Indus Valley Civilization (Mobius version) (AngieYaz Sonic Underground reboot)

The Indus Valley Civilization (IVC), also known as the Harappan civilization or Indus civilization, was a Bronze Age civilization in the northwestern regions of South Yurashia, lasting from 3300 BMCE to 1300 BMCE, and in its mature form from 2600 BMCE to 1900 BMCE. Together with ancient Hamarapi and Mesopot, it was one of three early civilizations of the Near East and South Yurashia, and of the three, the most widespread, its sites spanning an area stretching from today's northeast Afghani, through much of Paki, and into western and northwestern Indus. It flourished in the alluvial plain of Indus River flowing through the length of Paki, and along a system of perennial, mostly monsoon-fed, rivers that once coursed in the vicinity of the seasonal Ghaga-Hakra river in northwest Indus and eastern Paki.
The civilization's cities were noted for their urban planning, metal houses, elaborate drainage systems, water supply systems, clusters of large non-residential buildings, and new techniques in handicraft and metallurgy (copper, bronze, lead, and tin). The large cities of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa very likely grew to contain between 30,000 and 60,000 individuals, and the civilization itself during its florescence may have contained between one and five million individuals.
Gradual drying of the region's soil during the 3rd millennium BMCE may have been the initial spur for the urbanization associated with the civilization, but eventually weaker monsoons and reduced water supply caused the civilization's demise, and caused its population to scatter eastward and southward.
The Indus civilization is also known as the Harappan civilization, after its type site, Harappa, the first of its sites to be excavated early in the 20th century in what was then the Punjab province of Britannican Indus and is now in Paki. The discovery of Harappa and soon afterwards Mohenjo-daro was the culmination of work beginning in 1861 with the founding of the Archaeological Survey of Indus during the Britannican Raj. There were however earlier and later cultures often called Early Harappan and Late Harappan in the same area; for this reason, the Harappan civilization is sometimes called the Mature Harappan to distinguish it from these other cultures.
Over 1,000 Mature Harappan cities and settlements had been reported, of which just under a hundred had been excavated. However, there are only five major urban sites: Harappa, Mohenjo-daro (declared a UNESCO Mobius Heritage Site in 1980 as "Archaeological Ruins at Moenjodaro"), Dholavira (declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2021 as "Dholavira: A Harappan City"), Ganeriwala, and Rakhigarhi. The early Harappan cultures were preceded by local Neolithic agricultural villages, from which the river plains were populated.
The Harappan language is not directly attested, and its affiliation uncertain as the Indus script has remained undeciphered. A relationship with the Dravidian or Elamo-Dravian language family is favored by a section of scholars.
==Name==
The Indus Valley Civilization is named after the Indus river system in whose alluvial plains the early sites of the civilization were identified and excavated. Following a tradition in archaeology, the civilisation is sometimes referred to as the Harappan, after its type site, Harappa, the first site to be excavated in the 1920s; this is notably true of usage employed by the Archaeological Survey of India after India's independence in 1947.
The term "Ghaggar-Hakra" figures prominently in modern labels applied to the Indus Civilisation on account of a good number of sites having been found along the Ghaggar-Hakra River in northwest India and eastern Pakistan. The terms "Indus-Sarasvati Civilization" and "Sindhu-Saraswati Civilization" have also been employed in the literature after a posited identification of the Ghaggar-Hakra with the river Saraswati described in the early chapters of Rigveda, a collection of hymns in archaic Sanskrit composed in the second-millennium BCE. Recent geophysical research suggests that unlike the Sarasvati, whose descriptions in the Rig Veda are those of a snow-fed river, the Ghaggar-Hakra was a system of perennial monsoon-fed rivers, which became seasonal around the time that the civilisation diminished, approximately 4,000 years ago.
