Harappa and Mohenjo-daro

Examples of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro in the following topics:

• The Indus River Valley Civilization

  • Harappa and Mohenjo-daro were thought to be the two great cities of the Indus Valley Civilization, emerging around 2600 BCE along the Indus River Valley in the Sindh and Punjab provinces of Pakistan.
  • The discoveries of Harappa, and the site of its fellow Indus city Mohenjo-daro, were the culmination of work beginning in 1861 with the founding of the Archaeological Survey of India in the British Raj, the common name for British imperial rule over the Indian subcontinent from 1858 through 1947.
  • The city spread over 150 hectares (370 acres) and had fortified administrative and religious centers of the same type used in Mohenjo-daro.
  • Mohenjo-daro was abandoned around 1900 BCE when the Indus Civilization went into sudden decline.
  • The Great Bath at Mohenjo-daro, a city in the Indus River Valley Civilization.

• Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization

  • These cities include Harappa, Ganeriwala, and Mohenjo-daro in modern-day Pakistan, and Dholavira, Kalibangan, Rakhigarhi, Rupar, and Lothal in modern-day India.
  • Harappa, Mohenjo-daro, and the recently, partially-excavated Rakhigarhi demonstrate the world's first known urban sanitation systems.
  • The city of Mohenjo-daro contains the "Great Bath," which may have been a large, public bathing and social area.
  • The extraordinary uniformity of Harappan artifacts is evident in pottery, seals, weights, and bricks with standardized sizes and weights, suggesting some form of authority and governance.
  • The second theory posits that there was no single ruler, but a number of them representing each of the urban centers, including Mohenjo-daro, Harappa, and other communities.

• Harappan Culture

  • Harappa and Mohenjo-daro were the two great cities of the Indus Valley Civilization, emerging around 2600 BCE along the Indus River Valley in the Sindh and Punjab provinces of Pakistan.
  • A collection of written texts on clay and stone tablets unearthed at Harappa, which have been carbon dated 3300-3200 BCE, contain trident-shaped, plant-like markings.
  • One seal from Mohenjo-daro shows a half-human, half-buffalo monster attacking a tiger.
  • This seal was excavated in Mohenjo-daro and depicts a seated and possibly ithyphallic figure, surrounded by animals.
  • Miniature Votive Images or Toy Models from Harappa, c. 2500 BCE

• Indus Valley Civilization

  • Situated around the Indus River and the Ghaggar-Hakra River, the Indus Valley civilization is also known as the Harappan civilization, named after Harappa, the first city to be excavated in the 1920s.
  • Inhabitants of the ancient Indus Valley developed new and notable techniques in handicraft, metallurgy, trade and transportation, systems of measurement, and urban planning.
  • To date, over 1,052 cities and settlements have been found in the general area of the rivers and their tributaries, with the major ones being Harappa, Mohenjo-Daro, Dholavira, Rupar, Lothal, and Kalibangan.
  • Discovered at Mohenjo-daro, this seal depicts a seated, horned figure surrounded by animals, who is commonly interpreted to be Pashupati, the "Lord of Cattle."
  • A small 4500-year-old bronze statuette of a dancing girl was excavated in Mohenjo-daro in 1926.

• Disappearance of the Indus Valley Civilization

  • The civilization eventually disappeared along with its two great cities, Mohenjo-daro and Harappa.
  • Harappa lends its name to the Indus Valley people because it was the civilization’s first city to be discovered by modern archaeologists.
  • Writing began to disappear and the standardized weights and measures used for trade and taxation fell out of use.
  • Wheeler, who was Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India from 1944 to 1948, posited that many unburied corpses found in the top levels of the Mohenjo-daro archaeological site were victims of war.
  • The monsoons that came to the Indus River Valley aided the growth of agricultural surpluses, which supported the development of cities, such as Harappa.

• The Earliest Cities

  • Early cities arose in a number of regions, and are thought to have developed for reasons of agricultural productivity and economic scale.
  • Among the early Old World cities, one of the largest was Mohenjo-daro, located in the Indus Valley (present-day Pakistan); it existed from about 2600 BCE, and had a population of 50,000 or more.
  • In the ancient Americas, the earliest cities were built in the Andes and Mesoamerica, and flourished between the 30th century BCE and the 18th century BCE.
  • Examples include Alexandria and Antioch of the Hellenistic civilization, Carthage, and ancient Rome and its eastern successor, Constantinople (later Istanbul).
  • A good environment includes clean water and a favorable climate for growing crops and agriculture.

• The Indo-Aryan Migration and the Vedic Period

  • Foreigners from the north are believed to have migrated to India and settled in the Indus Valley and Ganges Plain from 1800-1500 BCE.
  • He based his conclusions on the remains of unburied corpses found in the top levels of the archaeological site of Mohenjo-daro, one of the great cities of the Indus Valley Civilization, whom he said were victims of war.
  • The Indo-Aryans also preserved collections of religious and literary works by memorizing and reciting them, and handing them down from one generation to the next in their sacred language, Sanskrit.
  • The Rigveda, which was likely composed during this time, contains several mythological and poetical accounts of the origins of the world, hymns praising the gods, and ancient prayers for life and prosperity.
  • The Indo-Aryans cultivated wheat, rice and barley and implemented new crafts, such as carpentry, leather work, tanning, pottery, jewelry crafting, textile dying, and wine making.