Ancient civilizations are basically around the rise of the Great River Basin, such as the Sumerian civilization in the Two Rivers Valley, the ancient Egyptian civilization in the Nile River Basin, the ancient Indian civilization in the Indus Valley, the Chinese civilization in the Yellow River Basin, etc. Today we want to talk about the ancient Indus River civilization, not the current India, there is no continuity between the current India and the ancient Indian civilization, and there is a fault in the middle.
Like all other ancient civilizations, the Indus civilization was predominantly an agricultural civilization, with wheat and barley as the main crops. In addition to this, the local population also grows purple-flowered peas, melons, sesame seeds, dates and cotton, and the Indus Valley was the first to weave cotton. At the same time, they also had considerable trade relations with the outside world, exporting goods such as peacocks, apes, pearls, cotton products, copper, ivory, and ivory products such as combs.
Most of their trade was with Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia refers to the Two Rivers Valley, where iraq and Iran are located today. Their cargo was transported along the coast by sailing ships to the Persian Gulf. Interestingly, they were clever: if sailors couldn't see the coast while driving, they released crows, because crows always flew to the nearest coast. What's even more interesting is that according to the Bible, this method was used when Noah was driving an ark in the ancient Flood, hoping to find land.
However, in 1500 AD, during the Ming Dynasty on the mainland, the Aryan invasion directly led to the decline of the Indus civilization. It has also been suggested that this civilization may actually have been submerged in mud. It is the volcanic activity underground that causes a large amount of mud, silt and sand to rush to the ground, blocking the channel of the Indus River, and the river cannot flow away, forming a large lake, flooding the capital of Mohenjo Daro, and the Indus Civilization has declined.
Emergence of the Indus Valley civilization:
The ancient Indus Valley civilization reached its heyday around 2500 BC, and relatively speaking, the ancient Indus Valley civilization is a conservative civilization with strong religious overtones and a high degree of planning. According to the archaeological excavations now known, the ruins of various cities found in the Indus Valley covered an area of about 15-18 square kilometers in their heyday, and the layout of the city was in the shape of a lattice, with wide main roads surrounding rectangular blocks, each block about 380 meters long and about 200 meters wide, much larger than the usual blocks of modern cities.
Ancient Egyptian buildings were made of stone, Mesopotamian buildings were made of sun-dried bricks, in the Indus Valley these cities were built of bricks fired in kilns, the key is that the bricks used in all the ancient city ruins found in the Indus Valley now are only two standard sizes. One is 11x5.5x2.5 inches and the other is 9.2x4.5x2.2 inches, which shows that the weights and measures used by ancient civilizations throughout the Indus Valley were also uniform, and this methodical and uniform planning spread throughout the Indus Valley civilization area.
Before the discovery of the great Indus civilization, the ancient history of the Indian subcontinent was shrouded in legends of clouds and mist. In 1921 and 1922, archaeologists Sani and Banaji presided over excavations at the sites of Haraba and Mohenzo Darrow, respectively. The two sites are located in the Haraba region of the Indus Valley, dating from about 2600 BC to 1750 BC (also said to be 1500 BC). The civilization extends from the foothills of the Himalayas in the north to the lower Nabatay River in the south, near Delhi in the east, and to southwestern Pakistan in the west.
The two largest cities in the archaeological excavations, Haraba and Mohenzo Darrow, are located 600 kilometers apart, with an area of about 2.6 million square meters and a population of more than 40,000. A large number of seals have been excavated from the site. The site indicates that the Bronze Age has entered, and the people have mastered the processing technology of gold, silver, tin, lead and other metals. There are a small number of texts in the ruins, but they have not yet been deciphered.
The site contains residential and industrial and commercial areas, as well as huge public baths. There are wells near the baths, as well as drainage ditches. There are also barns and administrative institutions nearby. The streets of the urban area are straight and intersect vertically. There are also many lampposts, sewers on the streets. The distribution of the buildings is extremely detailed. Commerce was more developed, with gold imported from South India, silver imported from Afghanistan and Iran, and copper from Baloch. Trade with the Two Rivers Basin began. Textiles and pottery were two important handicraft sectors at the time.
At that time, people planted wheat, barley, beans and so on. Fruits such as dates are the food that people drink every day. Cattle, sheep, pigs, poultry, etc. are also cultivated, while dogs and donkeys are also domesticated.
