[FONT=tahoma, arial][FONT=tahoma, arial]
The earliest known Southern Asian civilization, flourishing c.2300- 1750 BC across 1.1 million km2 / ½ million mi.2 around the Indus in Pakistan. Over 100 sites have been identified with important urban centers at Mohenjo-daro and Harappa (Pakistan), and Kalibangan and Lothal (Western India). There were uniform principles of urban planning, with streets set out in a grid pattern and public drainage systems. Weights and measures were standardized, and there was widespread trade with Western Asia. A common writing system was used, which remains undeciphered. Great granaries on citadel mounts suggest the existence of priest-kings or a priestly oligarchy. There is no firm explanation for the decline of the civilization. These first excavations at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro produced inscribed seals, painted pottery and other artifacts that matched nothing previously known from India. The Indus civilization received intense investigation over the next twenty years. This first generation of work revealed the nature of the mature Indus civilization in a way that emphasized its cultural uniformity: notably burnt brick architecture and town layouts composed of distinct and physically separated citadel and residential quarters. At Harappa, exposed an impressive defensive wall, some 9 meters (30 feet) high and 14 meters (46 feet) wide at the base. The great walls of the citadel emerged for the first time in their majesty as picks cut through the blocking debris, The historical character of the Indus civilization was changing and developing. At Mohenjo-daro - better preserved than Harappa - the buildings of the citadel were erected on a massive mud brick platform 6 meters (20 feet) high that covered 8 hectares (20 acres). The structures included a large, ventilated granary, a 3-meter (10-feet) deep asphalt-lined pool, the so-called Great Bath, probably used for ritual purification, and a complex of rooms that was interpreted as priests quarters. Extending over 100 hectares (250 acres), the lower town of Mohenjo- daro was laid out along a regular grid of major streets up to 9 meters (30 feet) wide around blocks of residential apartments and narrow lanes. The individual residential units, formed around courtyarRAB, contained from one to dozens of rooms, with staircases leading to the roof or upper stories. In some quarters, workshops belonging to potters, shell bangle cutters, bead-makers, smiths and other craftsmen were interspersed among the houses. The regularity of Mohenjo-daro's street layout and the residential architecture, sophisticated latrines, storage facilities and other municipal works gave the impression of town planning and indeed of a regimented society. Indus artifacts, both large and small, also seemed to be uniform: painted pottery, chipped stone and metal tools, steatite seals and other inscribed objects seemed to be identical across the Sind and the Punjab. Religion, moreover, seemed to be the central source of political authority in a society ruled by priest-kings. Struck by works of art that seemed to echo beliefs familiar from contemporary India, Marshall asserted that taken as a whole, their religion is so characteristically Indian as hardly to be distinguishable from still living Hinduism or at least from that aspect of it which is bound up with animism and the cults of Siva and the mother goddess - still the most potent forces in popular religion. Indian independence and Partition in 1947 left most of the Harappan culture area in Muslim Pakistan, a circumstance that encouraged Indian archaeologists to explore more modest Harappan sites to the south and east of Sind and the Punjab. Excavations in the 1950s at sites in Gujarat exposed considerable sections of these Harappan settlements, including a large tank at the site of Lothal on the Gulf of Carabay that the excavator interpreted as a docking area for sea-going ships. At numerous sites in the Ganges drainage around Delhi parallel investigations also revealed an eastward extension of Harappan civilization. Later settlements shrank to village size, and lost many of the most advanced Harappan characteristics, such as the use of writing, weights and seals, and sophisticated art. Although the settlements themselves were small villages of farmers and artisans, local pottery in both Gujarat and the Delhi area had clearly developed from the Harappan painted style, implying a continuation of Indus traditions. Although confined to the second millennium BC, the Iron Age cultures of northern India emerged from these faded descendants of Harappan civilization, so forging a link between the Bronze Age cities of the Indus and the Indian cities of the time of the Buddha that was investigated more than a century before. It is this chain that helps validate the suggestion, made by Marshall and others, that many traditional aspects of Indian culture already existed in the civilization of the Indus valley in the third millennium BC. Harappa A prehistoric city on the dried-up course of the R Ravi in the Pakistani Punjab, 800 km / 500 mi. South of Islamabad, occupied 2300-1750 BC. Its 20 m / 65 ft high mound with a circuit of 5 km / 3 mi. was discovered in 1826, and excavated from 1921. To the West is a massive, walled citadel of molded mudbrick; to the E a residential lower city with a rectangular street grid. Its houses were provided with drains, washrooms, and latrines. Its ancient population nurabered c.25 000. Mohenjo-daro is a prehistoric walled city on the R Indus, in Sind, Pakistan, 320 km / 200 mi. north-east of Karachi; a world heritage site. Occupied c.2300-1750 BC and excavateRABince 1922, it covered 100 ha / 250 acres and held an ancient population of 30-40 000. Its two mounRAB have buildings entirely of mudbrick. To the West , there is a citadel encircled by a 13 m / 42 ft-high erabankment containing civic, religious, and administrative buildings (notably the 3 m / 10 ft-deep Great Bath for ritual bathing). To the East , there is a regularly planned lower city of two-storied houses for the bulk of the population.
