A presentation helpful for the students of the Plus two classes in the cbse stream

1. THE INDUS VALLEY
CIVILISATION
- THE SHADOW OF A LOST EMPIRE
Presented by:
A.ABDUL SHUMZ,
kv kanjikode.

2. Where Is It?

3. The Era of The Land called Harappa
• The Indus Valley Civilization was
a Bronze Age civilization (3300–1300
BCE)
• The Harappan era can be plotted across
three time zones:
• Early Harappan Culture : 3300-2600 BCE
• Mature Harappan Culture : 2600-1900 BCE
• Late Harappan Culture : 1900-1300 BCE

4. The Discovery

5. The first explorers of the enigmatic empire
Proclaimed as the Father of Indian
Archaeology .
1st Director –General of the ASI
 Started his excavation in mid-nineteenth
century
 Mainly interested in texts and
inscription
left by Chinese Buddhist pilgrims
 Procured a Harappan seal-failed to
realize its importance
 Believed that Indian history began with
the first cities in the Ganga valley.
ALEXANDER CUNNINGHAM

6. JOHN MARSHALL
Another renowned Director General
of ASI of pre-independent India.
He announced the discovery of the
Indus Valley Civilization to the world
He excavated along horizontal units
measured uniformly throughout the
mound ignoring the stratigraphy of
the site.
This costed the archaeologists tons
of valuable information on the time
period of the artifacts discovered.

7. R. E. M. WHEELER
In 1944, he took over as the
Director General of ASI.
He re-organized excavations and
re-established various facts and
findings and corrected some of
the blenders of his predecessors
He excavated and studied many
areas of the civilization including
the granaries of Mohenjo-Daro.

8. The Harappan Way of Life
• The Harappan Civilisation being the earliest city state
empire was inhabited by one of the most learned and skilled
people of that era.
• Their way of life varied from that of a common peasant to
a highly skilled craftsmen and artisan. Their structures
ranged from burnt brick houses to mighty citadels.
• Their life was so rich, that even understanding them is an
art. So in order to make an attempt, we categorize their
life into five spheres:
• Organisation
• Political
• Social
• Economical
• Ritual

9. The Architecture and Town Planning
of Indus Valley Civilization

10. The Architecture and Urbanization of
Harappa
The most unique feature of the civilization was the
development of urban centres.
The settlement is divided into two sections – one
smaller but higher section – ‘the citadel’ and the
other larger but lower – ‘the lower town’.
Both ‘Citadel’ & ‘Lower Town’ were walled.
Platforms served as foundation for several building
and housed all the building activities within the city in
fixed area.
The bricks used were of standardized ratio- length
and breadth were four times and twice the height
respectively.

11. The citadels of the Harappan Civilization

12. The Citadel
The citadel housed special features which includes
the grannery and the great bath.
The warehouse, a massive structure of which the
lower brick portions remain, while the upper portions
probably of wood,decayed long ago.
The GREAT BATH was large rectangular tank in a
courtyard surrounded by a corridor on all four side.
There were two flights of steps on the north and
south leading into the tank which was made water
tight by setting bricks on the edge using a mortar of
gypsm.
There were rooms on three side in one oh which was a
large well.

13. Water from the flowed into a huge drain.
Across a lane to the north lay a smaller building with
eight bathrooms, four on each side of a corridor, with
drains from each bathroom connecting to a drain that
ran along the corridor.
The great bath was probably used for ritual purpose.
Similar DRAIN arrangements were found in the
domestic architecture also.
The drains and the streets were laid out in an
approximate grid pattern intersecting at right angle.

14. The Great Bath at Mohenjo-aro

15. Domestic Architecture
Studies indicate that streets with drains were laid out
first and then houses built along them.
Domestic waste water had to flow into the street
drains, every house is needed to have at least one wall
along the street.
Many residential buildings were centered with
courtyard with rooms on all sides.
Courtyard was probably the centre of activities such as
cooking and weaving, particularly during hot and dry
weather.
Concerns for Privacy:
There are no windows in the walls along the ground
level.
The main entrance does not give a direct view of the
interior or the courtyard.