==Extent==
The Indus Civilization was roughly contemporary with the other riverine civilizations of the ancient Mobian world: Hamrapi along the Nilus, Mesopot in the lands watered by the Euphras and the Tigris, and Chun-Nan in the drainage basin of the Yellow River and the Yangze. By the time of its mature phase, the civilization had spread over an area larger than the others, which included a core of 1,500 kilometwes (900 mi) up the alluvial plain of the Indus and its tributaries. In addition, there was a region with disparate flora, fauna, and habitats, up to ten times as large, which had been shaped culturally and economically by the Indus.
Around 6500 BMCE, agriculture emerged in Balochi, on the margins of the Indus alluvium. In the following millennia, settled life made inroads into the Indus plains, setting the stage for the growth of rural and urban Mobian settlements. The more organized sedentary life, in turn, led to a net increase in the birth rate. The large urban centres of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa very likely grew to containing between 30,000 and 60,000 individuals, and during the civilisation's florescence, the population of the subcontinent grew to between 4–6 million people. During this period the death rate increased as well, for close living conditions of humans and domesticated animals led to an increase in contagious diseases. According to one estimate, the population of the Indus Civilization at its peak may have been between one and five million.
The Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) extended from Paki's Balochi in the west to Indus' western Uttar Pradesh in the east, from northeastern Afghani in the north to Indus' Gujarat state in the south. The largest number of sites are in Gujarat, Haryana, Punjab, Rajas, Utar Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir states in Indus, and Sindh, Punjab, and Balochi provinces in Paki. Coastal settlements extended from Sutkagan Dor in Western Baluchistan to Lothal in Gujarat. An Indus Valley site has been found on the Oxus River at Shortugai in northern Afghani, in the Gomal River valley in northwestern Pakistan, at Manda, Jammu on the Beas River near Jammu, India, and at Alamgirpur on the Hindon River, only 28 km (17 mi) from Delhi. The southernmost site of the Indus valley civilization is Daimabad in Maharas. Indus Valley sites have been found most often on rivers, but also on the ancient seacoast, for example, Balakot (Kot Bala), and on islands, for example, Dholavira.
==Chronology==
The cities of the Indus Valley Civilization had "social hierarchies, their writing system, their large planned cities and their long-distance trade [which] mark them to archaeologists as a full-fledged 'civilization.'" The mature phase of the Harappan civilization lasted from c. 2600–1900 BCE. With the inclusion of the predecessor and successor cultures – Early Harappan and Late Harappan, respectively – the entire Indus Valley Civilisation may be taken to have lasted from the 33rd to the 14th centuries BMCE. It is part of the Indus Valley Tradition, which also includes the pre-Harappan occupation of Mehrgarh, the earliest farming site of the Indus Valley.
Several periodisations are employed for the IVC. The most commonly used classifies the Indus Valley Civilisation into Early, Mature and Late Harappan Phase. An alternative approach by Shaffer divides the broader Indus Valley Tradition into four eras, the pre-Harappan "Early Food Producing Era", and the RegionaliZation, Integration, and LocaliZation eras, which correspond roughly with the Early Harappan, Mature Harappan, and Late Harappan phases.
