INDIA’S EARLY CIVILIZATIONSHarappa and Mohenjo-Daro
1. BENEFITS OF THE INDUS RIVER
Summer monsoons made the rivers rise and flood which left rich, fertile soil
Farmers used the soil to grow crops to feed their families
2. RESULTS OF HAVING A LOT OF FOOD
Spend more time doing things like: Making tools Building houses Trade extra food and goods
with other people (which gained them wealth)
Build larger cities
Why would become more wealthy lead to building bigger cities?
3. HOW LONG DID CIVILIZATION LAST?
Began about 3000 B.C.E. and lasted until 1500 B.C.E. How many years is this? What
does B.C.E. stand for?
More than a thousand villages
and towns were part of this civilization.
Stretched from the Himalayas to the Arabian Sea.
4. MAJOR CITIES OF INDUS RIVER VALLEY
Study the ruins of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro
Called the Harappan or Indus civilization
Well-planned cities that had as many as 35,000 people.
5. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE CITIES
Fortress on a brick platform to keep guard over residents
Wide main streets and smaller side streets
A wall surrounded each neighborhood
Narrow lanes separated the houses
Houses had flat roofs Built with mud bricks
that were baked in ovens
Some houses were larger than others but they had a similar layout
Courtyard in the middle and smaller rooms around it
The houses had flat roofs and many had staircases that allowed people to climb to the
roof from the street
Mohenjo-Daro means “Mound of the Dead”. The cities ruins were discovered in
the 1920s.House Walls Water drains
Immense Citadels would help people to scout for invading armies and general public well being.
6. CONVENIENCES OF THE CITIES
Wells supplied water Residents had indoor bathrooms Wastewater flowed to drains under the streets, running
through pipes to pits outside city walls Houses had garbage chutes connected to a bin in the
street Residents built large granaries to store food for the
entire city’s population
Bathrooms and indoor plumbing
Water well
7. HARAPPAN SOCIETY
Special script to write on seals and stamps (not sure how to decipher the markings because there are no historical records and we can’t read their language).
Royal palace and temple may have been enclosed into a fortress revealing that religion and politics were closely connected
Many were farmers who grew rice, wheat, barley, peas, and cotton
City people made copper and bronze tools, clay pottery, and cotton cloth, jewelry from gold, shells, and ivory
Toys were found like small monkeys and dice.
People were literate and used Indus Script. The language was a short string of symbols that were associated with the Indus Valley culture.
The language is still coded because we can’t understand it.
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