16. Each and every house had its own bathroom paved
with bricks, with drains connected through the wall
to the street drains.
Some house have remains of staircases to reach a
second storey or the roof.
Many houses had wells, often in a room that could be
reached from the outside and perhaps used by the
passers by.

17. The Signatures of the forgotten era - Seals

18. The Harappan society
 There aren’t any substantial evidences to showcase
the different social cadre of the Indus people.
 One of the strategies used by archaeologist is to
excavate the burials.
 Few marked differences were:
Some were laid in mud pits while a few in brick
cased pits.
Some with copper mirrors while others with
pots, jewels, sometimes with jasper artifact-a
semi precious stone.
 It indicates the belief in afterlife.
 However there was no luxuries burials like that of
Egypt.

19.  Another strategy was to study the artefacts.
 these artefacts were divided into luxuries and
utilitarian.
 Utilitarian were daily use articles
 One way to distinguish the different class was with
the help of the material its made off--- sone nodules,
whole shells, copper ore, faience etc.
 A certain distinctive artefacts were considered as
luxury –this include canister believed to be prefume
bottles etc.
 Beads were made of different materials such as
carnelian, jasper, steatite, shell etc
 Thus all these contributed to the classification of
people yo different cadre.

21. Toys and Games of the Pre-historic
Indian Era

22. The Harappan Political structure
• There is a great ambiguity about it political system.
• A few suggestions that have been made about its
political scenario are:
• There was a single state,
given the similarity in artifacts, the evidence
for planned settlements, the standardized ratio
of brick size, and the establishment of
settlements near sources of raw material.
• There was no single ruler but several:
Mohenjo-Daro had a separate ruler, Harappa
another, and so forth.
• Harappan society had no rulers, and everybody
enjoyed equal status.
• Suggestion of the existence of a Priest-king.

23. The Priest-King of the Harappa

24. Harappan trade economy

25. The Harappan economy
 Evidences indicate the practice of agriculture.
 Agricultural crops include wheat, barley, lentil,
chickpea, sesame and millets.
 Evidences such as bones and miniatures indicates the
practice of animal husbandry-cattle, sheep, goat,
buffalo, pig.
Crop rotation was practiced.
 Evidences of long distance trading has been traced.
 It had integrating connection with Mesopotamia,
southern Turkmenistan, northern Iran, Central
Asia, portions of Afghanistan, the coastal regions
of Persia, northern and western India and
sometimes even to Crete and possibly to Egypt

26.  The trade was well established due to the use of
wheeled carts and sail boats.
 The Indus people traded by both sea and land routes.
 they sealed the export packages with their seal for
security purpose.
There aren't any marked economical difference
amongst people of the civilization.

27. Tools of their Trade

28. The Remnants of the Bygone Age-The
Harappan Artifacts
• Crafts of the Indus valley included pottery
making, dyeing, metal working in bronze, and bead
making.

29. Sculptory at Harappan Era

30. The Harappan Fashion Jewellery

31. Discoveries that led to revelations about
Harappan Craft
• Chanhudaro – tiny settlement exclusively devoted to
-> bead-making
-> shell-cutting
-> metal-working
-> seal-making and
-> weight-making.
• Area of Chanhudaro = < 7 hectares
• Other important craft production centers were
* Lothal
* Dholavira
* Nageshwar
* Balakot

32. The Un-deciphered text and the
Unspoken tongue
Between 400 and as many as 600 distinct Indus
symbols have been found on seals, small tablets,
ceramic pots and more than a dozen other materials,
including a "signboard" that apparently once hung
over the gate of the inner citadel of the Indus city
of Dholavira.

33. Evidences suggest that the script was written from
right to left.
Typical Indus inscription are no more than four or five
characters.
The longest on a single surface, which is less than 1
inch, is 17 signs long; the longest found on three
different faces of a mass-produced object has a length
of 26 symbols.
the Indus Valley Civilization is generally characterized
as a literate society on the evidence of these
inscriptions.
Farmer, Sproat and Witzel challenged the description
of the Indus people’s literacy status in 2004.