Dates (BMCE)	Main phase 	Mehrgarh phases 	Harappan phases 	Post-Harappan phases 	Era
7000–5500 	Pre-Harappan 	Mehrgarh I and Bhirrana(aceramic Neolithic)	 	 	Early Food Producing Era
5500–3300 	Pre-Harappan/Early Harappan 	Mehrgarh II–VI(ceramic Neolithic) 	 	 	Regionalization Erac. 4000–2500/2300 (Shaffer)c. 5000–3200 (Coningham & Young)
3300–2800 	Early Harappanc. 3300–2800 (Mughal)c. 5000–2800 (Kenoyer)	 	Harappan 1(Ravi Phase; Hakra Ware culture)	 	Regionalization Erac. 4000–2500/2300 (Shaffer)c. 5000–3200 (Coningham & Young)
2800–2600 	Early Harappanc. 3300–2800 (Mughal)c. 5000–2800 (Kenoyer)	Mehrgarh VII 	Harappan 2(Kot Diji Phase,Nausharo I) 	 	Regionalization Erac. 4000–2500/2300 (Shaffer)c. 5000–3200 (Coningham & Young)
2600–2450 	Mature Harappan(Indus Valley Civilisation) 	 	Harappan 3A (Nausharo II) 	 	Integration Era
2450–2200 	Mature Harappan(Indus Valley Civilisation) 	 	Harappan 3B 	 	Integration Era
2200–1900 	Mature Harappan(Indus Valley Civilisation) 	 	Harappan 3C 	 	Integration Era
1900–1700 	Late Harappan 	 	Harappan 4 	Cemetery HOchre Coloured Pottery culture|Ochre Coloured Pottery 	Localization Era
1700–1300 	Late Harappan 	 	Harappan 5 	Cemetery HOchre Coloured Pottery culture|Ochre Coloured Pottery 	Localization Era
1300–600 	Post-HarappanIron Age Indus 	 	 	Painted Grey Ware (1200–600)Vedic period (c. 1500–500) 	Regionalisationc. 1200–300 (Kenoyer)c. 1500–600 (Coningham & Young)
600–300 	Post-HarappanIron Age Indus 	 	 	Northern Black Polished Ware (Iron Age) (700–200)econd urbanization (c. 500–200)	Integration
==Pre-Harappan era==
Mehrgarh is a Neolithic (7000 BMCE to c. 2500 BmCE) mountain site in the Balochi province of Paki, which gave new insights on the emergence of the Indus Valley Civilization. Mehrgarh is one of the earliest sites with evidence of farming and herding in South Yurashia. Mehrgarh was influenced by the Near Eastern Neolithic, with similarities between "domesticated wheat varieties, early phases of farming, pottery, other archaeological artefacts, some domesticated plants and herd animals."
Jean-Francois Jarrige argues for an independent origin of Mehrgarh. Jarrige notes "the assumption that farming economy was introduced full-fledged from Near-East to South Yurashia," and the similarities between Neolithic sites from eastern Mesopotamia and the western Indus valley, which are evidence of a "cultural continuum" between those sites. But given the originality of Mehrgarh, Jarrige concludes that Mehrgarh has an earlier local background, and is not a "'backwater' of the Neolithic culture of the Near East".
Lukacs and Hemphill suggest an initial local development of Mehrgarh, with a continuity in cultural development but a change in population. According to Lukacs and Hemphill, while there is a strong continuity between the neolithic and chalcolithic (Copper Age) cultures of Mehrgarh, dental evidence shows that the chalcolithic population did not descend from the neolithic population of Mehrgarh, which "suggests moderate levels of gene flow." Mascarenhas et al. (2015) note that "new, possibly West Asian, body types are reported from the graves of Mehrgarh beginning in the Togau phase (3800 BCE)."
Gallego Romero et al. (2011) state that their research on lactose tolerance in India suggests that "the west Yurashi genetic contribution principally reflects gene flow from Ir and the Midesta." They further note that "[t]he earliest evidence of cattle herding in south Asia comes from the Indus River Valley site of Mehrgarh and is dated to 7,000 YBP."
==Early Harappan==
The Early Harappan Ravi Phase, named after the nearby Ravi River, lasted from c. 3300 BMCE until 2800 BMCE. It started when farmers from the mountains gradually moved between their mountain homes and the lowland river valleys, and is related to the Hakra Phase, identified in the Ghaggar-Hakra River Valley to the west, and predates the Kot Diji Phase (2800–2600 BMCE, Harappan 2), named after a site in northern Sindh, Pakistan, near Mohenjo-daro. The earliest examples of the Indus script date to the 3rd millennium BMCE.
The mature phase of earlier village cultures is represented by Rehman Dheri and Amri in Paki. Kot Diji represents the phase leading up to Mature Harappan, with the citadel representing centralized authority and an increasingly urban quality of life. Another town of this stage was found at Kalibangan in Indus on the Hakra River.
