An Overview of Indus Valley Civilisation

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In the early part of the 3rd Millennium, in the river valleys of the Nile, Euphrates and Indus, civilization with an organized system of government, over a comparatively large area developed and flourished.

The Indus valley people did not engrave long inscriptions on stone as papyrus scrolls but have left behind seals which have yet to be deciphered.

Knowledge of the Indus Valley Civilisation is quite inadequate in a number of areas.

The origin of the Harappan civilsation has long been a matter of debate.

Most of archaeologist say thatit was a colonial offshoot of the Mesopotomian civilization and was brought to the Indus region by the Sumerians, the early inhabitants of Mesopotamia.

This however, lacks evidence. The excavations of reveal that civilized life in the Indus valley was of indigenous origin.

The stimulus for urban development, however, came from outside, most likely from Mesopotomia where a natural urban civilization was already in existence.

Indian history was begun with Aryans before1922 when Mr. R.D. Banerjee while excavating a Buddhist Stupa in Sindh, found out a number of important remain which revealed to him that long before the advent of the Aryans, there flourished a highly developed civilization in Sindh.

About the same time, R.B. Daya Ram Sahni discovered similar remains in Harappa. The director general of Archaeology, Sir John Marshall, then took up the matter. Extensive excavations were undertaken at Harappa in the Punjab and Mohenjo-daro in Sind.

The ruins of these two old cities have proved that about 5,000 years ago there flourished a highly developed civilisation with well-planned and populous cities in the valley of the Indus.

This pre-Aryan civilization is styled as “Indus Valley Civilisation”.

The people who lived in the Indus valley belonged to the same race to which the Sumerians belonged.

Like the people of the old Egypt and Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley people also did not know the use of iron and, therefore, they represent a common stage of human development, i.e., the “Chalacolithic Civilisation”

The culture of the Indus Valley covered parts of the Punjab, Sind, Baluchistan, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Borders of Western Uttar Pradesh. In the North it extended from Rupar in the Punjab to the Narmada in the South and from Baluchistan in the West to Merrut in the North East. No other cultural area in the second and third millennium B.C. in the world was as large as the Indus Valley.

Since the language on the seals has not been deciphered, one cannot say exactly when the Indus Valley civilization existed. However, we can fix the date on the evidence like pottery, seals etc of the Indus Valley which have been found in the excavations at Babylonia, and Mesopotomia.

These excavations have been dated between 3200 to 2750 B.C., about 3000 years before Christ.

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