Civilization arose almost as early in South Asia as in Mesopotamia and Egypt. In the fertile floodplain of the Indus River, farming created the food surplus essential to urbanized society.
Natural Environment
A plain of more than 1 million acres (400,000 hectares) stretches from the mountains of western Pakistan east to the Thar (tahr) Desert in the Sind (sinned) region of modern Pakistan (see Map 2.1). Over many centuries silt carried downstream and deposited by the Indus River has elevated the riverbed and its banks above the level of the plain. Twice a year the river overflows and inundates surrounding land as far as 10 miles (16 kilometers). In March and April melting snow from the Pamir (pah-MEER) and Himalaya (him-uh-LAY-uh) mountain ranges feeds the floods. In August, the great monsoon (seasonal wind) blowing off the ocean to the southwest brings rains that cause a second flood. Farmers in this region of little rainfall are thus able to plant and harvest two crops a year. In ancient times the Hakra (HAK-ruh) River (sometimes referred to as the Saraswati), which has since dried up, ran parallel to the Indus about 25 miles (40 kilometers) to the east and supplied water to a second cultivable area.
Adjacent regions shared many cultural traits with this core area. To the northeast is the Punjab, where five rivers converge to form the main course of the Indus. Lying beneath the towering Himalaya range, the Punjab receives considerably more rainfall than the central plain but is less prone to flooding. Settlements spread as far east as Delhi (DEL-ee) in northwest India. Settlement also extended south into the great delta where the Indus empties into the Arabian Sea, and southeast into India's hook-shaped Kathiawar (kah-tee-uh-WAHR) Peninsula, an area of alluvial plains and coastal marshes. The Indus Valley civilization covered an area much larger than the zone of Mesopotamian civilization.
Material Culture
Urban Centers
Harappa Site of one of the great cities of the Indus Valley civilization of the third millennium b. c.e. It was located on the northwest frontier of the zone of cultivation (in modern Pakistan).
Mohenjo-Daro Largest of the cities of the Indus Valley civilization, centrally located in the extensive floodplain of the Indus River in contemporary Pakistan.
The Indus Valley civilization flourished from approximately 2600 to 1900 B. c.E. Although archaeologists have located several hundred sites, the culture is best known from the remains of two great cities first discovered eighty years ago. Since the ancient names of these cities are unknown, they are referred to by modern names: Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro (moe-hen-joe— DAHR-oh). Unfortunately, the high water table at these sites makes excavation of the earliest levels of settlement nearly impossible.
Settled agriculture in this region dates back to at least 5000 B. c.E. The precise relationship between the Indus Valley civilization and earlier cultural complexes in the Indus Valley and in the hilly lands to the west is unclear. Also unclear are the forces that gave rise to urbanization, population increase, and technological advances in the mid-third millennium B. c.E. Nevertheless, the case for continuity with the earlier cultures seems stronger than the case for a sudden transformation due to the arrival of new peoples.
This society produced major urban centers. Harappa, 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometers) in circumference, may have housed a population of 35,000. Mohenjo-Daro was several times larger. High, thick brick walls surrounded each city. The streets were laid out in a rectangular grid. Covered drainpipes carried away waste. The consistent width of streets and length of city blocks and the uniformity of the mud bricks used in construction suggest a strong central authority. The seat of this authority may have been the citadel—an elevated, enclosed compound containing large buildings. Scholars think the well-ventilated structures nearby were storehouses of grain for feeding the urban population and for export. The presence of barracks may point to some regimentation of skilled artisans.
Different centers may have had different functions. Mohenjo-Daro dominates the great floodplain of the Indus. Harappa, which is nearly 500 miles (805 kilometers) to the north, is on a frontier between farmland and herding land, and it may have served as a “gateway” for procuring the copper, tin, and precious stones of the northwest. Coastal towns in the south gathered fish and highly prized seashells and engaged in seaborne trade with the Persian Gulf.
Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa have been extensively excavated, and published accounts of the Indus Valley civilization tend to treat them as the norm. Most people, however, lived in smaller settlements, which exhibit the same artifacts and the same standardization of styles and shapes as the large cities. Some scholars attribute this standardization to extensive exchange of goods within the zone of Indus Valley civilization, rather than to the urban centers' control of the smaller settlements.
Man from Mohenjo-Daro, ca. 2600-1900 b. c.e. This statue of a seated man wearing a cloak and headband was carved from a soft stone called steatite. It is often called the “Priest-King” because some scholars believe it may represent someone with religious and secular authority, but the true identity and status of this person are unknown.
SECTION REVIEW
• The Indus Valley civilization occupied a large territory, including the fertile Indus floodplain as well as adjacent regions.
• Both the major urban centers and smaller settlements exhibit a uniformity of techniques and styles that indicates either strong central control or extensive communication between different regions.
• The Indus Valley people were technologically advanced in irrigation, ceramics, and construction. Metals were more widely available than in Mesopotamia and Egypt. The writing system has not been deciphered.
• The Indus Valley had widespread trading contacts, reaching as far as Mesopotamia.
• Cities were abandoned and the civilization declined after 1900 b. c.e., probably as a result of natural disasters or environmental changes.
There is a greater quantity of metal in the Indus Valley than in Mesopotamia and Egypt, and most metal objects are utilitarian tools and other everyday objects. In contrast, more jewelry and other decorative metal objects have been unearthed in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Apparently metals were available to a broad cross-section of the population in the Indus Valley, while primarily reserved for the elite in the Middle East.
