Life Around the Indus: Understanding Early Civilisation
Civilisation is a big word, but its story is full of exciting ideas and real-life examples from our past, such as the Indus Valley civilisation. It refers to a developed state of human society, combining social, cultural, and technological advancements.
What is a civilisation?
- A civilisation is a large group of people living together in villages, towns, and cities, with an organised culture, religion, traditions, beliefs, and ways of learning and sharing ideas.
- Civilisations usually have farming that produces extra food, a writing system, religious beliefs, shared ideas, and people doing different specialised jobs like potters, traders, priests, and builders.
Why did early civilisations grow near water?
Many of the world’s earliest civilisations began along rivers such as the Nile, Tigris–Euphrates, Indus, and Huang He. This was not a coincidence.
- Rivers gave water for drinking, cooking, and cleaning.
- Floodwater left rich soil on the land, which helped farmers grow more crops.
- Rivers were like natural roads, making it easier to travel and trade by boat.
- Fish and other river animals added to people’s food supply.
- River mud was used to make settlements.
The Bronze Age and bronze in India
The time when people began using bronze tools and weapons is called the Bronze Age. In India, this age roughly began around 3300 BCE and continued till about 1300 BCE, with the Indus Valley civilisation as a major Bronze Age culture.
Bronze is a metal made by mixing copper and tin. This new metal helped early humans in many ways:
- Bronze tools like axes, sickles, and plough parts were harder and stronger than stone tools, so farming and building became easier.
- Bronze
weapons like spears and blades were sharper and more durable, which helped in
hunting and defence.
- Bronze could be melted and poured into moulds, so people could make fine jewellery, statues, and everyday objects with neat shapes.
The Indus Valley civilisation: an overview
The Indus Valley civilisation (also called Harappan civilisation) was one of the world’s earliest urban civilisations. It grew in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent, mainly along the Indus River and its tributaries, in parts of modern-day Pakistan and western India.
- It started around 3300 BCE and reached its mature stage between about 2600 and 1900 BCE.
- Famous cities include Harappa, Mohenjo-daro, Kalibangan, and Lothal, as well as many smaller towns and villages.
Amazing city planning
Archaeologists were surprised to see how well-planned these cities were:
- Cities were divided into an upper area (citadel) and a lower town, each built on raised platforms, probably to protect against floods.
- Streets crossed each other at right angles in a grid pattern, like modern city blocks.
- Houses were usually made of standard-sized baked bricks and often had more than one room, courtyards, and sometimes a second floor.
- There was an advanced drainage system: almost every house had bathrooms or bathing areas connected to covered drains along the streets, which carried dirty water away from homes.
- Public buildings, granaries (huge storehouses for grain), and a famous Great Bath at Mohenjo-daro show that people cared about storage, bathing, and public life.
Occupations of the Indus Valley people
The Indus people did many different kinds of work:
- Farmers grew wheat, barley, peas, and other crops; they also kept cattle, sheep, goats, and buffalo.
- Craftspeople made beads, pottery, jewellery, tools, toys, and cloth; they were skilled in working with bronze, copper, stone, and terracotta (baked clay).
- Traders bought and sold goods within the civilisation and also traded with faraway places like Mesopotamia, mainly by river and sea routes.
- Builders and masons constructed houses, wells, drains, and public buildings with great skill using standard-sized bricks.
Religion and beliefs
We do not have written books from the Indus Valley, but archaeologists have found clues from seals, statues, clay tablets and buildings.
Some seals show figures sitting in a yogic posture, which some scholars think may be an early form of a god similar to Shiva, though this is still debated.
Many terracotta female figurines may represent mother goddess worship and belief in fertility and growth.
People probably worshipped natural forces such as trees, animals, water, and fertility, and may have believed in an afterlife, as evidenced by burials with pots and other objects.
The Great Bath at Mohenjo-daro suggests that ritual bathing and cleanliness were important parts of their religious life.
The Indus script
The Indus Valley people developed their own writing, called the Indus script.
- The script appears on seals, pottery, tablets, and other
objects, usually in short inscriptions.
- It includes many signs or symbols, some showing humans
and animals, others more abstract shapes.
- So far, no one has been able to fully decipher this
script, so we do not know the exact language they spoke or what their
inscriptions say.
Because the script is undeciphered, many details about their government, laws, and stories remain a mystery, which also makes this civilisation more fascinating for students and researchers.
Daily life in the Indus Valley
From houses, tools, toys, and skeletons, we get a picture of everyday life.
People lived in brick houses with courtyards; some houses had private wells, bathrooms, and stairs leading to upper floors.
They wore clothes made from cotton and wool and used ornaments like beads, bangles, necklaces, and earrings made of shell, stone, and metals.
Children played with clay toys, such as carts with wheels, animal figures, and small whistles.
Many people were healthy, but some skeletons show signs of disease and injuries, telling us that life also had hardships.
The neat planning and drains suggest that the people valued cleanliness and order in their surroundings.
The end of the Indus Valley civilisation
The decline of the Indus Valley civilisation is still a puzzle for historians.
- The mature cities began to decline around 1900 BCE, and many were abandoned or became smaller villages.
- Some scholars think that changes in rivers, such as drying up or changing course, led to less water and poorer farming.
- Others suggest repeated floods, earthquakes, or climate change (less rainfall) as reasons for decline.
- There may also have been social or economic problems, like reduced trade or internal conflicts, but there is no clear proof of a single cause.
Today, most researchers believe that
a mix of environmental changes and other factors slowly weakened the
civilisation rather than one sudden event.
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