Until just over 100 years ago, nothing was known about one of the largest and most technologically advanced civilizations of its time.
Archaeologists and anthropologists are still puzzled by this mysterious ancient civilization that was bigger than Egypt
The Egyptians left behind monumental structures adorned with hieroglyphs, which thanks to the Rosetta Stone, we were finally able to begin deciphering about 200 years ago. Likewise, for just about as long we’ve been able to read about the Mesopotamian civilization thanks to cuneiform tablets they left behind.
However, there was a contemporary of these two great early civilizations that we know almost nothing about. As a matter of fact, we didn’t even really know it existed until the 1920s when the first sites were excavated.
What has been discovered about the Indus Valley Civilization, or the Harappan civilization, has been both fascinating and puzzling. We don’t know what they called themselves as we haven’t been able to translate their writing, which is why this culture remains such a mystery.
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The great civilization that still puzzles researchers
The Harappan civilization covered much of modern-day Pakistan, as well as parts of Afghanistan and India in the general region of the Indus River and its tributaries. At its height between 2600 BCE and 1900 BCE, it was composed of hundreds of settlements and cities, which had complex urban designs and shared common units of weights and measures, and cultural artifacts.
They used fire-baked bricks for construction, that were of similar size across the whole of the civilization’s range. The cities were laid out on a grid format and even had sewage systems.
All of this points to an organized system of governance. However, so far no evidence has been uncovered of a king or a priestly caste, most urban dwellers were artisans and merchants. The buildings are relatively uniform in the cities, which lacked monumental architecture like palaces and temples. The largest structures appear to be granaries and possibly a public bathing house and social area in the city of Mohenjo-daro.
Although their cities were protected by walls and had fortifications, it also appears that they didn’t have any standing armies. One theory is that the walls that helped protect the urban centers from flooding also served as a deterrent from military conflict.
The Indus Valley Civilization disappears almost without a trace
It is not truly known what caused the decline of the Harappan civilization. While there is some evidence of extreme violence perhaps from an invading group of people from the north. Climate change, excessive flooding or rivers going dry, or a shifting of the course of the rivers added to the decline of this mysterious civilization. Archaeological evidence shows that most Harappan settlements had been abandoned by 1700 BCE.
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