On September 20 1924, a London newspaper published a momentous article—announcing the discovery of the “civilisation of the Indus Valley.” A century later, we still can’t agree on who these early Indians were. Aryan or Dravidian? Vedic or not? Here’s the first part of our guide to a civilisation that is familiar to every Indian—and yet entirely mysterious.
Editor’s note: This is the first part of our series on the Indus Valley Civilisation. You can read part two here.
Indus Valley Civilisation: Origin story
Until the 1920s, archeologists believed there were only two ancient civilisations in Asia: Egyptian and Mesopotamian. Then two Indian researchers separately stumbled upon similar objects—in separate locations. Daya Ram Sahni first excavated Harappa in 1921-22—uncovering seals, painted pottery, and beads. In 1922, Rakhal Das Banerji started excavating Mohenjo-daro—and uncovered his own trove of artefacts. The two digs were 640 km apart.
Enter John Marshall: The Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) was struck by the similarity of their finds—especially the stone seals. They suggested the existence of a singular civilisation—that didn’t resemble any other known Indian artefact. A conclusion Marshall shared in that legendary article in the Illustrated London News:
Of all these antiquities the most valuable are the stone seals, not only because they are inscribed with legends in an unknown pictographic script, but because the figures engraved on them, and the style of the engraving, are different from anything of the kind hitherto met with in Indian art… The animals engraved on them are in some instances bulls; in others, unicorns: but it is to be observed that neither the Indian humped bull nor the water-buffalo occurs among them.
FYI: Those Harappan unicorn seals looked like this:
Why the discovery was huge: Until the discovery of Harappa, there was a great gap between the first stone age implements discovered on the subcontinent and the third century BCE Mauryas. In fact, historians assumed there had been no human settlements until the Maurya empire. As archaeologist Vasant Shinde describes it: “The discovery of the Harappan civilisation filled the so-called gap and pushed back in one stroke the antiquity of the settled life in this part of the world by more than 3,000 years.”
A valley of splendours—and equals?
The geography: Marshall’s findings would form the basis of what archaeologists came to describe as the Harappan civilisation—named after the first city to be excavated by Sahni. In fact, the Indus Valley Civilization is spread across 2,000 sites over 1.5 million sq km in India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. These five are the biggest: Mohenjo-daro, Harappa, Ganweriwala—now in Pakistan—and Rakhigarhi and Dholavira in India. In all, there are 1,500 sites in India—in Gujarat, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh.
The map looks like this:
The three phases: It is widely accepted that Mehrgarh—in Balochistan, Pakistan—is the birthplace of the Indus Valley Civilisation—which began around 7000 BCE. Its span is divided into three phases: The early pastoral phase (3200 BCE to 2600 BCE), the mature urban period (2600 BCE to 1900 BCE), and the late phase of decline (1900 BCE to 1500 BCE).
But, but, but: A 2016 paper found evidence that the IVC may be even more ancient—at least 8,000 years old—with some settlements as old as 9,500 years. This would make it even older than the Mesopotamian or Egyptian civilisations.
Valley of wonders: At their peak, Harappan cities represented what we today would call the ‘First World’:
At the apogee of its prosperity, it was a “technological powerhouse” that excelled in town planning, harvesting water, building reservoirs, stadia, warehouses, underground sullage systems, massive fortification walls and building seafaring boats, fabricating bronze and copper artefacts, and in making beads, exquisite painted pottery, and terracotta products.
The dancing girl below gets most of the attention:
But we’re pretty fond of this cart:
And here’s a lovely image from a diorama of the Indus Valley Civilisation—from the Science & Technology Heritage of India gallery in Kolkata:
Harappa & the world: Discovery of the Harappans also uncovered their maritime contacts with Sumerians in Mesopotamia—who referred to their land as “Meluha”:
Indus seals were found both in Iraq, where the ancient Sumer civilisation flourished, and in the Persian Gulf. The Sumers apparently called India “Meluha”, and their inscriptions talk of how they purchased beads of various kinds, timber, copper, gold and ivory crafts from India. It was evident that the goods were upmarket and purchased by the Sumer royalty. Indus sailors appear to have discovered the trade winds long before Hippolus, and their maritime interests were vast.
On a more ironic note, we seem to have done a far better job of storing our grain back then—in great granaries for wheat, barley, rice, pulses—and more notably cotton. It was first cultivated in India—and IVC exported cotton garments to the middle east. You can see some of those 45 X 45 metre warehouses below:
Where are the palaces? The Harappans did not build vast or grandiose monuments—unlike their contemporaries in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Their cities were uniquely egalitarian, as John Marshall noted:
There is nothing that we know of in prehistoric Egypt or Mesopotamia or anywhere else in Western Asia to compare with the well-built baths and commodious houses of the citizens of Mohenjo-daro. In those countries, much money and thought were lavished on the building of magnificent temples for the gods and on palaces and tombs of kings, but the rest of the people seemingly had to content themselves with insignificant dwellings of mud. In the Indus Valley, the picture is reversed, and the finest structures are those erected for the convenience of the citizens.
Why this matters: It disproves the widely held theory that complex urban societies require strict hierarchies–controlled by a powerful elite. As archaeologist Adam S. Green writes, “The Indus civilization was perhaps the world’s most egalitarian early complex society, defying long-held presumptions about the relationships between urbanisation and inequality in the past.”
Something to see: These are the remains of a great public bath in Mohenjo-daro, for example:
The bottomline: In part two—which you can read here—we take on the fiercely contested–and political question: Who were the Harappans? A battle made all the more complicated (and absurd) by the fact that we can’t even read their damn script.
Reading List
The Hindu has the best coverage on the IVC—but a lot of it is behind a paywall. We recommend Indian Express’ colourful essay on its discovery. The most comprehensive archive of research material is available over at Harappa.com. Adam Green’s research paper on the IVC’s shocking lack of palaces is a bit nerdy—but an eye-opening read. New Indian Express looks at Harappa through the lens of ancient Tamil texts. You can read the second part of this Big Story here.
