Harappa (;

Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu"
'' archaeological site An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology a ...

Punjab, Pakistan Punjab (; , ) is one of the four provinces of Pakistan. Located in central-eastern region of the country, Punjab is the second-largest province of Pakistan by land area and the largest province by population. It shares land borders with the ...

, about west of

Sahiwal Sahiwal ( Punjabi and ur, ), formerly known as Montgomery, is a city in Punjab, Pakistan. It is the 21st largest city of Pakistan by population and the administrative capital of both Sahiwal District and Sahiwal Division. Sahiwal is appro ...

. The

Bronze Age The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second prin ...

Harappan civilisation, now more often called the

Indus Valley Civilisation The Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC), also known as the Indus Civilisation was a Bronze Age civilisation in the northwestern regions of South Asia, lasting from 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE, and in its mature form 2600 BCE to 1900& ...

, is named after the site, which takes its name from a modern village near the former course of the

Ravi River The Ravi River () is a transboundary river crossing northwestern India and eastern Pakistan. It is one of five rivers associated with the Punjab region. Under the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960, the waters of the Ravi and two other rivers were ...

, which now runs to the north. The core of the Harappan civilization extended over a large area, from

Gujarat Gujarat (, ) is a state along the western coast of India. Its coastline of about is the longest in the country, most of which lies on the Kathiawar peninsula. Gujarat is the fifth-largest Indian state by area, covering some ; and the ninth ...

in the south, across Sindh and

Rajasthan Rajasthan (; lit. 'Land of Kings') is a state in northern India. It covers or 10.4 per cent of India's total geographical area. It is the largest Indian state by area and the seventh largest by population. It is on India's northwestern s ...

and extending into Punjab and

Haryana Haryana (; ) is an Indian state located in the northern part of the country. It was carved out of the former state of East Punjab on 1 Nov 1966 on a linguistic basis. It is ranked 21st in terms of area, with less than 1.4% () of India's land a ...

. Numerous sites have been found outside the core area, including some as far east as Uttar Pradesh and as far west as Sutkagen-dor on the Makran coast of Baluchistan, not far from Iran. The site of the ancient city contains the ruins of a

fortified city, which was part of the Harappan civilisation centred in Sindh and the

Punjab Punjab (; Punjabi: پنجاب ; ਪੰਜਾਬ ; ; also romanised as ''Panjāb'' or ''Panj-Āb'') is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, comprising a ...

, and then the

Cemetery H culture The Cemetery H culture was a Bronze Age culture in the Punjab region in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, from about 1900 BC until about 1300 BC. It is regarded as a regional form of the late phase of the Harappan (Indus Valley ...

. The city is believed to have had as many as 23,500 residents and occupied about with

clay Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4). Clays develop plasticity when wet, due to a molecular film of water surrounding the clay par ...

brick houses at its greatest extent during the Mature Harappan phase (2600 BC – 1900 BC), which is considered

large Large means of great size. Large may also refer to: Mathematics * Arbitrarily large, a phrase in mathematics * Large cardinal, a property of certain transfinite numbers * Large category, a category with a proper class of objects and morphisms ( ...

for its time. Per archaeological convention of naming a previously unknown civilisation by its first excavated site, the Indus Valley Civilisation is also called the Harappan Civilisation. The ancient city of Harappa was heavily damaged under British rule, when bricks from the ruins were used as track ballast in the construction of the Lahore–Multan Railway. The current village of Harappa is less than from the ancient site. Although modern Harappa has a legacy

railway station Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a prep ...

from the

British Raj The British Raj (; from Hindi ''rāj'': kingdom, realm, state, or empire) was the rule of the British Crown on the Indian subcontinent; * * it is also called Crown rule in India, * * * * or Direct rule in India, * Quote: "Mill, who was him ...

period, it is a small crossroads town of 15,000 people today. In 2005, a controversial amusement park scheme at the site was abandoned when builders unearthed many archaeological artefacts during the early stages of building work.

History

The Harappan Civilisation has its earliest roots in cultures such as that of

Mehrgarh Mehrgarh (; ur, ) is a Neolithic archaeological site (dated ) situated on the Kacchi Plain of Balochistan in Pakistan. It is located near the Bolan Pass, to the west of the Indus River and between the modern-day Pakistani cities of Quetta, ...