After 1750 BC, the Haraba civilization gradually withered away. There are many theories about the reasons for the disappearance: there are theories of the invasion and destruction of the Indo-European nomads from the north through the Hindu Kush Pass, the theory of the diversion of the Indus River, the theory of the outbreak of the ancient plague, and the sensational theory of the explosion of nuclear weapons from ancient times, etc., there is still no definite conclusion. Generally speaking, people believe that the Aryan invasion from Central Asia led to the destruction of the Harappan civilization.
Ruins of the Arabba civilization
After the decline of the Harappan civilization, India entered the "Dark Ages", the writing disappeared, the cities were annihilated, production regressed, the economy was depressed, and the Indus civilization, which had been brilliant for more than 500 years, gradually became unknown. The saddest thing about the ancient Indian civilization is that the Darobids who created it did not have the habit of revision of history, and the Halaba civilization relied on almost exclusively archaeological excavations. Research on the ancient civilizations of India began in the 19th century and culminated in the 20th century.
The "Vedic civilization" laid the foundation of Indian civilization. After a brief period of "darkness," groups of Aryans pouring into the South Asian subcontinent from the northwest became the masters of the land. After 1750 BC, the Aryans, who traveled south through Central Asia Afghanistan, first entered the Indus and upper Ganges rivers, then entered the Ganges River basin and settled down, wreaking havoc and massacres during the invasion, destroying 90 castles on the Indus and upper Ganges rivers alone. The Aryans of that time lived a primitive tribal life of half farming and half pastoralism, apparently lagging behind the Indus civilization. Around 900 BC, aryan society underwent major changes, with iron replacing bronze, wheat, barley, and rice cultivation becoming more common, livestock breeding increasing, social clan organization changing, and presbyterian councils and councils emerging. During the reign of the Aryans, the caste system in India gradually took shape.
Ancient India
The caste system, also known as the Varna system, is one of the most prominent features of ancient Indian society and a cancer hindering India's development. The caste system began in vedic times. As a result of the Aryan invasion, the original indigenous population was reduced to the bottom of society (the bottom was the Untouchables). The caste system originally consisted of only two layers: Aryan Varna and Dasa Varna. Later it evolved into four layers from top to bottom: Brahmins, Shaktiris, Vedas and Sudras. Brahmins belonged to the highest level of religious monks, followed by the noble kings and warriors, again the Vedas including merchants and craftsmen, and finally the Sudras were descendants of the conquered people, engaged in agriculture, animal husbandry and handicrafts, and the most humble.
The Aryans used to be polytheistic, but later the various beliefs were fused and absorbed into each other to form Brahmanism, which advocated that all things are nothing and ultimately belonged to Brahma, and also advocated the theory of causality. Religious ceremonies are mostly sacrificed, and even the phenomenon of human sacrifice appears.
The caste system brought about inequalities in the legal status of religions among the people of Indian society, with brahmins, Kshatriyas, and Vedas known as the regeneration tribes, while the Shudras were called the lifetimes and could not share religious rituals with the former. The position is hereditary, the father is the lowly Shudra, and the children can only be Shudra. Religion deified this system. The caste system has always hindered the progress of Indian society and has not been completely eliminated in modern times.
Continuation and characteristics of ancient Indian civilization:
The ancient civilization of the Indus Valley, which is now discovered, has been basically in a static and continuous development trend for 1000 years since its development and maturity in 2500 BC, and during this 1000 years, whenever the city is devastated by floods, the reconstructed city is built according to the previous scale pattern, and this consistent and traditional continuity has never appeared in other civilizations, so there is a hypothesis that appears:" Control of this disciplined society may depend on a spiritual force", a hypothesis that archaeologists have not found military equipment and fortifications that may be able to test this hypothesis.
The ancient Indus River civilization, like the ancient Chinese civilization, is mainly an agricultural civilization, the main crops are wheat and barley, and others also grow peas, melons, cotton, etc. The ancient Indus River Basin is also the earliest area to weave cotton. Their foreign trade was mainly with the Mesopotamian civilization, and the goods were carried along the coastline by sailing ships to the Persian Gulf for trade.
