A civilization lost to memory, then recovered
The Harappan civilization, also called the Indus civilization or Indus Valley civilization, was a Bronze Age urban culture that spread across what is now Pakistan and northwest India. Its cities were at their height from about 2600 to 1900 BCE. “Forgotten” is fair only in a narrow sense: no later South Asian tradition clearly preserves its name or story, and modern scholars did not recognise it until excavations in the 1920s. Since then it has become one of the best-studied early civilizations, although some basic questions remain open.
The culture takes its name from Harappa, in Punjab province, Pakistan, the first of its cities to be excavated. Well over a thousand settlements are known, most of them small towns and villages. By some estimates the zone covered roughly a million square kilometres, which would make it among the most extensive of the early urban societies. Its boundaries were never political frontiers that we can draw with confidence.
Land and water
The core of the civilization lay on the plains watered by the Indus and its tributaries, together with the Ghaggar-Hakra channel to the east, which today carries water only seasonally. Settlements also reached Gujarat, the Makran coast and, at Shortugai, the upper Oxus region of northern Afghanistan, a site often linked to access to lapis lazuli.
Farmers had to cope with river floods and with a monsoon that varied from year to year. The region’s mix of summer and winter rains made two cropping seasons possible in many areas, which helped support towns and cities.
Cities and towns
Five large sites are usually named: Mohenjo-Daro, Harappa, Ganweriwala, Dholavira and Rakhigarhi. Ganweriwala has seen little excavation, so what we know of it is limited. The best-known features of Indus Valley cities are a raised citadel and a lower town, streets laid out on a grid-like plan, standard baked bricks, covered drains and numerous private wells. At Mohenjo-Daro the most famous structure is the Great Bath of Mohenjo-Daro, a large brick-lined pool whose purpose, perhaps ritual bathing, is an interpretation rather than a certainty.
The cities were not identical. Dholavira, in Kutch, was built largely of stone and had an elaborate system of water reservoirs. Population estimates for the largest cities vary widely, from several thousand to tens of thousands of people, because so much of each site is unexcavated or eroded.
Farming and food
The staple crops were wheat and barley, along with peas, lentils, chickpeas and sesame. Cotton was grown, and traces of cotton thread have been recovered from Mohenjo-Daro. Rice and millets appear at some sites, particularly in the east and south. Cattle were central, including humped zebu-type animals, and the people also kept sheep and goats. Fish and wild animals added to the diet. Clay models of carts and bulls suggest that animal-drawn transport was familiar.
Crafts and technology
Indus craftworkers were skilled and often specialised. Carnelian beads were drilled and sometimes decorated with patterns, and shell bangles were cut from marine shells. Faience, a glazed material, and carved steatite seals were widely made. Pottery was shaped on the potters wheel in standard forms, often red with black painted designs. Metalworkers cast copper and bronze tools and vessels using bronze alloying and, in some cases, the lost-wax method, as in the small bronze figure known as the “dancing girl”. Stone cubes in regular weight ratios were used for trade and perhaps taxation, and similar bricks and weights turn up across great distances.
Society and rule
The Indus cities offer less obvious evidence of kings than their neighbours do. Compared with the palaces, temples and royal tombs of the contemporary Mesopotamian civilization, no building has been securely identified as a palace or a royal burial, and weapons are relatively scarce. Whether the cities were ruled by kings, councils, merchant groups or priestly elites is debated. The uniformity of bricks, weights and seals points to some form of coordination, but its nature is not understood.
Households, dress and belief
Houses in the cities were often built around a courtyard, with rooms opening onto it, and many had a bathing area connected to a street drain. Figurines in terracotta show people with elaborate hairstyles and ornaments, and small clay toys such as rattles, whistles and model animals suggest a lively domestic life. Jewellery was worn by many, as shown by the quantity of beads and bangles found even in modest houses.
Religion is hard to reconstruct. Female figurines, seals with horned figures and scenes involving trees and animals have all been given religious readings, but without texts these remain interpretations. Burials were generally simple, with pottery and some ornaments, and a surprisingly small number of graves have been found compared with the size of the cities.
Writing and contact
The civilization had its own script, found mainly on stamp seals, and it has not been deciphered. Unlike cuneiform writing, which survives in huge numbers on clay tablets, Indus inscriptions are very short, which is one reason the language behind them remains unknown. Seals, beads and weights show contact with the Gulf and Mesopotamia, where the Indus region was probably known as Meluhha.
The end of the cities
From about 1900 BCE the large cities declined, the script and standard weights went out of use, and population shifted to smaller settlements, many of them further east and south. No single cause is accepted. Changes in climate and rivers, shifts in trade and local factors have all been proposed, and Indus decline theories now usually combine several of them. Dating the sequence rests heavily on radiocarbon dating of charcoal and other organic material, together with pottery styles.
Why the Harappans matter
The Indus cities are one of the few places where urban life arose independently of the river valleys of Mesopotamia and Egypt, which makes them important for understanding how cities develop. They also show that complex societies need not follow a single pattern: the Harappans built large planned towns with comparatively little visible monumental architecture. Their craft traditions, such as bead making, shell working and pottery, continued to influence later South Asian life in ways that archaeologists are still tracing.
What remains uncertain
Much of the picture is still provisional. The language, political organisation and religion of the Harappans are all debated, and the later Vedic traditions of northern India cannot be linked to them with certainty. New excavations, scientific analysis and survey work continue to refine the account, and some of today’s confident-sounding statements will probably be revised.