, approximately 6000 BC. The two greatest cities,

Mohenjo-daro Mohenjo-daro (; sd, موئن جو دڙو'', ''meaning 'Mound of the Dead Men';Indus River valley in

and Sindh. The civilisation, with a possible

writing system A writing system is a method of visually representing verbal communication, based on a script and a set of rules regulating its use. While both writing and speech are useful in conveying messages, writing differs in also being a reliable fo ...

, urban centres, drainage infrastructure and diversified

social Social organisms, including human(s), live collectively in interacting populations. This interaction is considered social whether they are aware of it or not, and whether the exchange is voluntary or not. Etymology The word "social" derives from ...

and economic system, was rediscovered in the 1920s also after excavations at

Mohenjo-daro Mohenjo-daro (; sd, موئن جو دڙو'', ''meaning 'Mound of the Dead Men';Larkana Larkana ( ur, , translit=lāṛkāna; sd, لاڙڪاڻو, translit=lāṛkāṇo) is a city located in the Sindh province of Pakistan. It is the 15th largest city of Pakistan by population. It is home to the Indus Valley civilization site M ...

, and Harappa, in west

south of

Lahore Lahore ( ; pnb, ; ur, ) is the second most populous city in Pakistan after Karachi and 26th most populous city in the world, with a population of over 13 million. It is the capital of the province of Punjab where it is the largest city ...

. A number of other sites stretching from the

Himalaya The Himalayas, or Himalaya (; ; ), is a mountain range in Asia, separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range has some of the planet's highest peaks, including the very highest, Mount Everest. Over 100 ...

n foothills in the east

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

in the north, to

in the south and east, and to Pakistani Balochistan in the west have also been discovered and studied. Although the archaeological site at Harappa was damaged in 1857 when engineers constructing the

Multan Multan (; ) is a city in Punjab, Pakistan, on the bank of the Chenab River. Multan is Pakistan's seventh largest city as per the 2017 census, and the major cultural, religious and economic centre of southern Punjab. Multan is one of the old ...

railroad used brick from the Harappa ruins for

track ballast Track ballast forms the trackbed upon which railroad ties (sleepers) are laid. It is packed between, below, and around the ties. It is used to bear the load from the railroad ties, to facilitate drainage of water, and also to keep down veget ...

, an abundance of artefacts have nevertheless been found. Because of the reducing sea-levels certain regions in late Harappan period were abandoned . Towards the end Harappan civilisation lost features such as writing and hydraulic engineering. As a result the Ganges Valley settlement gained prominence and Ganges cities developed. The earliest recognisably Harappan sites date to 3500 BC. This early phase lasts till around 2600 BC. We then enter the Mature phase from 2600 BC to 2000 BC. This is when the great cities were at their height. Then, from around 2000 BC we have a steady disintegration that lasts till 1400 BC – what is usually called Late Harappan. There is no sign that the Harappan cities were laid waste by invaders. The evidence strongly points to natural causes. A number of studies show that the area which is today the Thar desert was once far wetter and that the climate gradually became drier.

Culture and economy

The Indus Valley civilization was basically an urban culture sustained by surplus agricultural production and commerce, the latter including trade with Elam and Sumer in southern

Mesopotamia Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the ...

. Both

Mohenjo-daro Mohenjo-daro (; sd, موئن جو دڙو'', ''meaning 'Mound of the Dead Men';Library of Congress: Country Studies. 1995
Harappan Culture
Retrieved 13 January 2006. Although such similarities have given rise to arguments for the existence of a standardised system of urban layout and planning, the similarities are largely due to the presence of a semi-orthogonal type of civic layout, and a comparison of the layouts of

Mohenjo-Daro Mohenjo-daro (; sd, موئن جو دڙو'', ''meaning 'Mound of the Dead Men';bronze were in use,

iron Iron () is a chemical element with Symbol (chemistry), symbol Fe (from la, Wikt:ferrum, ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 element, group 8 of the periodic table. It is, Abundanc ...

was not yet employed. "Cotton was woven and dyed for clothing; wheat, rice, and a variety of vegetables and fruits were cultivated; and a number of animals, including the humped bull, was

domesticated Domestication is a sustained multi-generational relationship in which humans assume a significant degree of control over the reproduction and care of another group of organisms to secure a more predictable supply of resources from that group. A ...