In fact, so far, as to why the ancient Indus Valley civilization terminated the fault line, the academic community is not very clear, now recognized is that in 1500 BC due to the aryan invasion led to the decline of the civilization, the caste system brought by the Aryans also continued to today's India, but according to the Moshammed left. Darrow's ancient city research shows that the end of civilization is most likely the cause of the flood, the ancient Indus Valley due to the activity of underground volcanoes caused a large amount of mud to gush out of the ground, blocking the indus river channel, forming a barrage lake, and eventually the lake collapsed and flooded the ancient city, after several decades, the embankment that blocked the river was destroyed, the river channel was restored, the ancient city was rebuilt, and then blocked and submerged and rebuilt, and the cycle began, from the opposite mosso left. Judging by the layers of sediment piled up at the ruins of the ancient city of Dhara, this disaster occurred at least five times or more, eventually leading to the end of civilization.
However, these are all inferences, after all, the current archaeological community has not yet understood the meaning of the hieroglyphs found in the ancient Indus Valley civilization, so it can only rely on the continuous efforts of later generations to study and hope to gain something.
The Indus civilization turned out to be a highly developed urban civilization
Ruins of the city of Mohenzodaro
Ruins of the city of Harappa
Of these monuments, the ruins of the two major cities of Harappa and Možodaro are the most famous. The two cities adopted similar architectural methods, the city was large in scale, strictly followed a unified format, and was obviously accurately measured when it was built, and even the shape and size of the bricks of the building had certain specifications, which showed that the construction of the city at that time had a careful plan. The main street of the city of Mohinzodaro is straight, about 3.12 meters wide, the houses are made of bricks, and it is interesting that the households built along the street do not have doors or windows to open to the street, and the doors and windows of the residents are open to the alley, which may be for anti-theft, but more likely for flood control and drainage, because the terrain of the alley is slightly higher, and the street is getting lower and lower from the resident to the street. The dwellings of city dwellers are sturdy and beautiful, which is unique in ancient cities.
Ancient Egypt and the civilization of the Two Rivers Valley spent all their financial resources on the construction of temples, palaces, and tombs, and the houses of ordinary people were simple and small. The buildings of the general residents in the Indus civilization are very regular, the houses are made of bricks, each house is arranged along the street, each street is intersected at a right angle, forming a four-square urban structure, although the size of each house is different, but it is a single-family courtyard building, the houses of the city, both two small rooms, there are also very spacious houses, each house is built with thick brick walls, the living rooms are also separated, and the houses are usually multi-storey buildings.
Each family has a set of wells, bathrooms, toilets, sewers, and the sewers of each family are connected to each other and flow into the septic tanks underground. It is surprising that the drainage system of the Indus Civilization is so complete. This discovery sets the Indus civilization apart from other ancient civilizations in the world.
Considering that many rural areas in the world do not yet have such equipment, I wonder what happened to the Indus civilization that had this advanced equipment 5,000 years ago?
Even more exaggerated are the large bathing places
A bathing place in the ruins of Mohenzodaro
The bathroom at the site of Mohinzodaro is rectangular, 55 meters long, 33 meters wide, 2.4 meters thick in the outer wall, surrounded by corridors and rooms, and in the center is a huge bath, 12 meters long, 7 meters wide and about 2.4 meters deep, much like a modern competition swimming pool, with stairs at both ends for easy access. Experts speculate that this is likely to be a public bathing place for religious purposes. The water comes from a well in a nearby house, and the bathing water is discharged by a huge sewer, which is supported by a masonry roof and is about 1.8 meters high, in which people can walk. The large bathroom has survived nearly 5,000 years, indicating that its construction is very strong.
Mohenzodaro Ruins High Platform
Harappa Ruins High Platform
Both Mohindaro and Harappa had artificially built long oval platforms on the west side of the city, 9 to 15 meters high, 360 meters long, and 180 meters wide, surrounded by walls with defensive holes in the walls and public buildings in the middle. Below the outer walls of the city there is a city, about a square mile in size, which may have been a fortress to protect the city. Indus rivers often flood, cities are often buried in silt, and after each flood, almost exactly the same city is built in the same place, on top of the buried city. In Mohinzodaro, a multi-layered city was discovered from above ground to underground. Although it took 800 years from 2500 BC to 1700 BC, the way the city's main buildings were built was exactly the same.
Judging from the relics of the city, barley and wheat were the main food of the residents at that time, they also ate flax, beans, dates and coconut fruits, etc., and at that time people also ate the meat of birds and animals obtained from hunting, and knew how to fish or fish with fishing nets. The livestock raised were cattle, sheep, elephants, camels, cattle were mainly used for military service, but also used to pull two-wheeled vehicles, which inferred that a considerable part of the population at that time was engaged in agriculture and animal husbandry.
