Saraswati River described in the early Hindu Rigveda, just as today in prehistoric and ancient times, the annual flooding of these rivers provided fresh water and silt that was well suited for the cultivation of these two resources combined. with a relatively long growth. The season of high temperatures and constant sunshine made the Indus Valley region the ideal place for large-scale agriculture.

Utilizing these river systems initially proved to be very challenging. They had to learn to deal with unpredictable floods, as well as clear forests and drain swamp mosquitoes. infested wetlands in order to create new farmland, only then could they make use of the region's potentially rich agricultural resources to grow their crops, which at first consisted mainly of wheat and barley, but later included peas and cotton. Fields were plowed by oxen and sometimes even camels, eventually donkeys were also used. There is even evidence that in the third millennium BC. C. the Harappan cities in Gujarat and Maharashtra had domesticated elephants, buffaloes, sheep, goats and pigs were eaten regularly and, wherever possible, their skins or wool were used to make clothing and, of course, to be worn.

It is likely that river or even sea fish were also a substantial part of the Harappan diet, as in other parts of the world, constant agricultural surpluses allowed segments of society to divert time and resources towards other endeavors, such as metallurgy. , urban engineering and the arts. In a nutshell, this is how the Harappan civilization began, unlike today, where much of the Indus Valley receives on average less than 15 centimeters of rain in a given year. Scientists have determined that the monsoons of the third millennium BC were much stronger and, consequently, more dangerous for humanity. For locals, the melting snows of the Himalayas coupled with annual torrential rains meant that permanent settlements in the Indus Valley had to be built with strong, durable materials, given the region's climate.

Mud bricks, such as those commonly used in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, were not ideal. Because they could be easily broken or washed away, especially during periods of heavy rains and floods, the solution to this in Harappan society was the invention of burnt bricks. Burnt bricks were usually made from locally available materials such as clay, sand and water, which were molded into identical shapes. Rectangular prisms that were shaped like each brick and then dried in the sun before being fired in an oven whose temperatures could reach more than 800 degrees Celsius. The end result was that the brick became much harder and more resistant to harsh weather conditions and indeed erosion.

They ultimately proved to be so strong that many of them were used in the late 19th century as sleepers for the Harappan people in building local railways throughout Punjab, although these bricks were vital in protecting their settlements against annual floods and monsoon rains. which might otherwise have literally been eliminated, the use of bronze became more prevalent in and around the Indus Valley during the mature Harappan phase, when it was used to make a variety of objects, including tools, ornaments, figurines, toys , needles for weaving jewelry and weapons, among others. Things, the large number of bronze forges discovered in many Harappan cities is a good indicator of how important this alloy was in Harappan society, although items made solely of copper were also very common.

Copper and tin are essential in the production of bronze, but these two elements were relatively scarce within the Indus Valley itself, cities such as Mohenjo-daro and Harappa had to import them. Copper was mainly obtained from mines in Balochistan and the deserts of Rajasthan. While most of the region's tin came from Afghanistan as Harappan settlements, some fairly large tin has been found throughout these outlying regions. Many scholars believe that long-distance trade developed to obtain such materials, which may ultimately have been the main cause of Harappan outposts and culture spreading throughout the Indian subcontinent and beyond in exchange for Harappan traders are thought to have supplied their trading partners with cotton-grain wood shells and finished products, such as beads made of carnelian, with so much trade going on that it probably became necessary to keep track of inventories and the flow of goods. and services in and from the cities of Harappa to foreign destinations and vice versa, it was necessary to trace all this commercial activity and from this it is believed that a registration system may have been invented in the form of what scholars today have identified like the Harappan writing system, the key.

The word here is May because unlike the Kuneiform script of Mesopotamia or the hieroglyphics of Egypt, the Harappan script has never been deciphered, although it has been determined that the language was written from left to right because on some seals it appears that theScribe had run out and I had to condense the text to fit the script. It also does not appear to be alphabetical, but consists of more than 400 pictographs. Most of this writing appears on small stone seals that are quite simple and apparently contain few words. There are no great epics or other literary works written about them, there are many theories about what the true purpose of these seals was.

The most widely accepted is that in some way they were used in trade, for example they could have been markers of ownership and a means of identifying goods in long-distance trade networks the figures of animals and other objects depicted on the seals may have been associated with a particular region and used to indicate the origin or destination of traded goods. Another theory is that such seals were used to identify It has been suggested to some people that the inscriptions on the seals may represent personal or place names, titles, and other information similar to what would be found on a government identification card today.

