Indus Civilization

The Indus Civilization, otherwise called Harappan or Indus-Sarasvati, is one of the world’s earliest urban civilizations that flourished during the entire third millennium cal BC in a few regions of South Asia. Its distribution area covers part of present-day Pakistan, broadly corresponding to the Great Indus Valley, the Gujarat, north-western India, and part of Afghanistan. Archaeologists and philologists have identified this territory with the country called Meluhha in the ancient Mesopotamian texts. Besides impressive urban centers, the Indus Civilization is characterized by a developed agricultural system based on irrigation, a highly specialized handicraft activity, including the production of luxury items, and the transoceanic maritime trade of various goods. Moreover, its standardized weighting and measure systems followed both binary and decimal arrangements. Last, but not least, another hallmark of this civilization is its still undeciphered “script.” The Indus Civilization has been considered for long a sort of poorer relative of those that developed in Mesopotamia and the Nile Valley, which started to flourish ca 1000 years before. Moreover, since it has not left behind either a richly decorated monumental architecture comparable to the pyramids, temples, and royal palaces, or largesized sculptures, or products of great artistic value, it is not surprising that until recently it did not attract that much attention or was considered by archaeologists simply a later derivation of ancient Mesopotamian influence. At present, the Indus Civilization is consi dered to represent quite an independent phenomenon whose development was very little influenced by any other culture. Furthermore, this civilization is of major interest for the study of the origin of complex human societies, since apparently it led to a distribution of wealth in a way much more equitable than those of other more or less contemporary Bronze Age civilizations.