The Harappan Civilization, which flourished in the Indus River Valley between 3300 and 1300 BCE, covered what is now northeast Afghanistan, Pakistan, and northwest India.
Standardized weights and measurements, seal carving, and the use of copper, bronze, lead, and tin in metallurgy are some of this civilization’s most significant inventions.
The Indus script is poorly understood, and as a result, little is known about the governmental structures and institutions of the Indus River Valley Civilization.
Migration and climatic change were likely the causes of the civilization’s demise.
With respect to it’s location and time period, it has been observed that the British colonial officials in India were occupied in 1856 supervising the construction of a railway that ran along the Indus River valley and connected the modern-day Pakistani towns of Lahore and Karachi.
Some of the workers found numerous bricks that had been cooked by fire and were stuck in the dry ground as they continued to work. Numerous tens of thousands of comparatively uniform bricks that appeared to be relatively old were present.
Despite this, the workmen used some of them to build the road bed without realising they were doing so. They soon discovered soapstone objects with delicate artistic marks hidden among the blocks.
These railway workers had stumbled upon the remains of the Indus Valley Civilization, also known as the Harappan Civilization after Harappa, the first of its sites to be excavated, in what was then the Punjab province of British India and is now in Pakistan, even though they were unaware of it at the time and the first significant excavations did not occur until the 1920s.
Many archaeologists initially believed they had discovered the remains of the Maurya State, a sizable empire that ruled ancient India between about 322 and 185 BCE.
Before the discovery of these Harappan settlements, researchers believed that Indian civilization originated in the Ganges valley around 1250 BCE with the arrival of Aryan immigrants from Persia and central Asia.
That idea was challenged by the discovery of the ancient Harappan cities, which pushed the Indus Valley Civilization’s existence back in time by another 1500 years and placed it in a very different ecological setting.
Although information about this enigmatic society is still being pieced together, much has been discovered since its rediscovery.
Its roots appear to be in a town called Mehrgarh, which is located in the western Pakistani province of Baluchistan at the base of a mountain pass. There is proof that this region was populated as early as 7000 BCE.
The three phases of the Indus Valley Civilization—the Early Harappan Phase, which lasted from 3300 to 2600 BCE, the Mature Harappan Phase, which lasted from 2600 to 1900 BCE, and the Late Harappan Phase, which lasted from 1900 to 1300 BCE—are frequently distinguished.
The Indus Valley Civilization may have had more than five million people living in it at its height.
Urban planning, a technical and political process dealing with the utilization of land and the creation of the urban environment, is a skill that the Indus towns are renowned for.
They are renowned for their enormous, non-residential building clusters, extensive drainage and water supply systems, and baked brick homes.
Around 1800 BCE, the Indus Valley Civilization started to disappear.
Archaeological data suggests that trade with Mesopotamia, which is mostly located in present-day Iraq, appeared to have ceased.
The large cities’ sophisticated drainage systems and baths were covered over or stopped.
Standardized weights and measurements that were used for trade and taxation started to disappear, along with writing.
The Indus River Valley Civilization made a number of noteworthy technological advancements, including having extremely accurate systems and equipment for measuring length and mass.
Building baths and sewage systems required the use of fire-baked bricks, which were moisture resistant and of uniform size.
This is proof that the Harappans were among the first civilizations to create a system of standardized weights and measures.
The same brick size throughout cities also shows harmony between the various metropolitan districts, which is proof of a more advanced civilization.
