Thread by @thewarriorpoet7

Harappan Civilization

It was British India in 1850, Charles Mason, an employee of the British East India Company, informed the authority about the mound he found around the Indus river, and over the next few decades, more odds stone seals and sculptures kept popping up.

It baffled everyone with its inscription and was never seen in written language. The founder of the Archaeological Survey of India, Alexander Cunningham, started excavating from 1853 to 1873. and it was soon discovered as a 4500-year-old civilization

a Civilization that was absent in the historical record. One of the earliest urban civilizations flourished alongside ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and ancient China around 3300-1300 BCE, give or take a few centuries but was bigger than all of them.

A Civilization that built wonders not for God or Kings but for sanitation, a Civilization without war, made up of planned cities using bricks, master of bronze sculpture.
Many famous toys were found like dancing girl and elder man sized 4-5 cm.

They created their own writing system and traded across the vast sea and invented the world's first indoor toilets, and then vanished without completely understandable reasons. It covered an area of kilometers. It had the largest population in the area in bronze age civilizations

Like almost all early civilizations, the Harappa Civilization developed around river valleys. The farmer grew a massive food surplus along the bank of the Indus and Ghaggar-Hakra Rivers. Ghaggar-Hakra may have been more productive back then as much more settlement was founded.

Since the Ghaggar-Hakra River was much more powerful in the past. Some people claim it is the lost Saraswati river of Hindu literature. Let's understand the difference between Harappa and its parallel civilization like Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt and China. They all have -

1. A strict hierarchy of classes.
2. State-monopolized use of violence
3. Power focused on individual leaders or kings or priests.
4. Centralised state-controlled economics
5. Monumental religious and political structure
6. A powerful religious institution with its own hierarchy.

But there is no evidence found of a king or priest or priest King for harappans. There are no Royal tombs or palaces, no evidence of state religion, no temples or pyramids, no sign of army weapons, enslaved persons, or powerful political capital.

Harappans were no peaceful utopia, but it seems they had no natural enemies, they seemed more interested in trade than conquest. All citizens seemed to live relatively equal life too. Rather than building temples or palaces, they focused on building public baths & sewage system.

There is no idea how the Harappan government worked, but they may have been split into many different domains governed by major Cities rather than kings. They may have village, towns, city and regional councils, which A Supreme Harappan Council oversees.

It was probably a Harappan Federation which is actually very futuristic.

Well planned city of Harappan culture tend to have three main aspects

1. Water

Water drainage and bathing held an important significance in Harappan culture. Every Harappan home had a dedicated bathroom built with a water-tight brick floor. This floor slopped through small drains cut into the house wall,

and this drain brought dirty water out of the house and into the sewage system underneath the main street and channeled water out of the city. Excavation at Harappa uncovered toilets in almost every house. They were usually big pots sunk into the floor.

Although some at Mohenjo Daro had seats, waste from the toilet was directed into the drain and out of the city or into large Jars sunk into the ground outside the house like an early septic tank. In multistoried buildings, drains were built inside or along the wall.

This bought water and waste from street-level drains.
Among all the ruins of Harappan, the great bath of Mohenjo Daro stands out, nothing like this has been found in any other city. The great bath seems to have some sort of religious significance.

It is a multi-storied building with a 2.5 M deep bathing pool in the center. The pool is made from fitted burnt bricks coated with a layer of tar, making it one of the earliest examples of waterproofing in history.

There is no idea who used great bath or why but the best can be guest as some ritual bathing.
The importance of water and bathing Speaks a lot about the dedication they put towards building such an impressive structure and other impressive feet of water control,

including the dholavira's massive 16 man-made water reservoirs that surrounded the city and made it appear to float and Lothal had an impressive dock and canal system.

2. Standardization

Large Harappan cities were usually 100 kilometers apart compared to the Mesopotamian cities, which were, on average, 20 km apart. The Harappan state maintained complete uniformity across this massive distance.

Uniformity-like standardized bricks at every single Harappan site bricks are the exact same ratio of 1:2:3. Standardization extended to unit of weight. Cubical stone weights are founded in big Harappan cities to small farming villages. Smallest weight was 0.856 G.

3. City Planning

The main street of Harappan cities, usually oriented north-south and east-west, divided the Harappan settlement into blocks. Narrow and often crooked lanes ran off the main street, so Cities were not built in the exact grid pattern.

Walls usually surrounded Harappan settlements. There were separate walled areas on a man-made Citadel. Most important buildings were here,like warehouses, granaries and the great bath at mohan jo Daro. Citadel seems to have been built as a defense against flood rather than Army.

For example, Mohenjo Daro is built on two massive mounds that raise the city above the Indus river floodplain.
700 brick line well were founded in Mohanjo Daro. Remains of bricked platforms and trees planted along streets to provide public sitting and shade are founded.

Even large jars half sunk into the ground may be used as the dustbin was founded.

Script:

Egyptian hieroglyphs and Mesopotamian cuneiform were deciphered, which gave a wealth of information about that civilization, but Harappan writing is still not deciphered.

so it remains a mystery to this day. Only short inscriptions are found on tiny stone seals. Every seal has an image, usually of an animal and an inscription. Thousand of Harappan seals are founded mostly between 3-5 cm in size. They seem to have 450 signs,

and the script is logo syllabic like Chinese or ancient Mayans. Some Scribes ran out of space on the left side, so the writing system seemed right to left. The seals could have been used like a stamp, but it seems they were more often used like an identity card.

Harappan people were mostly farmers and herders, Barley and wheat was the main crop garlic, turmeric, ginger, cumin and cinnamon was also grown. Cattle and water buffalo were the most important domesticated animals, followed by sheep and goats.

Chicken, camel and elephant may have been domesticated. Archaeological evidence suggests that dogs & cats used as pets then.

Trade:
Harappan internal trade was conducted along the huge river they controlled, and foreign trade was mostly made over the sea between 2600-1900 BCE.

It has been founded that Harappans were trading with Mesopotamia. Apart from the radiocarbon dating, seals found in Mesopotamia confirm the vast civilization of Harappa.
Around 2600-2300 BCE, Mesopotamian records mention trade done with a far-off land known as 'Meluhha.'

This was their name for Harappan.
The Mesopotamian text mentions items like lapis lazuli, gold,silver, copper, Timber, Ivory tortoiseshell, chicken, buffalo, peacock, dog, cat and monkey were imported from Meluhha. Harappan merchant seems to have been a common site in Mesopotamia

but the Mesopotamian merchant was never seem to have sailed outside the Gulf, suggesting Harappan were the better Merchant and sailor along with the fact that they were shipping bulky goods like Timber and wild animals which show they had pretty big ships.

Very few Mesopotamian artifacts appear on the Harappan site, so there is little idea of what they are trading their good for.
Located more than 1000 km from Harappa city, an isolated Harappan town, shortugai, has been found in modern-day Afghanistan.

The Harappan use shortugai to control the nearby lapis lazuli mines. This allowed them to monopolize the ancient world's supply of lapis lazuli.
But after hundreds of years of prosperity, the Harappan Civilization started to decline around 1900 BCE.

There is no evidence of massacre, battles or sieges at any Harappan sites, so Harappan didn't meet a violent end. Factors such as reduction in trade, climate change, disease, civil strife and drying up of the Ghaggar-Hakra river played a major role in the collapse.

By 1300 BCE, the entire Harappan system was gone. The memory of the Harappan Civilization, their cities, their belief, their language and their writing system disappeared under Earth until they were rediscovered 4000 years later.