Indus River Valley, Lecture notes of Indian History

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Indus River Valley

Ancient India

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

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.

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-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.