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The Forgotten History of the Harappan Civilization
An overview of the Harappan civilization of the Indus plains: its cities, farming, crafts and society, and what archaeologists still debate about its people.
Persia and Asia
The Harappan culture of the Indus plains and the Vedic traditions that came after.
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An overview of the Harappan civilization of the Indus plains: its cities, farming, crafts and society, and what archaeologists still debate about its people.
How excavations at Harappa from 1921 and Mohenjo-Daro from 1922 revealed the Indus civilization, and how later surveys have widened the picture since.
The Mature Harappan phase, about 2600-1900 BCE: standard bricks and weights, planned cities, how it grew from early villages and gave way to late communities.
The Vedas and Upanishads: what the texts contain, how they were memorised and passed on orally, and how their ideas shaped later Indian thought.
The undeciphered Indus script: what survives on seals and other objects, what the signs might represent, and why no claimed decipherment has been proven.
Harappan trade with Mesopotamia, where the Indus region was called Meluhha: the textual clues, seals, carnelian beads, Gulf links and the port of Lothal.
How the Vedic period is dated, what separates its early and later phases, and why its relationship to the Harappans and to migration theories remains unsettled.
How the Harappans vanished from memory for millennia and how archaeologists recovered them, from railway-era finds to Mehrgarh, DNA and modern conservation.
A timeline of the Indus Valley civilization from early farming villages to urban peak and dispersal, with the main proposed causes of change and their limits.
The main open questions about the Indus Valley civilization, from language and rulers to religion and drainage, and the evidence each side relies on.
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