The Indus Valley Civilization, also called Harappan after one of its major cities, is the second of the three great river-based civilizations of the third millennium BC in northern Africa and southwest Asia. Its cities, with their distinctive choices in architecture and town planning, provide an instructive counterpoint to those of regions further west, Mesopotamia and Egypt. In certain features, the Harappans seem particularly advanced.
The Indus Valley Civilization arose in the vast alluvial plain of two roughly parallel rivers, the Indus and the now dry Saraswati (or Ghaggar-Hakra), a region now situated in modern Pakistan and north-west India (Figure 4.1). Although the general similarity of the geographical setting and the sophistication of its architecture and city plans suggest a cultural development comparable to that experienced in Mesopotamia and Egypt, some major differences in the material record make it difficult to assess this hypothesis. First, the wealth of information available from Mesopotamian clay tablets and Egyptian papyri and stone inscriptions has no counterpart in the ancient Indus Valley. The Harappans did use writing, but their script has not been deciphered. Even if it were, the results would not yield much: inscriptions, mostly on seals or sealings, tend to be very short. Second, we know little about the social structure. This is due not simply to the lack of textual information, for non-textual evidence can have much to contribute about such matters. Here, the material remains give no clear picture of social distinctions. For example, lacking are elaborate tombs with rich grave gifts, burials of the sort that have brought the upper echelons of society so strikingly to our attention in lands further west. The rulers of these Harappan cities are as yet invisible to our modern eyes. Third and last, after the Indus Valley Civilization dissolved in the early second millennium BC, its traditions were not carried on, at least not directly, by succeeding peoples. Moreover, texts from later antiquity remain silent about the Harappans. As a result, this region did not have a continuity of cultural traditions comparable to what we see in Mesopotamia and Egypt.
Until recent decades, little was known about cultural developments in the Indus Valley before the Harappan period proper. Did the Harappan cities spring up quickly, or were they the result of a long period of gradual development? Such important questions could not be answered. Evidence from Mohenjo-Daro, for example, is meager, and more would in any case be difficult to obtain, the relevant deposits lying below the water table, buried deep in the silt brought by the river. Excavations elsewhere, at such sites as Mehrgarh, are now documenting developments of the preceding 4,000 years, the Neolithic into the Bronze Age. The picture emerging is one
Figure 4.1 The Indus Valley Civilization
Of gradual development, of the sort we have traced in Anatolia, the Levant, and Mesopotamia, although with regional variation being important.
World History