Others have proposed that the Harappan seals had some kind of ritual or religious function, this is because several of them appear to depict mythological creatures, they were scenes that may have been associated with certain religious beliefs and practices, they could also have been used as amulets for protection and good luck, however, without being able to decipher the script, the real purpose of these small and mysterious seals continues to elude us, you can imagine what a great source of frustration this must all be for archaeologists and historians because unlocking This script could help confirm their hypotheses and tell us much more about the Harappan way of life, including what they may have.

They called themselves and their Harappan cities Mohenjo-daro dolovira and lothal are names that archaeologists have given to these sites often based on the name of the nearest village or town or the local name of the mound that once covered them, For example, the Harappan ruins are named after the village just a kilometer from the site, while Mohenjo-daro in the regional language means mound of the dead, what the Harappans called these places is anyone's guess, but it is something that the inscriptions on the seals found there could one day tell us. However, the answer may already be in front of us.

Most seriologists are fairly certain that the Sumerian and Akkadian texts, when they mention a land called meluha, also sometimes read as maluka, are referring specifically to a place within the boundaries of the Harappan civilization as the word itself It has no other meaning in the Sumerian and Akkadian languages. It is possible that there is a relationship between the name Meluha and what the Harappan people may have called themselves or their country. An inscription of sargana vakad, also known as Sargon the Great, the accredited man. with the formation of the world's first true empire mentions at least three countries outside Mesopotamia whose ships docked at its capital city Avagade Sargon king of the world was victorious in 34 battles destroyed the city walls to the seashore moored ships of Meluha Magan and Dil moon at Agade wharf, as just mentioned, Meluha is believed to be somewhere within the borders of the Harappan civilization, while Magan was located in what is now Oman, in the easternmost parts of the United Arab Emirates, remember the country of Dil moon. for most it had been the Persian Gulf island now known as Bahrain during the ancient Acadian and Neo-Sumerian periods of the late third millennium BC.

Meluha was understood to have been a country far to the east from which fine woods, gold, carnelian, ivory and lapis lazuli came. of the Harappan settlers, and perhaps also, there is a text from the year 34 of the Neo-Sumerian king Shulgi discovered among the ruins of the city of Lagash, which in those days was possibly the main commercial center for goods from the East. He mentions a meluhan. Seals from villages within his territory with text written in Harappan script have also been found there, as well as the cities of Kishō and the city of Susa in the neighboring country of Ilam, today part of southwestern Iran.

Seals and objects with Harappan writing have also been found there. It has been discovered on the island of Bahrain, as well as at the site of Ras al-qaima in Oman, which in ancient times were part of Dil Moon and Magan respectively. Another fascinating find is a cylinder seal belonging to a scribe named Shu ilushu who lived around 2020 BC. and in the text it is identified as ameluja translator now in the Louvre the exact place within Mesopotamia where the cylinder seal was discovered is not known assuming that meluha is in fact somewhere within the Harappan World such evidence leads us to conclude that it does not there were only trade contacts between this country and the Near East, but also that there may have been Harappans living in Mesopotamia in early antiquity.

The mention of a Harappan translator is especially encouraging. Imagine how incredible it would be if a bilingual Acadian Harappan document very similar to the Rosetta Stone was discovered beneath it. the sands of ancient Sumeria and Akkad, such a text could be the key that unlocks the meaning of Harappan writing and gives us a greater understanding of their society. Harappan traders, who often acted as middlemen, are believed to have been instrumental in transporting items such as beads made of carnelian. Fine jewelry adorns wood, ivory, spices, copper and lapis lazuli to destinations further west. The evidence from the Harappans in Mesopotamia mentioned above indicates that while some of them may have transported the items themselves in most cases, it is likely that they delivered them to other traders. from places like marhashi ilam Magan and Dil Moon, who then took them to their final destination, which was often one of the cities of Mesopotamia.

However, the reverse is much less understood because it is not known what Harappan traders may have received in exchange for their counterparts in Mesopotamia. There does not appear to be any written or material evidence that Mesopotamian goods reached the Indus Valley, although some have speculated that they may have exchanged textiles and foodstuffs such as dates. There is an interesting Harappan seal in the National Museum in New Delhi, India. Called by archaeologists the seal of Gilgamesh, it is not actually a seal of Gilgamesh, but is so called because it depicts a man firmly grasping two ferocious tigers similar to the so-called master of animals.

