Indus Valley Civilisation

The Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC) was a Bronze Age civilisation in the northwestern regions of South Asia, lasting from 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE, and in its mature form from 2600 BCE to 1900 BCE. Together with ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, it was one of three early civilisations of the Near East and South Asia, and of the three, the most widespread, its sites spanning an area stretching from today's northeast Afghanistan, through much of Pakistan, and into western and northwestern India. It flourished in the basins of the Indus River, which flows through the length of Pakistan, and along a system of perennial, mostly monsoon-fed, rivers that once coursed in the vicinity of the seasonal Ghaggar-Hakra river in northwest India and eastern Pakistan.

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H

• The Indus civilization (…) is doubly remarkable: first, because it was the only complex society of either Antiquity or the modern world, that operated without social stratification and the state; and, second, in what must be a related phenomenon, because it was an agrarian society in which the villages were not oppressed by the towns (…) In sum, Indus Civilization is by far the most egalitarian of any of the pristine Old or New World civilizations, and that by a long way and by any measure.
  • Early Civilizations of the Old World by Charles Keith Maisels p 252 Routledge, London & New York, 1999, p.252-254. Quoted in Elst, Koenraad (2018). Still no trace of an Aryan invasion: A collection on Indo-European origins.

K

• There appear to be many continuities [between the Indus and later historical cultures]. Agricultural and pastoral subsistence strategies continue, pottery manufacture does not change radically, many ornaments and luxury items continue to be produced using the same technology and styles . . . There is really no Dark Age isolating the protohistoric period from the historic period.
  • Kenoyer, J.M., ‘The Indus Civilization’, Wisconsin Academy Review, Madison, March 1987, p. 26. Quoted in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• Although the overall socioeconomic organization changed, continuities in technology, subsistence practices, settlement organization, and some regional symbols show that the indigenous population was not displaced by invading hordes of Indo-Aryan speaking people. For many years, the ‘invasions’ or ‘migrations’ of these Indo-Aryan-speaking Vedic/Aryan tribes explained the decline of the Indus civilization and the sudden rise of urbanization in the Ganga-Yamuna valley. This was based on simplistic models of culture change and an uncritical reading of Vedic texts. Current evidence does not support a pre- or proto-historic Indo-Aryan invasion of southern Asia. Instead, there was an overlap between Late Harappan and post-Harappan communities, with no biological evidence for major new populations.
  • J. M. Kenoyer: “The Indus Valley Tradition of Pakistan and Western India”, Journal of World Prehistory, 1991/4. 371, quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. page 231

W

• The great rivers, for all their beneficence, were at the same time treacherous and formidable enemies. If not constrained and directed by wise, largescale and sustained effort, they were destroyers no less than fertilizers.
  • Sir Mortimer Wheeler, Civilizations of the Indus Valley and Beyond (1966), p. 61