Who Was When

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Indus Valley Civilisation

South AsiaHeartland today: Pakistan and India

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Meanwhile…

Along the Indus and its tributaries, the Harappans built grid-planned cities with brick drains and standardised weights, and wrote on seals in a script nobody has yet read. Their towns emptied after about 1900 BCE.

Also alive at the same time

Key events

  1. Harappa, Mohenjo-daro and Dholavira flourish as planned cities laid out on grids
  2. Indus settlements spread from Baluchistan to the Rajasthan desert and south to the Gulf of Kutch
  3. – Cities are built of uniform fired bricks and served by terracotta sewers
  4. – Thousands of steatite seals carry an Indus script that has never been deciphered

    What the signs say, and which language they write, is unknown. Claims of decipherment have not won agreement.

  5. – Indus traders exchange goods with the Persian Gulf and Mesopotamia, where Indus objects are found
  6. – The cities empty out as the monsoon weakens and monsoon-fed rivers dry or run only in seasonDisputed

    The cause is argued. Giosan and colleagues tie the decline to a weaker monsoon that left the monsoon-fed rivers dry or seasonal. Reference works also list flooding, earthquakes and trade loss. The older idea of an Aryan invasion is no longer accepted.