Planned Cities on the Indus

1. Planned Cities on the Indus Chapter 2: Section 3

2. Geography • Geographers often refer to the landmass that includes India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh as the Indian subcontinent • There are mountains to the north • Desert to the east • Both of these items guarded this area from foreign invaders • The Indus and the Ganges are the two rivers that make this area such a fertile land • Like the Tigris, the Euphrates, and the Nile, these rivers carry not only water for irrigation, but also silt which produces rich land for agriculture • Below the Indo-Gangetic Plain, southern part of the subcontinent is a peninsula

3. Geography Continued • Monsoons • Seasonal winds called monsoons dominate India’s climate • From October-February, winter monsoons from the NE blow dry air westward across the county • Then they shift in June • When the summer monsoons fail-drought occurs causes crop disasters but if too much than it floods and could wipe out entire villages • Environmental Challenges • Similar to that of Mesopotamia and Egypt • Yearly floods spread deposits of rich soil • Unpredictable flooding • Cycle of wet and dry seasons brought those monsoon winds

4. Civilization Emerge in the Indus • Historians know less about the Indus than any of the other River Valleys • The main reason is we have not deciphered their writing system • What we do know comes from archaeological digs, however, the floods took away many artifacts • No one is sure how human settlement began in the Indus • Some think they came from the sea via Africa • Some think Northern immigrants made their way through the Hindu Kush mountains

5. Planned Cities • Around 2500 B.C. while Egyptians were building the pyramids the people of Indus were setting up shop • They had strong levees and walls to keep water out • When that didn’t work they made islands to raise the cities above possible flood waters • The largest cities were Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa. • The Indus is sometimes referred to as Harappan Civilization • One of the most remarkable achievements of the Indus River Valley was their planning • Mesopotamia was a hot mess of buildings connected by a maze of winding streets whereas Indus laid out their cities on a grid system • In the center was the Citadel which was the major buildings of the city • Engineers of the time also created a plumbing and sewage system • These systems were better than anything built before the 19th century in other civilizations

6. Harappan Culture • Language • Impossible to decipher • Unlike the other civilizations we have not found and inscriptions that are bilingual • Culture • Uniform in Religion and Culture • Artifacts such as clay and wooden children’s toys suggest a relatively prosperous society that could afford to make nonessentials • Presence of animal images on many artifacts suggest that animals were important part of the culture • Some of these show animals of the area and some show beast with several different animal parts

7. Religion and Trade • Ruler of the Harappan civilization believed in close ties to religion • We think they were a theocracy however no site of a temple has been found • Figures show what may have been the Hindu figure Shiva • Thrived on trade with peoples in the region • Gold and Silver came from the north in Afghanistan • Excellent means of transportation for trade goods • Provided a link to the sea

8. Indus Valley Culture Ends • 1750 quality of building the cities of the Indus Valley declined • Cities fell to decay and really what happened remains a mystery • You can tell that there were shifts in tectonic plates and that could have caused earthquakes and floods and altered the course of the Indus River • Some cities suffered, some survived, and some were destroyed • Another theory is that they suffered soil that was exhausted by overuse • Final theory is that Nomadic people swept into the Valley