Motif that is common in ancient Near Eastern art, while this seal is not. To prove that travelers from Mesopotamia or another place in the Near East once visited a Harappan city, it could hint at cultural influence and exchanges between the two civilizations, more than anything else, which really distinguished the Harappan culture from others during the Middle Ages. Bronze was his emphasis. and experience when it came to urban planning, while there were some other large Urban Societies in the world at the time, none of them appear to have had the organizational standardization and overall efficiency of the Harappan civilization, most Harappan sites larger than what archaeologists have demonstrated.

Identified as a citadel or Acropolis that was usually located atop an artificially constructed platform where the elite or ruling class were believed to live. Such high ground was especially advantageous during monsoon rains and flooding of nearby rivers. Below the Acropolis was the Lower City inhabited by For the common people, the buildings here were more modest compared to those on the Acropolis, but they were still made of uniform and resistant fired bricks. Houses that could have one or two stories were arranged in a grid system whose streets were lined with drains and sewers in the latter part. was the most impressive to archaeologists, as they discovered that dwellings in almost every Harappan town, regardless of size, had its own courtyard and a bath, many with raised platforms so that one could pour water over another, much like a modern shower.

Some houses even had their own water from private wells would leave the house through a fairly simple but efficient drainage system which, especially on the Acropolis, was often covered by bricks or stone slabs. There is no record of any other Bronze Age society that appears to have concerned itself with cleanliness and personal hygiene. as the mohanjodaro of Harappa had a large bath measuring 39 by 23 feet with a depth of eight feet, which most scholars believe was used for ritual baths, although some have suggested it may have been for recreational use and a place for people to relax as if they were swimming.

Today's swimming pool, although made of bricks, the bathroom was also coated with tar to help waterproof it, like other buildings, it was connected to both a relatively complex water supply system and sewers to drain new waste. To the east of this bathroom was a large building. It measures 230 by 78 feet and many archaeologists believe it may have functioned as a palace for the city's king or political leader and his family. If there was an established priesthood, then the high priest and his entourage may also have lived there and some have tried. portray Harappan society as very egalitarian because most people living in its cities, especially during the mature Harappan period, appear to have enjoyed a high standard of living relative to other Bronze Age cultures, as seen mentioned earlier, the average household had access to services like Wells.

The sophisticated drainage system and perhaps even public baths in some places, the number and size of the city's granaries imply that food shortages were rare, and the absence of clearly identifiable grand palaces or giant temples has convinced many. that power was not concentrated in the hands of a few Elite individuals, on the other hand, the presence of large buildings on elevated platforms such as the Mohenjo-daro Citadel versus the smaller, more modest dwellings in the Lower City suggests that some individuals Some houses consisted of a single room, while others may have had up to 12. Additionally, the discovery of burials with elaborate grave goods versus simpler tombs for presumed commoners also suggests that select individuals may having enjoyed the privileges of wealth and a higher status in death if Then there was a social and political hierarchy who was at the top was a king, a priest who served as both spiritual and temporal ruler or some type of governing council;

There is no way to know for sure, but scholars have proposed many theories as to who was in charge most likely based within the Acropolis area of ​​the city and specifically in the Citadel, if there was another question it is how powerful this was. ruling class within the typical Harappan town, as there is little evidence of any kind of military culture or standing army in most Harappan towns. How was the will of the leadership imposed on the general population, as far as we know, during the mature Harappan period? Political and economic stability had been well established throughout society.

Most today believe that this would have been almost impossible without someone or at least a group of people. possessing the authority to enforce law and order, the other question is what was the political relationship between the Harappan cities, whether they functioned as individual city-states or one or two had hegemony over the others. One possibility is that belief in some higher power compelled the Harappan people to maintain peace and order within their society, but even here scholars have little conclusive evidence to work with, unlike ancient Mesopotamia or Egypt. However, the absence of such structures does not mean absence. of religion or spirituality, only perhaps a special man-made building or public space was not needed, daily devotion and rituals might have been necessary. made at home, making worship in a temple unnecessary, the so-called pashupati seal, depicting a three-headed man covering his head with horns in a meditation or yoga position, is often used by many scholars as evidence of that the Harappan people had some type of religion, this particular figure could have been a god or some type of shaman, looking around we can see that he is surrounded by various animals that could also have had some religious significance.

