One civilization, many cities
The Indus civilization, also called the Harappan civilization after its first-identified site, was one of the great early urban societies of the ancient world. Its Mature Harappan phase is usually dated to roughly 2600-1900 BCE. At its height it covered a very large area of what is now Pakistan and north-western India, reaching from the foothills of Baluchistan to the Gujarat coast and up into the Himalayan foothills. Archaeologists have recorded well over a thousand settlements, most of them small villages, with only a handful of large cities.
It is worth saying early what is and is not known. Many of these cities are remarkably well documented: their street plans, brick sizes, drains and workshops have been mapped. But the people’s own writing, found on stamp seals and pottery, has not been deciphered, so we know no kings’ names, no city names, and none of their myths or laws. Almost everything said about their society is inferred from buildings and objects, and should be read as interpretation.
The big cities
Five or six sites are usually described as the major urban centres, and each had its own character.
- Harappa, in the Punjab province of Pakistan, was the first site recognised and gave the civilization its name. It has several mounds, large brick-built platforms and extensive craft areas.
- Mohenjo-Daro, in Sindh, is the best preserved and most famous, with a raised citadel and a gridded lower town. Its monuments are covered in separate articles.
- Dholavira, on the island of Khadir in Gujarat, is notable for its stone construction and a sophisticated system of reservoirs and channels for collecting seasonal water. It was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2021.
- Rakhigarhi, in Haryana, is among the largest known Indus sites by area, though estimates of its size vary with how the surrounding mounds are counted.
- Ganweriwala, in the Cholistan desert, is known mainly from survey rather than extensive excavation.
- Lothal, in Gujarat, is a smaller town associated with bead making and with trade by sea.
City populations are uncertain. Figures for Mohenjo-Daro are often given in the tens of thousands, but they depend on assumptions about how densely houses were occupied, and scholars do not agree on a single number.
What the cities share
What makes these places a single civilization, rather than separate towns, is a repeated set of habits, many of them visible across hundreds of kilometres.
Standard bricks. Fired and mud bricks were often made in a consistent proportion, commonly given as 1:2:4 for thickness, width and length. The same ratio appears at sites far apart, which suggests shared building knowledge.
Planned streets. Larger cities show main streets running roughly in cardinal directions, with narrower lanes between blocks. This was not identical everywhere, but the overall impression is of deliberate layout rather than organic growth.
Drainage and water. Many houses had bathing areas connected to brick-lined drains in the street, and wells were common. Few other Bronze Age cities show comparable attention to household sanitation.
A raised, walled area. Most large sites have a higher section, often called the citadel, and a larger lower town. The citadel was usually separated by walls or platforms, but whether it held rulers, priests or storage is debated. Nothing resembling an obvious palace or royal tomb has been identified, which is unusual when compared with the Mesopotamian civilization to the west.
Standard weights. Small cubical stone weights, in a series that increases in regular steps, turn up across the region. They point to shared ideas of measurement, and the study of ancient weights measures across early states shows how such standards typically supported trade and tax.
Craft and trade
The Indus towns produced carnelian and agate beads, shell bangles, copper and bronze tools, fine pottery and cotton textiles. Craft areas have been found at Harappa, Chanhudaro and Lothal, among others. Raw materials came from a wide area: marine shell from the coast, copper from Rajasthan and Oman, lapis lazuli from Afghanistan and other stones from different highland sources.
Indus seals and beads have been found in Mesopotamia and in the Gulf. Cuneiform texts mention a land called Meluhha, and many scholars connect it with the Indus region, although the identification is an inference. The Meluhha trade links remain a useful but not fully certain bridge between the Indus world and its western neighbours. Unlike Mesopotamian cuneiform writing, which survives in huge archives, the Indus written record is only short inscriptions, usually of a few signs, which is a main reason the Indus script debate continues.
Different kinds of power
Because no palaces or royal inscriptions are known, scholars have proposed different models of authority: a priestly elite, merchant communities, a loose federation of cities, or several local rulers sharing a common culture. None is firmly established. What the evidence does show is a society able to organise large building projects, standardise goods, and maintain trade, without the monumental royal display seen in Egypt or Sumer.
From mature cities to a dispersed countryside
From about 1900 BCE the big cities declined, and some were abandoned over the following centuries. This was not a single catastrophe, and people did not vanish: the Late Harappan period shows continuing villages, especially to the east and south. The reasons are still debated, and the Indus rise and fall is discussed in more detail elsewhere on this site.
Why it matters
The Indus cities show that planned, sanitised urban life developed independently in South Asia, in the same broad era as the earliest cities in Egypt and Mesopotamia. They also show how much remains uncertain: without readable texts, archaeology has to answer questions of rule, belief and language, and that makes every new excavation, survey and analysis important.