What is Harappa History?

Wheat and six-row barley were grown; field peas, mustard, sesame, and a few date stones have also been found, as well as some of the earliest known traces of cotton. Domesticated animals included dogs and cats, humped and shorthorn cattle, domestic fowl, and possibly pigs, camels, and buffalo.

The Asian elephant probably was also domesticated, and its ivory tusks were freely used. Minerals, unavailable from the alluvial plain, were sometimes brought in from far afield. Gold was imported from southern India or Afghanistan, silver and copper from Afghanistan or northwestern India (present-day Rajasthan state), lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, turquoise from Iran (Persia), and a jadelike fuchsite from southern India.

Although such similarities have given rise to arguments for the existence of a standardized system of urban layout and planning, the similarities are largely due to the presence of a semi-orthogonal type of civic layout, and a comparison of the layouts of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa shows that they are in fact, arranged in a quite dissimilar fashion.

The weights and measures of the Indus Valley Civilization, on the other hand, were highly standardized, and conform to a set scale of gradations

Perhaps the best-known artifacts of the Indus civilization are a number of small seals, generally made of steatite (a form of talc), which are distinctive in kind and unique in quality, depicting a wide variety of animals, both real—such as elephants, tigers, rhinoceros, and antelopes—and fantastic, often composite creatures. Sometimes human forms are included.

Distinctive seals were used, among other applications, perhaps for identification of property and shipment of goods. Although copper and bronze were in use, iron was not yet employed.

A few examples of Indus stone sculpture have also been found, usually small and representing humans or gods. There are great numbers of small terra-cotta figures of animals and humans.

How and when the civilization came to an end remains uncertain. In fact, no uniform ending need be postulated for a culture so widely distributed. But the end of Mohenjo-daro is known and was dramatic and sudden.

"Cotton was woven and dyed for clothing; wheat, rice, and a variety of vegetables and fruits were cultivated; and a number of animals, including the humped bull, were domesticated," as well as "fowl for fighting".

Mohenjo-daro was attacked toward the middle of the 2nd millennium BCE by raiders who swept over the city and then passed on, leaving the dead lying where they fell. Who the attackers were is matter for conjecture.

Wheel-made pottery—some of it adorned with animal and geometric motifs—has been found in profusion at all the major Indus sites. A centralized administration for each city, though not the whole civilization, has been inferred from the revealed cultural uniformity; however, it remains uncertain whether authority lay with a commercial oligarchy.

In terms of geographic area, Indus Valley Civilization was the largest among the four ancient civilizations of the world namely, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and China. Its area was 1,260,000 square kilometres. It was spread over India, Pakistan, Afghanistan etc.

The episode would appear to be consistent in time and place with the earlier invaders from the north (formerly called Aryans) into the Indus region as reflected in the older books of the Rigveda, in which the newcomers are represented as attacking the “walled cities” or “citadels” of the aboriginal peoples and the invaders’ war-god Indra as rending forts “as age consumes a garment.

Harappans had many trade routes along the Indus River that went as far as the Persian Gulf, Mesopotamia, and Egypt. Some of the most valuable things traded were carnelian and lapis lazuli.

However, one thing is clear: the city was already in an advanced stage of economic and social decline before it received the coup de grâce.

This civilization extended from Ghaggar-Hakra River Valley in the east to Makran coast of Balochistan in the west, from Afghanistan in the northeastern to Daimabad in Maharashtra in the south. In today’s map, if it were a country, it would rank 22nd in term of size between Niger and Angola

What is clear is that Harappan society was not entirely peaceful, with the human skeletal remains demonstrating some of the highest rates of injury (15.5%) found in South Asian prehistory

Over 1,056 Harappan cities and settlements had been found, of which 96 have been excavated. They are mostly located in the broad regions of the Indus and Ghaggar-Hakra Rivers and their tributaries. Dholavaria, Rakhigarhi, Lothal, Kalibangan are some of the famous urban cities apart from Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro.

Deep floods had more than once submerged large tracts of it.

Paleopathological analysis demonstrated that leprosy and tuberculosis were present at Harappa, with the highest prevalence of both disease and trauma present in the skeletons from Area G (an ossuary located south-east of the city walls)

Furthermore, rates of cranio-facial trauma and infection increased through time demonstrating that the civilization collapsed amid illness and injury.

Houses had become increasingly shoddy in construction and showed signs of overcrowding.

Archaeologists believe that majority of the population of Indus Valley Civilization lived in villages. Unfortunately, archaeologists are having tough time finding the conditions and culture and society in which they lived because of absence of any proper evidence. Their residences, archaeologists assume, were made of mud or wood which gets damaged easily and hence no trace.

The bioarchaeologists who examined the remains have suggested that the combined evidence for differences in mortuary treatment and epidemiology indicate that some individuals and communities at Harappa were excluded from access to basic resources like health and safety, a basic feature of hierarchical societies worldwide.

The first settlements discovered were along the banks of river Indus, so the archaeologist called them ‘Indus Valley Civilization.‘ However, contrary to its name only about 100 sites are found along the Indus and its tributaries. While over 500 sites are discovered along Gaggar-Hakra River (which is believed to be the long-lost river, Saraswati).