One thing that archaeologists discovered at many Haraban sites were numerous terracotta figures, mostly in the form of women, men,birds, dogs, sheep, cows and monkeys, for approximately 600 years, between 2500 and 1900 BC. C., the civilization of the Indus Valley and its surroundings was at its peak, the Harappan people as a whole had an average quality of life that at least on the surface appears to have exceeded that of their Bronze Age peers in Mesopotamia Egypt China and other parts of the world's penchant for trade and active participation in the large international trade networks of the time allowed them to become extremely prosperous, while armed conflicts between neighbors probably occurred from time to time.

The little we know about their culture, as well as information confirmed by archaeologists, suggests that mass violence and campaigns of conquest like those glorified by Near Eastern rulers were rare or nonexistent. This may have been because there was really no need as we have seen that for the most part there was little to differentiate one Harappan city from another, as far as we know they were quite similar in their general culture, urban planning, architecture, weights. and measurements, written language, bricks, the tools they used. They used the crops they grew and the beautiful seals and small figures they created while floods were a constant threat.

Harappan civilization and society were generally in harmony with themselves and their environment, so, just a century into their golden age, how did Harappa do? Civilization begins to decline precipitously and in most areas eventually collapses. This is a mystery that has plagued archaeologists and scholars since the ruins of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro were first excavated. Unsurprisingly, many ideas have been proposed about how this could happen. Most scholars today do not believe that there was a single cause, but rather a series of factors that occurred over the span of a few generations and that may having contributed greatly to the end of many smaller Harappan cities and settlements, while in the past scholars had relied on made the claim that the decline and destruction was due to foreign invaders, specifically a Central Asian people known as the Aryans, this is today rejected by most as the main cause, as they are believed to have arrived on the scene a few centuries later, also modern archaeologists. as a scientific community at large, a tribute to the fall of the Harappan civilization to changes in climate, degradation and deforestation of the local environment and perhaps also to tectonic activity that may have caused the courses of several major rivers to change, consider this setting at the end of the 20th century BC.

There may have been less rain, causing parts of the mighty Indus gagar hakra and other rivers to change course or dry up completely, as such bodies of water were the lifeline of most Harappan cities when they disappeared, Like its citizens, the loss or fatal reduction of their main water source would have caused massive failure of their farms and forced them to move elsewhere, but where would they most likely have gone, elsewhere? Cities and Harappan villages whose people shared the same cultural language and a similar way of life, but this would have created another massive problem: overpopulation, even in places that may have suffered the effects of drought, the huge influx of people to these areas would have created food shortages. and greater population density, which facilitated disease outbreaks.

The Harappan civilization relied heavily on agriculture, requiring the clearing of forests to make way for new farmland to grow crops and additional pastures for animals to graze as the population grew and agricultural demands skyrocketed. More land would have been needed. If removed at the same time, demand for wood used as fuel for kilns that make fired bricks would also have accelerated. All of this would have led to widespread deforestation that can have several negative effects on the environment and society as a whole, unrelated to the most significant impacts of deforestation are soil erosion. Trees help destabilize the soil and prevent such erosion.

Without them, the soil can be easily washed away by rain and wind, and especially in the Indus Valley floods, this leads to a decrease in soil fertility, making cultivation difficult. ultimately leading to food shortages, economic collapse and often social unrest, with rivers drying up and trees disappearing. The land would no longer have been able to support the general population of Harappa and therefore those who did not starve left in search of food. and opportunities elsewhere, such as further east and the fertile plains along the Ganges River or to the south, where the local environment may have been a little more hospitable and less unpredictable.

This is at least a hypothesis that many scholars more or less accept today. several others, but we do not have time to discuss them all here, although the great cities of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa may have been almost completely abandoned by 1800 BC. C., pockets of Harappan culture still survived in other areas for a few more centuries. but as often happens over time, new peoples migrated to new regions and what was once the Harappan Cultural Zone and its people merged or were absorbed into the new Vedic society that was taking root in the subcontinent during the second millennium before Christ, but that's a story. for another time, so I hope you learned something about the great Harappan civilization of the early Bronze Age.

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