Ancient Man and His First Civilizations

Indus Valley civilization

Mohenjo-daro, Harappa and other cities. (modern Pakistan)

Sometime around 6,000 B.C. a nomadic herding people, who some now think to be Dravidians, settled into villages in the Mountainous region just west of the Indus River. There they grew barley and wheat, harvesting it using sickles with flint blades. They lived in small houses built with adobe bricks. After about 5000 B.C. the climate in their region changed, bringing more rainfall, which apparently enabled them to grow more food, for they grew in population. They began domesticating sheep, goats and cows and then water buffalo.

Then after 4000 B.C. they began to trade with distant areas in central Asia and areas west of the Khyber Pass. They also began using bronze and other metals. In time the total area of the Indus civilization, became larger than that of the old kingdom of Egypt. Their cities were characterized by buildings of elaborate architecture, constructed of fired brick, with sewage systems and paved streets.

Those wishing to pursue an understanding of the Human Journey, and Specifics of the ancient East African migrations, which led to Modern Man's colonization of the entire world; please visit the National Geographic – Genographic Project – Atlas of the Human Journey. Though as one would expect, when it comes to European and Anatolian (Turkey) settlement, it is not only inaccurate, it is downright Racist. But what would you expect?  https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/atlas.html

Typical of these large planned cities, is Mohenjo-daro, which along with it's great buildings, had city streets laid out in a grid. The city is thought to have housed roughly 50,000 people, and had a granary, baths, assembly halls and towers. The city was divided into two parts, west of the city there stood a citadel surround by a wall.

This citadel appears to have been a religious center. The Citadel included an elaborate tank or bath, created with fine quality brickwork and sewer drains, this area was then surrounded by a verandah. Also located here was a giant granary, a large residential structure, and at least two aisled assembly halls. To the east of the citadel was the lower city, laid out in a grid pattern.

The streets were straight and were drained to keep the area sanitary. Mohenjo-Daro had a building with an underground furnace and dressing rooms, suggesting bathing was done in heated pools - as in modern day Hindu temples. The people of the city used very little stone in their construction. They preferred bricks, two types of bricks mainly - fired bricks, and wood bricks - which were created by using burnt wood ash.

They used timber to create the flat roofs of their buildings, there are brick stairways leading to the roofs of many houses, suggesting that roofs were used as recreational areas - as in early Anatolia. Houses were of various sizes, some were small, and others were large with interior courtyards and indoor bathrooms. Several craftsman workshops have been found, such as metalworking, carpentry, and shell-working.

Defensively Mohenjo-daro was not a well fortified city, it did not have city walls, but it did have towers to the west of the main settlement, and some defensive fortifications to the south. These fortifications taken into consideration, as well as a comparison to the Harappa ruins to the northeast, lead to the conclusion that perhaps Mohenjo-daro was an administrative center.

The people of Mohenjo-Daro, Harappa and the other cities, shared a sophisticated system of weights and measures, used arithmetic with decimals, and had a written language that was partly phonetic and partly ideographic. The Indus people also utilized seals for signatures and pictorial presentation, as did the people to the northwest in Elam and Sumer. The Indus valley people carried on active trade relations with the middle-east in gold, copper utensils, lapis lazuli, ivory, beads and semiprecious stones.

The Indus religion was animistic, they used the Unicorn, cattle, elephants and other animals to represent their gods. They are seemingly the originators of the Unicorn, {the exact meaning of a horned Horse is unknown}. The Indus seals are amulets addressed to the gods and were worn on the body.

In the Seal below, we have a depiction of the Deity (in this case Maal/Mal) as a Unicorn, and then the votive inscription was written above the Deity (in Harappan script).

The manger, under the head of Maal is made up of several Indus signs. It reads Puu-i- Paa, or " A flourishing Condition, Thou distribute it".

Sometime between 1,800 and 1,700 B.C. Civilization on the Indus Plain all but vanished. What befell these people is unknown. One suspected cause is a shift in the Indus River, another is a huge ruinous Earthquake, still another is monumental flooding of the rivers. Flooding that would explain the thick layers of silt, thirty feet above the level of the river at the site of Mohenjo-Daro. Of course these are only unsubstantiated theories, no one knows what really caused the people to leave. Later, people of a different culture inhabited some of the abandoned cities, in what archaeologists call a "squatter period."

Then the squatters also disappeared: Careful note should be made, that only the people and culture of the valley vanished. The Indus Valley civilization was the largest of its time and covered a vast territory. It effectively extended north to the Himalayas and east to what is now Vietnam. But because of the Arian invasion or migration, whichever, subsequent Indus history was lost.

Additionally, we should keep in mind that the Arian's were illiterate nomads, {the Rig Veda was written 600 years after they had arrived}, so whomever it was that kept civilization alive in India, during the convulsive period, it couldn't have been them. Surviving remnants of the Indus valley people in Southeast Asia, will be dealt with later.

Knowledge of the Mohenjo-Daro civilization died, until archaeologists discovered evidence of the civilization in the twentieth century. As to where these people went, no one knows for sure. Some believe that they went to southern India, some surely did.

But one guess is that many of the Indus Valley people went back to the north, into Elam and Sumer to re-join their former group. This scenario would explain the somewhat “sudden” appearance of the Medes and Persians in Elam, as well as other, similar groups in eastern Anatolia.