," as well as " fowl for fighting". Wheel-made pottery—some of it adorned with animal and geometric motifs—has been found in profusion at all the major Indus sites. A centralised administration for each city, though not the whole civilisation, has been inferred from the revealed cultural uniformity; however, it remains uncertain whether authority lay with a commercial

oligarchy Oligarchy (; ) is a conceptual form of power structure in which power rests with a small number of people. These people may or may not be distinguished by one or several characteristics, such as nobility, fame, wealth, education, or corporate, r ...

. Harappans had many trade routes along the Indus River that went as far as the Persian Gulf, Mesopotamia, and Egypt. Some of the most valuable things traded were

carnelian Carnelian (also spelled cornelian) is a brownish-red mineral commonly used as a semi-precious gemstone. Similar to carnelian is sard, which is generally harder and darker (the difference is not rigidly defined, and the two names are often used ...

and lapis lazuli. What is clear is that Harappan society was not entirely peaceful, with the human skeletal remains demonstrating some of the highest rates of injury (15.5%) found in South Asian prehistory. Examinations of Harappan skeletons have often found wounds that are likely to have been inflicted in battle. Paleopathological analysis demonstrated that leprosy and tuberculosis were present at Harappa, with the highest prevalence of both disease and trauma present in the skeletons from Area G (an ossuary located south-east of the city walls). Furthermore, rates of craniofacial trauma and infection increased through time demonstrating that the civilisation collapsed amid illness and injury. The bioarchaeologists who examined the remains have suggested that the combined evidence for differences in mortuary treatment and epidemiology indicate that some individuals and communities at Harappa were excluded from access to basic resources like health and safety.

Trade

The Harappans had traded with ancient

, especially Elam, among other areas. Cotton textiles and agricultural products were the primary trading objects. The Harappan merchants also had procurement colonies in Mesopotamia as well as which served as trading centres. They also traded extensively with people living in southern India, near modern-day Karnataka, to procure gold and copper from them.

Archaeology

The excavators of the site have proposed the following

chronology Chronology (from Latin ''chronologia'', from Ancient Greek , ''chrónos'', "time"; and , ''-logia'') is the science of arranging events in their order of occurrence in time. Consider, for example, the use of a timeline or sequence of events. I ...

of Harappa's occupation: #Ravi Aspect of the

Hakra The Ghaggar-Hakra River is an intermittent river in India and Pakistan that flows only during the monsoon season. The river is known as Ghaggar in India, before the Ottu barrage, and as the Hakra in Pakistan, downstream of the barrage, ending i ...

phase, c. 3300 – 2800 BC. #Kot Dijian (Early Harappan) phase, c. 2800 – 2600 BC. #Harappan Phase, c. 2600 – 1900 BC. #Transitional Phase, c. 1900 – 1800 BC. #Late Harappan Phase, c. 1800 – 1300 BC. By far the most exquisite and obscure artefacts unearthed to date are the small, square

steatite Soapstone (also known as steatite or soaprock) is a talc-schist, which is a type of metamorphic rock. It is composed largely of the magnesium rich mineral talc. It is produced by dynamothermal metamorphism and metasomatism, which occur in the ...

(soapstone) seals engraved with human or animal motifs. A large number of seals have been found at such sites as Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa. Many bear pictographic inscriptions generally thought to be a form of writing or script. Despite the efforts of philologists from all parts of the world, and despite the use of modern cryptographic analysis, the signs remain undeciphered. It is also unknown if they reflect proto- Dravidian or other non-

Vedic upright=1.2, The Vedas are ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism. Above: A page from the '' Atharvaveda''. The Vedas (, , ) are a large body of religious texts originating in ancient India. Composed in Vedic Sanskrit, the texts constitute the ...

language(s). The ascribing of Indus Valley Civilisation iconography and epigraphy to historically known cultures is extremely problematic, in part due to the rather tenuous archaeological evidence for such claims, as well as the projection of modern South Asian political concerns onto the archaeological record of the area. This is especially evident in the radically varying interpretations of Harappan material culture as seen from both Pakistan- and India-based scholars. In February 2006 a school teacher in the village of Sembian-Kandiyur in

Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is a state in southern India. It is the tenth largest Indian state by area and the sixth largest by population. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu is the home of the Tamil people, whose Tamil language ...

discovered a stone celt (tool) with an inscription estimated to be up to 3,500 years old. Indian epigraphist

Iravatham Mahadevan Iravatham Mahadevan (2 October 1930 – 26 November 2018) was an Indian epigraphist and civil servant, known for his decipherment of Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions and for his expertise on the epigraphy of the Indus Valley civilisation. Early lif ...

postulated that the four signs were in the Indus script and called the find "the greatest archaeological discovery of a century in Tamil Nadu". Based on this evidence he goes on to suggest that the language used in the Indus Valley was of Dravidian origin. However, the absence of a Bronze Age in South India, contrasted with the knowledge of bronze making techniques in the Indus Valley cultures, calls into question the validity of this hypothesis. The area of the late Harappan period consisted of areas of

Daimabad Daimabad is a deserted village and archaeological site on the left bank of the Pravara River, a tributary of the Godavari River in Shrirampur taluka in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra state in India. This site was discovered by B. P. Bopardi ...

, Maharashtra, and

Badakshan Badakhshan is a historical region comprising parts of modern-day north-eastern Afghanistan, eastern Tajikistan, and Taxkorgan Tajik Autonomous County in China. Badakhshan Province is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan. Much of historic Ba ...

regions of

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...

. The area covered by this civilisation would have been very large with a distance of around .

Early symbols similar to Indus script

Clay and stone tablets unearthed at Harappa, which were carbon-dated 3300–3200 BC., contain trident-shaped and plant-like markings. "It is a big question as to if we can call what we have found true writing, but we have found symbols that have similarities to what became Indus script" said Dr. Richard Meadow of Harvard University, Director of the Harappa Archeological Research Project. This primitive writing is placed slightly earlier than primitive writings of the Sumerians of

, dated c.3100 BC. These markings have similarities to what later became

Indus Script The Indus script, also known as the Harappan script, is a corpus of symbols produced by the Indus Valley Civilisation. Most inscriptions containing these symbols are extremely short, making it difficult to judge whether or not they constituted ...

which has not been completely deciphered yet.

Notes

*The earliest radiocarbon dating mentioned on the web is 2725±185 BC (uncalibrated) or 3338, 3213, 3203 BC calibrated, giving a midpoint of 3251 BC. Kenoyer, Jonathan Mark (1991) Urban process in the Indus Tradition: A preliminary report. In Harappa Excavations, 1986–1990: A multidisciplinary approach to Second Millennium urbanism, edited by Richard H. Meadow: 29–59. Monographs in World Archaeology No.3. Prehistory Press, Madison Wisconsin. *Periods 4 and 5 are not dated at Harappa. The termination of the Harappan tradition at Harappa falls between 1900 and 1500 BC. *

Mohenjo-daro Mohenjo-daro (; sd, موئن جو دڙو'', ''meaning 'Mound of the Dead Men';Sindhprovince of

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 243 million people, and has the world's second-lar ...

. One of its most well-known structures is the

Great Bath The Great Bath is one of the best-known structures among the ruins of the Harappan Civilization excavated at Mohenjo-daro in Sindh, Pakistan.

of Mohenjo-Daro.

References

External links

Harappa.comHarappa.info

Harappa Town Planning
-article by Dr

S. Srikanta Sastri Sondekoppa Srikanta Sastri (5 November 1904 – 10 May 1974) was an Indian historian, Indologist, and polyglot. He authored around 12 books, over two hundred articles, several monographs and book reviews over four decades in English, Kannada, ...

Art of the Bronze Age: Southeastern Iran, Western Central Asia, and the Indus Valley
an exhibition catalogue from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Harappa {{Authority control 4th-millennium BC architecture Archaeological sites in Punjab, Pakistan History of Pakistan Bronze Age sites Populated places in Sahiwal District Indus Valley civilisation Indus Valley civilisation sites Former populated places in Pakistan Culture of Punjab, Pakistan Sahiwal District Tourist attractions in Sahiwal Ruins in Pakistan Lost cities and towns