34. They argued that the Indus system did not encode language,
but was instead similar to a variety of non-linguistic sign
systems used extensively in the Near East and other societies.
Others have claimed on occasion that the symbols were
exclusively used for economic transactions, but this claim
leaves unexplained with the appearance of Indus symbols on
many ritual objects, many of which were mass-produced
in moulds. No parallels to these mass-produced inscriptions are
known in any other early ancient civilizations.
In 2009 study by P. N. Rao et al. published in Science,
computer scientists, comparing the pattern of symbols to
various linguistic scripts and non-linguistic systems, including
DNA and a computer programming language, found that the
Indus script's pattern is closer to that of spoken words,
supporting the hypothesis that it codes for an as-yet-unknown
language.

35. The Undeciphered script….

36. The Impact of the Harappan Civilization
on the world history
• The unveiling of the harappan civilization changed the
very fiber of historical understanding.
• It made the world correct so many of its established
facts like:
• the existence of the first cities
• Script of the earliest written languages.
• Discovery of mining and alloying process
• The establishment and connectivity of early trade
• The intricacy and skill in craftsmanship in the BCs
• And all of these advancements and rich culture
present in the pre-historic northern India which
according to the popular belief was not so.

37. The legacy of the lost Empire
The influence of Harappan culture sprawled in varying
degree in it aftermath.
Burials of the Harappa have been found correspond
to a regional culture called the Cemetery H Culture.
This cemetery H culture have evidences of cremation
in early stages which is seen in the Hinduism later.
The Ochre Coloured Pottery culture expanded from
Rajasthan into the Gangetic plain.

38. Buttons made of seashells, of different geometrical
shapes were used by these people as ornaments as
well as in clothing.
Ivory rulers were found in Indus valley civilization
marked by accurate decimal units.
Stepwells were the greatest legacy left to us by
Indus people.---- evidence suggest that Buddhist and
Jains adopted this wells for ritual purpose.
They were early practioners of mining, alloying and
processing which are indicated by the presence of
materials like copper, bronze, steatite, lapis lazuli,
carnelian, terracotta etc,.

39. Findings suggests that they were the first people to
adorn themselves in cotton clothes and distinguished
jewellery.
The IVC may have been the first civilization to use
wheeled transport.

40. Into the Oblivion…

41. The Apocalyptic Disappearance of the
Indus Valley Civilization
Since there is no clear evidence indicating how and when
the Harappan civilization came to an end, many
apocalyptic theories were suggested by the explorers
like:
Emigration of people from Harappan sites such as
Cholistan etc as evidences suggest population expansion
in the areas of Gujarat, Haryana and west U.P. in the
same period.
Transformation material culture in the place where
settlement continued to sustain.
Another set of explanations deals with natural calamities
such as climatic change, deforestation, excessive floods,
shifting or drying up of rivers, overuse of landscape,
earthquake.

42. Another explanation put forth by historians is that a
strong unifying element came into existence ending the
Harappan state.
This is evidenced by the disappearance of seals, the
script, distinctive beads and pottery, abandoning of
standardized weight system and cities.
The other possibility for its disappearance is foreign
invasion as 16 skeletons of people were found dead in
the same part of Mohenjo-Daro in 1925, fractured
skeletons and skulls were found in a narrow alley by
John Marshall(1931).
R.E.M. Wheeler tried to correlate these archaeological
evidences with Rigveda and found similar records
indicating a massacre.
Though all these suggest the possible ends of the
civilization the truth still remains buried deep beneath
the sandy banks of the Indus.

43. Conclusions from the Epic Journey
It is seen that many modern practices and
process owe their roots to the Harappan
civilization…
One among the most advanced
civilizations of the world……
But it still remains a Mystery to the
world……….

44. presentation
• reference:
• NCERT text book
• www.harappa.com
• www.wikipedia.com
• Related articles and scripts.

45. Thank You
Pl mail ur suggestions 2:
abdul.shumz@gmail.com