WorRAB: 946 [/FONT][/FONT]
The earliest known Southern Asian civilization, flourishing c.2300- 1750 BC across 1.1 million km2 / ½ million mi.2 around the Indus in Pakistan. Over 100 sites have been identified with important urban centers at Mohenjo-daro and Harappa (Pakistan), and Kalibangan and Lothal (Western India). There were uniform principles of urban planning, with streets set out in a grid pattern and public drainage systems. Weights and measures were standardized, and there was widespread trade with Western Asia. A common writing system was used, which remains undeciphered. Great granaries on citadel mounts suggest the existence of priest-kings or a priestly oligarchy. There is no firm explanation for the decline of the civilization. These first excavations at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro produced inscribed seals, painted pottery and other artifacts that matched nothing previously known from India. The Indus civilization received intense investigation over the next twenty years. This first generation of work revealed the nature of the mature Indus civilization in a way that emphasized its cultural uniformity: notably burnt brick architecture and town layouts composed of distinct and physically separated citadel and residential quarters. At Harappa, exposed an impressive defensive wall, some 9 meters (30 feet) high and 14 meters (46 feet) wide at the base. The great walls of the citadel emerged for the first time in their majesty as picks cut through the blocking debris, The historical character of the Indus civilization was changing and developing. At Mohenjo-daro - better preserved than Harappa - the buildings of the citadel were erected on a massive mud brick platform 6 meters (20 feet) high that covered 8 hectares (20 acres). The structures included a large, ventilated granary, a 3-meter (10-feet) deep asphalt-lined pool, the so-called Great Bath, probably used for ritual purification, and a complex of rooms that was interpreted as priests quarters. Extending over 100 hectares (250 acres), the lower town of Mohenjo- daro was laid out along a regular grid of major streets up to 9 meters (30 feet) wide around blocks of residential apartments and narrow lanes. The individual residential units, formed around courtyarRAB, contained from one to dozens of rooms, with staircases leading to the roof or upper stories. In some quarters, workshops belonging to potters, shell bangle cutters, bead-makers, smiths and other craftsmen were interspersed among the houses. The regularity of Mohenjo-daro's street layout and the residential architecture, sophisticated latrines, storage facilities and other municipal works gave the impression of town planning and indeed of a regimented society. Indus artifacts, both large and small, also seemed to be uniform: painted pottery, chipped stone and metal tools, steatite seals and other inscribed objects seemed to be identical across the Sind and the Punjab. Religion, moreover, seemed to be the central source of political authority in a society ruled by priest-kings. Struck by works of art that seemed to echo beliefs familiar from contemporary India, Marshall asserted that taken as a whole, their religion is so characteristically Indian as hardly to be distinguishable from still living Hinduism or at least from that aspect of it which is bound up with animism and the cults of Siva and the mother goddess - still the most potent forces in popular religion. Indian independence and Partition in 1947 left most of the Harappan culture area in Muslim Pakistan, a circumstance that encouraged Indian archaeologists to explore more modest Harappan sites to the south and east of Sind and the Punjab. Excavations in the 1950s at sites in Gujarat exposed considerable sections of these Harappan settlements, including a large tank at the site of Lothal on the Gulf of Carabay that the excavator interpreted as a docking area for sea-going ships. At numerous sites in the Ganges drainage around Delhi parallel investigations also revealed an eastward extension of Harappan civilization. Later settlements shrank to village size, and lost many of the most advanced Harappan characteristics, such as the use of writing, weights and seals, and sophisticated art. Although the settlements themselves were small villages of farmers and artisans, local pottery in both Gujarat and the Delhi area had clearly developed from the Harappan painted style, implying a continuation of Indus traditions. Although confined to the second millennium BC, the Iron Age cultures of northern India emerged from these faded descendants of Harappan civilization, so forging a link between the Bronze Age cities of the Indus and the Indian cities of the time of the Buddha that was investigated more than a century before. It is this chain that helps validate the suggestion, made by Marshall and others, that many traditional aspects of Indian culture already existed in the civilization of the Indus valley in the third millennium BC. Harappa A prehistoric city on the dried-up course of the R Ravi in the Pakistani Punjab, 800 km / 500 mi. South of Islamabad, occupied 2300-1750 BC. Its 20 m / 65 ft high mound with a circuit of 5 km / 3 mi. was discovered in 1826, and excavated from 1921. To the West is a massive, walled citadel of molded mudbrick; to the E a residential lower city with a rectangular street grid. Its houses were provided with drains, washrooms, and latrines. Its ancient population nurabered c.25 000. Mohenjo-daro is a prehistoric walled city on the R Indus, in Sind, Pakistan, 320 km / 200 mi. north-east of Karachi; a world heritage site. Occupied c.2300-1750 BC and excavateRABince 1922, it covered 100 ha / 250 acres and held an ancient population of 30-40 000. Its two mounRAB have buildings entirely of mudbrick. To the West , there is a citadel encircled by a 13 m / 42 ft-high erabankment containing civic, religious, and administrative buildings (notably the 3 m / 10 ft-deep Great Bath for ritual bathing). To the East , there is a regularly planned lower city of two-storied houses for the bulk of the population.
WorRAB: 946 [/FONT][/FONT]