A LOST CIVILIZATION

While the civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and China left enduring monuments and historical records and were remembered in later times, the Indus civilization was forgotten. Thus, when the European antiquarians began to investigate Asia's past in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, only the later traces of India's ancient history commanded their attention: the cities of the Mauryan Empire, where some centuries earlier the Buddha had lived, and the megalithic monuments of the south, with their striking similarity to prehistoric European tombs. The discovery of the Indus civilization in the 1920s, when excavations began at Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, therefore took Europe by storm. The cities' well laid-out streets and fine houses with bathrooms surprised and impressed archaeologists and the public alike, while the discovery of seals bearing an enigmatic script intrigued them. The contemporaneity of the Indus cities with Mesopotamia's civilization was quickly established. Excavations by Sir Mortimer Wheeler in the 1940s brought further publicity.

Partition in 1947 redrew the map, with the greater part of the known Harappan civilization falling within newly formed Pakistan: The situation acted as a spur to the Indian government to investigate its remaining Harappan regions: Gujarat and the Indo-Gangetic divide. Survey work in Cholistan, on the Pakistan side of the border, revealed the importance of the now dry Saraswati River in Indus times. Recent work by collaborative international teams at the two best-known and largest cities, Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, using the most up-to-date techniques, have greatly enhanced understanding of the civilization, while the investigation of new sites, such as the city of Dholavira and a number of small rural settlements, has extended our knowledge in new directions.