Various seals that have not been cracked so far
Let's have a stamp with an animal motif
Stamps with various symbols
The ruins of the Indus City have unearthed a large number of seals inscribed with various motifs. There are many patterns on the Indus seal, there are swastika patterns, there are cross patterns, there are Bodhi trees, and there are all kinds of animal patterns, what are these seals used for? People's views are different, there are two views that are representative, the first view is that these seals are used for commerce, because the Indus Seal was also found in the Two Rivers Valley, when people speculated that merchants traded with distant countries, then used these seals to mark goods, and there is also a view that these seals are personal amulets, mainly used to worship gods and ward off evil spirits.
The text in the Indus civilization has not been deciphered
The text engraved on the seal
The Indus civilization ranged from the southern foothills of the Himalayas in the north to the Nabada River in the south, from the Mokran coast of Iran in the west to the edge of the Ganges Plain in the east. The cities of Indus have used writing, which are mainly engraved on seals. So far, the total number of seals with inscriptions and pictures unearthed so far is more than 2500, and there are 419 written symbols, of which 62 are basic symbols. This shows that the inhabitants of the time used the same script, these characters have the characteristics of hieroglyphs, the text symbols are generally composed of lines, the font is clear, each text is generally composed of two or more symbols, some symbols represent conceptual meaning and numbers, some symbols represent syllables, and short strokes on them indicate accents. The inscription is short, generally five to six symbols, no more than 26, mostly on a single line, from right to left.
Since the discovery of the Indus script, there have been researchers who claim to have interpreted the Indus script, but most of them are unreliable, of which the more reliable is a Czech scholar named Khrozny, who claims to have deciphered 125 script symbols, he believes that the Indus script is similar to the Hittite hieroglyphs of ancient Asia Minor, a large number of absorption of sumerian culture and Iranian culture characteristics, based on this as a clue to try interpretation, and inferred that the people who created the Indus culture belong to the Indo-European national system.
Rao, an Indian scholar, said he had identified nearly 500 inscriptions from 1,800 seals. He believes that the script, which originally consisted of 62 basic symbols, including a mixture of graphics, later evolved into 22, which is a phonetic script that transitions from phonetic script to alphabetic script. He believes that the Halapan script belongs to the pre-Aryan language of the Old Indo-European language family and has a great influence on the later Vedic Sanskrit language. However, some scholars have put forward different views, most scholars led by archaeologist John Marshall believe that the language of the Indus civilization belongs to the Dravidian language, and some scholars believe that it belongs to the Munda language. The Indus script is simply the only script inscribed on the seal. Since no other corroborating material has been found, the Indus script has not yet been interpreted.
What language do Indus people speak?
Texts written in the Indus script have not yet been deciphered
There is quite a bit of debate about the language of the Indus people. After the decline of the Indus civilization, Sanskrit became the lingua franca of the various regions of the Indus civilization. But there is no evidence of what language the Indus speaks.
Archaeologists have found several seals emblazoned with the Indus script from India, Pakistan, Iran and Iraq. An analysis of 3700 stamps revealed a total of 417 different symbols, with an average of 5 symbols and a maximum of 26 symbols.
Some archaeologists believe that the script is a precursor to the Brahmi language, a script used in India in classical times. Linguists have not reached a consensus that the Indus script is an early form of Brahmi.
We don't know what language the Indus people speak. Although there are some indications that they speak the original Dravidian language, the results are far from conclusive. Both the Indian scholar Asko Parpola and the linguist Igawatham Mahadevan endorsed the linguistic concept of the original Dravidian language.
Other scholars believe that the Indus language may be a linguistic isolation, like Sumerian. This means that the language is not derived from or associated with any other language.
We may have lost the Indus language. Although there is hope. Deciphering the script may unravel the mysteries of the language spoken by the Indus people.
Although we don't know much about the language of the Indus people, the abundance of artifacts allows us to better understand their religious beliefs. Or is there something more than what you see in front of you?
What is the religion of the Indus people?
Female figures of terracotta warriors of the Indus Valley civilization
Indians have practiced different religions since vedic times. But unlike other Bronze Age civilizations with well-known gods, the religion of the Indus is the subject of speculation.
