Indus Valley Civilisation

Indus Valley Civilisation
IVC major sites
Alternative namesHarappan civilisation
ancient Indus
Indus civilisation
Geographical rangeBasins of the Indus river, Pakistan and the seasonal Ghaggar-Hakra river, eastern Pakistan and northwestern India
PeriodBronze Age South Asia
Datesc. 3300 – c. 1300 BCE
Type siteHarappa
Major sitesHarappa, Mohenjo-daro, Dholavira, and Rakhigarhi
Preceded byMehrgarh
Followed byCemetery H culture
Black and red ware
Ochre Coloured Pottery culture
Painted Grey Ware culture
Excavated ruins of Mohenjo-daro, Sindh province, Pakistan, showing the Great Bath in the foreground. Mohenjo-daro, on the right bank of the Indus River, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the first site in South Asia to be so declared.
Miniature votive images or toy models from Harappa, c. 2500 BCE. Terracotta figurines indicate the yoking of zebu oxen for pulling a cart and the presence of the chicken, a domesticated jungle fowl.

The Indus Valley Civilisation[1] (IVC), also known as the Indus Civilisation, was a Bronze Age civilisation in the northwestern regions of South Asia, lasting from 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE, and in its mature form from 2600 BCE to 1900 BCE.[2][a] Together with ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, it was one of three early civilisations of the Near East and South Asia, and of the three, the most widespread, its sites spanning an area including much of modern-day Pakistan, northwestern India and northeast Afghanistan.[3][b] The civilisation flourished both in the alluvial plain of the Indus River, which flows through the length of Pakistan, and along a system of perennial monsoon-fed rivers that once coursed in the vicinity of the Ghaggar-Hakra, a seasonal river in northwest India and eastern Pakistan.[2][4]

The term Harappan is sometimes applied to the Indus Civilisation after its type site Harappa, the first to be excavated early in the 20th century in what was then the Punjab province of British India and is now Punjab, Pakistan.[5][c] The discovery of Harappa and soon afterwards Mohenjo-daro was the culmination of work that had begun after the founding of the Archaeological Survey of India in the British Raj in 1861.[6] There were earlier and later cultures called Early Harappan and Late Harappan in the same area. The early Harappan cultures were populated from Neolithic cultures, the earliest and best-known of which is named after Mehrgarh, in Balochistan, Pakistan.[7][8] Harappan civilisation is sometimes called Mature Harappan to distinguish it from the earlier cultures.

The cities of the ancient Indus were noted for their urban planning, baked brick houses, elaborate drainage systems, water supply systems, clusters of large non-residential buildings, and techniques of handicraft and metallurgy.[d] Mohenjo-daro and Harappa very likely grew to contain between 30,000 and 60,000 individuals,[10] and the civilisation may have contained between one and five million individuals during its florescence.[11] A gradual drying of the region during the 3rd millennium BCE may have been the initial stimulus for its urbanisation. Eventually it also reduced the water supply enough to cause the civilisation's demise and to disperse its population to the east.[e]

Although over a thousand Mature Harappan sites have been reported and nearly a hundred excavated,[f] there are five major urban centres:[12][g] Mohenjo-daro in the lower Indus Valley (declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980 as "Archaeological Ruins at Moenjodaro"), Harappa in the western Punjab region, Ganeriwala in the Cholistan Desert, Dholavira in western Gujarat (declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2021 as "Dholavira: A Harappan City"), and Rakhigarhi in Haryana.[13][h] The Harappan language is not directly attested, and its affiliations are uncertain, as the Indus script has remained undeciphered.[14] A relationship with the Dravidian or Elamo-Dravidian language family is favoured by a section of scholars.[15][16]

  1. ^ Dyson 2018, p. vi
  2. ^ a b c Wright 2009, p. 1.
  3. ^ a b Wright 2009.
  4. ^ Giosan et al. 2012.
  5. ^ a b Habib 2015, p. 13.
  6. ^ Wright 2009, p. 2.
  7. ^ Shaffer 1992, I:441–464, II:425–446.
  8. ^ Kenoyer 1991.
  9. ^ Wright 2009, pp. 115–125.
  10. ^ Dyson 2018, p. 29 "Mohenjo-daro and Harappa may each have contained between 30,000 and 60,000 people (perhaps more in the former case). Water transport was crucial for the provisioning of these and other cities. That said, the vast majority of people lived in rural areas. At the height of the Indus valley civilization the subcontinent may have contained 4-6 million people."
  11. ^ McIntosh 2008, p. 387: "The enormous potential of the greater Indus region offered scope for huge population increase; by the end of the Mature Harappan period, the Harappans are estimated to have numbered somewhere between 1 and 5 million, probably well below the region's carrying capacity."
  12. ^ a b Coningham & Young 2015, p. 192.
  13. ^ a b Wright 2009, p. 107.
  14. ^ "We are all Harappans". Outlook India. 4 February 2022. Archived from the original on 5 August 2018. Retrieved 5 August 2018.
  15. ^ Ratnagar 2006a, p. 25.
  16. ^ Lockard, Craig (2010). Societies, Networks, and Transitions. Vol. 1: To 1500 (2nd ed.). India: Cengage Learning. p. 40. ISBN 978-1-4390-8535-6.


Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).