Technologically, the Indus Valley people showed skill in irrigation, used the potter's wheel, and laid the foundations of large public buildings with mud bricks fired to rocky hardness in kilns (sun-dried bricks would have dissolved quickly in floodwaters). They had a system of writing with more than four hundred signs. Archaeologists have recovered thousands of inscribed seal stones and copper tablets, but no one has been able to decipher these documents.
The people of the Indus Valley had widespread trading contacts. They had ready access to the metals and precious stones of eastern Iran and Afghanistan, as well as to ore deposits in western India, building stone, and timber. Goods were moved on rivers within the zone of Indus Valley culture. Indus Valley seal stones have been found in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley, indicating that Indus Valley merchants served as middlemen in long-distance trade, obtaining raw materials from the northwest and shipping them to the Persian Gulf. The undeciphered writing on seal stones may represent the names of merchants who stamped their wares.
We know little about the political, social, economic, and religious institutions of Indus Valley society. Attempts to link artifacts and images to cultural features characteristic of later periods of Indian history (see Chapter 7)—including a system of hereditary occupational groups with priests predominating, bathing tanks like those later found in Hindu temples, depictions of gods and sacred animals on seal stones, a cult of the mother-goddess—are highly speculative. Further knowledge about this society awaits additional archaeological finds and the deciphering of the Indus Valley script.
Transformation of the Indus Valley Civilization
The Indus Valley cities were abandoned sometime after 1900 B. c.E. Archaeologists once thought that invaders destroyed them, but they now believe this civilization suffered “systems failure”—a breakdown of the fragile interrelationship
Environmental Stress in the Indus Valley
Mud-Brick Fortification Wall of the Citadel at Harappa
Built upon a high platform, this massive construction required large numbers of bricks and enormous manhours of labor.
The three river-valley civilizations discussed in this chapter were located in arid or semiarid regions. Such regions are particularly vulnerable to changes in the environment. Scholars' debates about the existence and impact of changes in the climate and landscape of the Indus Valley illuminate some of the possible factors at work, as well as the difficulties of verifying and interpreting such long-ago changes.
One of the points at issue is climate change. Earlier scholars believed the climate of the Indus Valley was considerably wetter during the height of that civilization than it is now. They pointed to the enormous quantities of timber needed to bake the millions of mud bricks used to construct the cities (see photo), the distribution of human settlements on land now unfavorable for agriculture, and the representation of jungle and marsh animals on decorated seals. They maintained that the growth of population, prosperity, and complexity in the Indus Valley in the third millennium B. c.E. required wet conditions, and concluded that the change to a drier climate in the early second millennium B. c.E. pushed this civilization into decline.
Other experts, skeptical about radical climate change, offered alternative calculations of the amount of timber needed and the evidence of plant remains—particularly barley, a grain that is tolerant of dry conditions. However, recent studies of the stabilization of sand dunes, which occurs in periods of heavy rainfall, and analysis of the sediment deposited by rivers and winds have strengthened the view that the Indus Valley used to be wetter and that in the early - to mid-second millennium b. c.e. it entered a period of relatively dry conditions that have persisted to the present.
A clearer case can be made for changes in the landscape caused by shifts in the courses of rivers. These shifts are due, in some cases, to tectonic forces such as earthquakes. Dried-up riverbeds can be detected in satellite photographs or by on-the-ground inspection. It appears that a second major river system, the Hakra, once ran parallel to the Indus some distance to the east. The Hakra, with teeming towns and fertile fields along its banks, appears to have been a second axis of this civilization. Either the Sutlej, which now feeds into the Indus, or the Yamuna, which now pours into the Ganges, may
Have been the main source of water for the Hakra before undergoing a change of course. The consequences of the drying-up of this major waterway must have been immense—the loss of huge amounts of arable land and the food it produced, the abandonment of cities and villages and migration of their populations, shifts in trade routes, and desperate competition for shrinking resources.
As for the Indus itself, the present-day course of the lower reaches of the river has shifted 100 miles (161 kilometers) to the west since the arrival of the Greek conqueror Alexander the Great in the late fourth century B. c.E., and the deposit of massive volumes of silt has pushed the mouth of the river 50 miles (80 kilometers) farther south. A similar shift of the riverbed and buildup of alluvial deposits may have occurred in the third and second millennia B. c.E. and played a role in the decline of the Indus civilization.
Of political, social, and economic systems that sustained order and prosperity. The cause may have been one or more natural disasters, such as an earthquake or massive flooding. Gradual ecological changes may also have played a role as the Hakra river system dried up and salinization (an increase in the amount of salt in the soil, inhibiting plant growth) and erosion increased (see Environment and Technology: Environmental Stress in the Indus Valley).
Towns no longer on the river, ports separated from the sea by silt deposits in the deltas, and the loss of fertile soil and water would have necessitated the relocation of populations and a
Change in the livelihood of those who remained. The causes and pace of change probably varied in different areas. The urban centers eventually succumbed, however, and village-based farming and herding took their place. As the interaction between regions lessened, regional variation replaced the standardization of technology and style of the previous era. It is important to keep in mind that in most cases like this the majority of the population adjusts to the new circumstances. But members of the elite, who depend on the urban centers and complex political and economic structures, lose the source of their authority and are merged with the population as a whole.
World History
