Indus River Valley

Ancient India

Geography

• Located in modern day

Pakistan

• Rich agricultural lands

surrounded by highlands,

mountains, deserts, and

the ocean

• Developed in the area

known as the Indian

Floodplain

Indus River Valley

• It was named after the city of Harappa.

Harappa and the city of Mohenjo-Daro

were important cities.

• This Indus Valley “civilization” flourished

around 4000-1000 BCE

Other River Civilizations Locations

Early Harappan-Ravi Phase

3300-2800 BCE

• Trade networks linked

culture with related regional

cultures and distant sources

of raw materials

• Domesticated crops

included peas, sesame

seeds, dates and cotton.

• Domestic animals also

used, such as the water

buffalo

Middle Harappan-Integration Era

2600-1900 BCE

• By 2500 BCE,

communities had been

turned into urban centers.

• Over 1052 cities and

settlements have been

found

• Irrigation used to increase

crop production and mud

brick structures.

Late Harappan 1700-1300 BCE

• Cremation of human remains

• The bones were stored in painted pottery burial urns

• Reddish pottery, painted in black with shapes and designs with different surface treatments to the earlier period.

• Expansion of settlements into the east

• Rice became a main crop

• Apparent breakdown of the widespread trade of the Indus civilization, with materials such as marine shells no longer used.

Natural Resources

• The Indus Valley

contained numerous

natural resources that

were an important part of

Harappan civilization.

• Resources included:

– Fresh water and timber

– Materials such as gold,

silver, semi-precious

stones.

City Plans• Houses had flat roofs and were

just about identical

• Each was built around a courtyard, with windows overlooking the courtyard.

• The outside walls had no windows.

• Each home had its own private drinking well and its own private bathroom.

• Clay pipes led from the bathrooms to sewers located under the streets.

• These sewers drained into nearly rivers and streams.

Language

• The Indus (or Harappan) people used a pictographic script.

• Some 3500 examples of this script survive in stamp seals carved in stone, in molded terracotta and faience amulets, in fragments of pottery, and in a few other categories of inscribed objects.

Economy-Trade

• The Harappan civilization

was mainly urban and

based on trading.

• Inhabitants of the Indus

valley traded with

Mesopotamia, southern

India, Afghanistan, and

Persia for gold, silver,

copper, and turquoise.

Economy-Agriculture

• Irrigation systems were used to take advantage of the fertile grounds along the Indus River.

• Walls were built to control the river's annual flooding.

• Crops grown included wheat, barley, peas, melons, and sesame.

• This civilization was the first to cultivate cotton for the production of cloth.

Collapse of Harappan

“Civilization”

• The de-urbanization period of the Harappan

Civilization saw the collapse and disappearance of

the urban phenomena in the South Asia.

• The theme for this period is localization.

• Architectural and ceramic forms changed along with

the loss of writing, planned settlements, public

sanitation, monumental architecture, seaborne and

exotic trade, seals, and weights.

Four Theories of Collapse

• Three theories are based on ecological factors: intense flooding, decrease in precipitation, and the dessication of the Sarasvati River.

• The fourth hypothesis is that of the Aryan Invasion, proposed by Sir R. E. Mortimer Wheeler and Stuart Piggott.

• Fourth largely abandoned in the 1940s in favor of a combination of factors from ecological disasters.