What Was The Indus Valley/Harappan Civilisation?

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In British India in the 1920's odd stone seals kept popping up at ruins near Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro along the Indus river valley. They baffled everyone, with their inscriptions in a never before seen written language. Archaeologists, intrigued by this, started excavating these previously ignored sites.

They soon uncovered a 4,500-year-old civilisation. A civilisation completely absent in the historical record. One of the earliest urban civilizations in human history. It flourished alongside Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and China around 3300-1900BCE but was bigger than all of them. A civilisation that built wonders not to gods or kings but to sanitation. A civilisation without war. Made up of massive planned cities built in brick. Masters of bronze and sculpture. They created their own writing system, traded across the vast sea, and possibly invented the world’s first indoor toilets and then vanished for reasons still not understood.

So what was this civilisation in the Indus Valley, what did they achieve, and what does it have to do with rubber duckies? Well let’s find out.

Head to https://www.harappa.com/ to learn more!


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Sources:

Understanding Ancient Civilizations Jane R. McIntosh - The ancient Indus Valley new perspectives - https://amzn.to/2XFl3M9
A population history of India - From the First Modern People to the Present Day by Tim Dyson - https://amzn.to/2XdmX7V
A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India From the Stone Age to the 12th Century by Upinder Singh - https://amzn.to/2MdsmVS
India’s Ancient Past by R.S. Sharma - https://amzn.to/3etINtj
An Environmental History of India From Earliest Times to the Twenty-First Century by Fisher, Michael H - https://amzn.to/2MmvM9f
The Lost River On the trail of Saraswati by Michel Danino - https://amzn.to/2TMS5IX
The Indus Civilization by Irfan Habib - https://amzn.to/2B68GB4
The Cambridge history of India Suppl. vol. The Indus Civilization by Mortimer Wheeler
Climate change and the course of global history a rough journey by John L Brooke - https://amzn.to/2Am2LaE
The Indus Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective by Gregory L. Possehl - https://amzn.to/2XJHFez
Allchin, Bridget, and Raymond Allchin The Rise of Civilization in India and Pakistan - https://amzn.to/3dqDDOZ
Bellwood, Peter First Farmers: The Origins of Agricultural Societies - https://amzn.to/2XegYQb


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Belcher, William R. 1997. “Ancient Harappa in 3-D.” www.harappa.com/3D/index.html.
Kenoyer, Jonathan Mark. 1996. “Around the Indus in 90 Slides.” www.harappa.com/indus/indus0.html.

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