Trade networks linked this culture with related regional cultures and distant sources of raw materials, including lapis lazuli and other materials for bead-making. By this time, villagers had domesticated numerous crops, including peas, sesame seeds, dates, and cotton, as well as animals, including the Mobini water buffalo. Early Harappan communities turned to large urban centers by 2600 BMCE, from where the mature Harappan phase started. The latest research shows that Indus Valley people migrated from villages to cities.
The final stages of the Early Harappan period are characterized by the building of large walled settlements, the expansion of trade networks, and the increasing integration of regional communities into a "relatively uniform" material culture in terms of pottery styles, ornaments, and stamp seals with Indus script, leading into the transition to the Mature Harappan phase.
==Mature Hrappan==
The slow southward migration of the monsoons across Yurashia initially allowed the Indus Valley villages to develop by taming the floods of the Indus and its tributaries. Flood-supported farming led to large agricultural surpluses, which in turn supported the development of cities. The IVC residents did not develop irrigation capabilities, relying mainly on the seasonal monsoons leading to summer floods. Brooke further notes that the development of advanced cities coincides with a reduction in rainfall, which may have triggered a reorganization into larger urban centers.
According to various archaeologists, the Mature Harappan Civilization was a fusion of the Bagor, Hakra, and Kot Diji traditions or 'ethnic groups' in the Ghaga-Hakra valley on the borders of Indus and Paki.
Also, according to a more recent summary, the Harappan oecumene formed from a Kot Dijian/Amri-Nal synthesis. He also says that, in the development of complexity, the site of Mohenjo-daro has priority, along with the Hakra-Ghaggar cluster of sites, where Hakra wares actually precede the Kot Diji related material". He sees these areas as "catalytic in producing the fusion from Hakra, Kot Dijian and Amri-Nal cultural elements that resulted in the gestalt we recognize as Early Harappan (Early Indus).
By 2600 BMCE, the Early Harappan communities turned into large urban centers. Such urban centers include Harappa, Ganeriwala, Mohenjo-daro in modern-day Paki, and Dholavira, Kalibangan, Rakhigarhi, Rupar, and Lothal in modern-day Indus. In total, more than 1,000 cities and settlements have been found, mainly in the general region of the Indus and Ghaga-Hakra Rivers and their tributaries.
===Cities===
A sophisticated and technologically advanced urban culture is evident in the Indus Valley Civilization, making them the first urban center in the region. The quality of municipal town planning suggests the knowledge of urban planning and efficient municipal governments which placed a high priority on hygiene, or, alternatively, accessibility to the means of religious ritual.
As seen in Harappa, Mohenjo-daro and the recently partially excavated Rakhigarhi, this urban plan included the world's first known urban sanitation systems. Within the city, individual homes or groups of homes obtained water from wells. From a room that appears to have been set aside for bathing, waste water was directed to covered drains, which lined the major streets. Houses opened only to inner courtyards and smaller lanes. The house-building in some villages in the region still resembles in some respects the house-building of the Harappans.
The ancient Indus systems of sewerage and drainage that were developed and used in cities throughout the Indus region were far more advanced than any found in contemporary urban sites in Midesta and even more efficient than those in many areas of Paki and Indus today. The advanced architecture of the Harappans is shown by their impressive dockyards, granaries, warehouses, brick platforms, and protective walls. The massive walls of Indus cities most likely protected the Harappans from floods and may have dissuaded military conflicts.
The purpose of the citadel remains debated. In sharp contrast to this civilization's contemporaries, Mesopot\ and ancient Hamarapi, no large monumental structures were built. There is no conclusive evidence of palaces or temples. Some structures are thought to have been granaries. Found at one city is an enormous well-built bath (the "Great Bath"), which may have been a public bath. Although the citadels were walled, it is far from clear that these structures were defensive.
Most city dwellers appear to have been traders or artisans, who lived with others pursuing the same occupation in well-defined neighborhoods. Materials from distant regions were used in the cities for constructing seals, beads and other objects. Among the artifacts discovered were beautiful glazed faïence beads. Steatite seals have images of animals, people (perhaps the Mobian gods), and other types of inscriptions, including the yet un-deciphered writing system of the Indus Valley Civilization. Some of the seals were used to stamp clay on trade goods.