Archaeologists have unearthed several female statues in towns in the Indus Valley. We often interpret them as gods of fertility, which, according to historian Upinder Singh, is an oversimplification of complex societies.
Many of the figurines may not be religious. They come in many forms and sizes and represent different women. Some have big belly and wear heavy jewelry, while others have slender waists. Very few women also wear headscarves or headdresses. Some were nude and some wore skirt-like clothing.
Historians believe that many of the figurines are ancient forms of shakambari, the goddess of the earth.
The Pashupati seal represents the early form of Shiva
One of the most interesting representations is the seal, which shows a man with horns on his head sitting in a yoga pose. Archaeologists believe the man was Pashupati or a master animal. Pashupati is an early version of the Hindu god Shiva.
The so-called Priest-King of Mohenjo-daro is perhaps the most famous artifact in the Indus Valley. The image depicts a man with a short beard, headband, armband, and a robe draped over his shoulders. We will never know if he is a priest or a king or a priest king.
Bull man seals fight wild beasts. Maybe Enchidu?
Has the Indus culture been influenced by outsiders? The image of a cattleman on a seal resembles the famous Enchidu in the epic of Gilgamesh, a Sumerian story about the legendary Uruk king Gilgamesh. There is no such figure as Enchidu in Indian mythology.
We don't know if this half-cow, half-human creature represents any religion. But perhaps the Mesopotamian civilization had an impact through trade.
As we know, Hinduism may have developed from the religion and Vedic traditions of the Indus people. After the decline of the major cities of civilization, there is evidence of a mixture between the Indus and the Vedics.
In the absence of conclusive evidence, these theories are mostly speculative. Although it is possible for the inhabitants of the Indus To follow an ancient form of Hinduism, it is difficult to draw conclusions with confidence.
The great civilization of the Indus Valley has left us with more unsolved mysteries than any other Bronze Age civilization. So far, we have only scratched the surface of this glorious civilization of the Indian subcontinent.
Finally, let's talk about 5 interesting facts about the Indus civilization:
The first record was left by British Army soldiers
Records of the Indus Valley civilization first appear in a book by James Lewis. Lewis was a soldier in the East India Company who, while leaving the army on a trip to Punjab, saw the remains of an ancient civilization in a small town called Harappa.
In 1872, British soldiers tore down the ruins and used bricks from houses to build the foundations needed for the railway. The Harappan civilization remained buried until 1920, at the suggestion of John Marshall, director of the Harappa Institute of Archaeology in India.
The Harappan civilization is the largest of the four civilizations
Excavations of the Indus Valley civilization sites have not stopped, and by 1999, 1,056 cities and tribes had been excavated.
The Harappan civilization thrived in basins of two major rivers: the Indus River and the Saraswati River, covering India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and other regions. The era of harappa civilization is not yet known, but according to a study published in the journal Nature, experts now believe that harappa civilization is 8,000 years old, 2,500 years older than previously thought.
The Indus Valley cities were masterpieces of engineering at the time
The level of architectural planning of the Indus Valley cities, represented by Harappa, was unparalleled in ancient times.
In order to protect the city from seasonal flooding and polluted waters, the city's settlements are built on huge elevated land, and the city streets are arranged in a straight line, directly tangential, and exceptionally orderly. In addition to this, the buildings along the road are all built with bricks of uniform size.
It has a more advanced health system than many modern cities
The indus valley civilization has the world's first known urban sanitation system, and all houses are equipped with toilets, baths, and sewers that drain into larger public drains that eventually deposit fertile silt on surrounding farmland. Most houses have a private source and have a sophisticated water management system. All of this illustrates the importance of sanitation in the Harappan civilization and their extraordinary skills in water conservancy engineering.
The people of the Indus Valley pioneered metallurgical technology
The people of the Indus Valley pioneered metallurgical techniques and produced copper, copper, lead and tin. One of the most famous artifacts of the Indus Valley is a bronze statue of a standing girl called "Dancing Girl of Mohenjo-Daro", known as "the most fascinating work of art on the Indus". The statue has many ornaments, and her left arm is almost completely obscured by a bracelet.
In many parts of India, there is already a custom of wearing many bracelets. The Indus Valley civilization pioneered new techniques of handicrafts including seal carvings, and its famous Pashupati seal depicts a sitting posture surrounded by animals. Some experts believe it is an incarnation of the Hindu god Shiva, calling it Pashpati or the "King of Animals," but this remains a matter of debate.