5 Facts about the Indus Valley Civilization

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The Indus Valley Civilization, South Asia’s first cities were established around 2600 B.C. in the present Pakistan and western India. It is also known as the Harappan Civilization since they were first sighted there. Here are a few interesting facts about this urban and organized civilization:

1.   The Indus Valley civilization developed roughly around the same time as the early city states of Egypt and Mesopotamia. It prospered in the basins of the Indus River, one of the major rivers of Asia, and the Ghaggar-Hakra River that once coursed through the modern northwest India and eastern Pakistan.
2. The greater Indus region was home to the largest of the four ancient urban civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, South Asia and China. It was not discovered until the 1920s. Most of its ruins, even its major cities, are still unexcavated.
3. The Indus Civilization had a writing system which today still remains a mystery since all attempts to decipher it have been unfruitful. This is one of the reasons why the Indus Valley Civilization is one of the least known of the important early civilizations of antiquity. Examples of their writing system have been found in pottery, amulets, carved stamp seals, and even in weights and copper tablets. Clay and stone tablets unearthed at Harappa, which were carbon dated 3300–3200 BCE consisted writing that is placed slightly earlier than primitive writings of the Sumerians of Mesopotamia, dated 3100 BCE.
4. Also unknown to man is the nature of the relationship between these cities. Whether they were independent city-states or part of a larger kingdom is still a mystery. Due to the failure to decipher their writings and the absence of any sort of sculptures of their rulers or depictions of battles and military campaigns, the assumption of any possibility is still inconclusive.
5. The downfall of the Bronze-Age civilizations in Egypt, Greece and Mesopotamia has been attributed to a long-term drought that began around 2000 BC. Now paleoclimatologists propose that the mysterious Indus Valley Civilization must have also faced the same tragedy around the same period. A large amount of evidence of the civilization was damaged during the British Raj, in 1857, when the brick from the remains were used to build track ballast for the Lahore-Multan railroad.

Even today, the mystery of this enigmatic civilization remains unresolved. However, it is regarded as one of the most urban and organized early civilizations of the old world.