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The Ancient Indus
Civilization
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Introduction
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 1920's. Most of its ruins, even its
major cities, remain to be excavated. The ancientIndus
Civilization script has not been deciphered.
Many questions about the Indus people who created this
highly complex culture remain unanswered, but other
aspects of their society can be answered through various
types of archaeological studies.
Harappa was a city in the Indus civilization that
flourished around 2600 to 1700 BCE in the
western part of South Asia.
Cities and Context
The Harappans used the same size bricks
andstandardized weights as were used in other
Indus cities such as Mohenjo
Daro and Dholavira. These cities were well
planned with wide streets, public and private
wells, drains, bathing platforms and reservoirs.
One of its most well-known structures is
the Great Bath of Mohenjo Daro .
There were other highly developed cultures in
adjacent regions of Baluchistan, Central Asia
and peninsular India.
Material culture and the skeletons from the Harappa cemetery and other sites
testify to a continual intermingling of communities from both the west and the
east. Harappa was settled before what we call the ancient Indus
civilization flourished, and it remains a living town today.
The Saraswati River
In fact, there seems to have been another large river
which ran parallel and west of the Indus in the third
and fourth millenium BCE. This was the ancient
Saraswati-Ghaggar-Hakra River (which some
scholars associate with the Saraswati River of
the Rg Veda).
Its lost banks are slowly being traced by
researchers. Along its now dry bed, archaeologists
are discovering a whole new set of ancient towns and cities.
Meluhha
Ancient Mesopotamian texts speak of trading with at least two seafaring civilizations Magan and Meluhha - in the neighborhood of South Asia in the third millennium B.C.
This trade was conducted with real financial sophistication in amounts that could involve
tons of copper. The Mesopotamians speak of Meluhha as a land of exotic commodities. A
wide variety of objects produced in the Indus region have been found at sites in
Mesopotamia.
This site tells the story of the ancient Indus Civilization through the words and
photographs of the world's leading scholars in the US, Europe, India and Pakistan. It starts
with the re-discovery of Harappa in the early 19th century by the explorer Charles
Masson and later Alexander Burnes, and formally by the archaeologist Sir Alexander
Cunningham in the 1870's. This work led to the the first excavations in the early 20th
century at Harappa by Rai Bahadur Daya Ram Sahni, and by R.D. Banerji at another
Indus Civilization city, Mohenjo Daro .
HARP and Indian excavations
Since 1986, the joint Pakistani American Harappa Archaeological Research
Project (HARP) has been carrying out the first major excavations at the site since before
independence in 1946. These excavations have the shown Harappa to have been far larger
than once thought, perhaps supporting a population of 50,000 at certain periods. These
continuing excavations are rewriting assumptions about the Indus Civilization, as is recent
work by archaeologists in neighboring India. New facts, objects and examples of
writing are being discovered every year in India and Pakistan.
Harappa.com
Almost 600 slides from HARP photographed by Dr. Jonathan Mark Kenoyer [University
of Wisconsin, Madison] and Richard H. Meadow [Harvard University] appear on this
Website, including the 90 Slide Introduction to the Ancient Indus Civilization. A detailed
look at the discoveries from 1995-1998 at the actual site in Punjab describes the
comprehensive evidence for aEarly Harappan Ravi Phase dating to 3300 BCE. Another 90
slide section covers excavations in 2000-2001. It includes an essay on the early
development of Indus arts and technologies. Another section explores the mysterious socalled granary and circular platforms at Harappa. A fifth 90 slide section covers further
evidence for the Ravi and Kot Diji phases at the site. A 72 slide series bySharri
Clark [Harvard University] looks at ancient Indus figurines discovered in
Harappa. There is also a 103 introduction and image series on Mohenjo
Daro, the best known ancient Indus site in Sindh, southern Pakistan.
Another 600 slides and essays by a number of other leading scholars of the
ancient Indus civilization in India, Pakistan, Europe and America are part of this
Website. Many more new facts and theories will be published here in the
coming years, for we are only at the beginning of what are likely to be a long
series of exciting future discoveries in the Indus and Saraswati river basin.