Indus River Valley Ancient India Geography Located in

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 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 1940 s in favor of a combination of factors from ecological disasters.