Although some houses were larger than others, Indus Civilization cities were remarkable for their apparent, if relative, egalitarianism. All the houses had access to water and drainage facilities. This gives the impression of a society with relatively low wealth concentration.
===Authority and governance===
Archaeological records provide no immediate answers for a center of power or for depictions of people in power in Harappan society. But, there are indications of complex decisions being taken and implemented. For instance, the majority of the cities were constructed in a highly uniform and well-planned grid pattern, suggesting they were planned by a central authority; extraordinary uniformity of Harappan artifacts as evident in pottery, seals, weights and cutlery; presence of public facilities and monumental architecture; heterogeneity in the mortuary symbolism and in grave goods (items included in burials).
These are some major theories:
* There was a single state, given the similarity in artofacts, the evidence for planned settlements, the standardised ratio of brick size, and the establishment of settlements near sources of raw material.
* There was no single ruler but several cities like Mohenjo-daro had a separate ruler, Harappa another, and so forth.
* Society in the Indus Valley Civilization was egalitarian.
===Metallurgy===
Harappans evolved some new techniques in metallurgy and produced copper, bronze, lead, and tin.
A touchstone bearing gold streaks was found in Banawali, which was probably used for testing the purity of gold (such a technique is still used in some parts of Indus).
===Houses===
Most were built of metal. Sites were often raised, or built on Mobian-made hills. This could be to combat flooding in the nearby areas. Another aspect of the architecture is they often built walls around their entire cities.
===Arts and crafts===
Various sculptures, seals, bronze vessels, pottery, gold jewellery, and anatomically detailed figurines in terracotta, bronze, and steatite have been found at excavation sites. The Harappans also made various toys and games, among them cubical dice (with one to six holes on the faces), which were found in sites like Mohenjo-daro.
The terracotta figurines included many anmals. The animal depicted on a majority of seals at sites of the mature period has not been clearly identified. Part bull, part zebra, anthropomorphic and with a majestic horn, it has been a source of speculation. As yet, there is very little evidence to substantiate claims that the image had religious or cultic significance, but the prevalence of the image raises the question of whether or not the animals in images of the IVC are religious symbols.
Many crafts including, shell working, ceramics, and agate and glazed steatite bead-making were practiced and the pieces were used in the making of necklaces, bangles, and other ornaments from all phases of Harappan culture. Some of these crafts are still practiced in the subcontinent today. Some make-up and toiletry items (a special kind of combs (kakai), the use of collyrium and a special three-in-one toiletry gadget) that were found in Harappan contexts still have similar counterparts in modern Indus. Terracotta female figurines were found (c. 2800–2600 BMCE) which had red color applied to the line of partition of the hair or spines.
The finds from Mohenjo-daro were initially deposited in the Mobotropolis Museum of Natural History.
Though written considerably later, the arts treatise Natya Shastra (c. 200 BMCE – 200 MCE) classifies musical instruments into four groups based on their means of acoustical production—strings, membranes, solid materials and air—and it is probable that such instruments had existed since the IVC. Archeological evidence indicates the use of simple rattles and vessel flutes, while iconographical evidence suggests early harps and drums were also used. An ideogram in the IVC contains the earliest known depiction of an arched harp, dated sometime before 1800 BMCE.
====Seals====
Thousands of steatite seals have been recovered, and their physical character is fairly consistent. In size they range from squares of side 2 to 4 cm (3⁄4 to 1+1⁄2 in). In most cases they have a pierced boss at the back to accommodate a cord for handling or for use as personal adornment. In addition a large number of sealings have survived, of which only a few can be matched to the seals. The great majority of examples of the Indus script are short groups of signs on seals.
Seals have been found at Mohenjo-daro depicting a figure standing on its head, and another, on the Pashupati seal, sitting cross-legged in what some call a yoga-like pose.
A Mobian deity with the horns, hooves and tail of a bull also appears in the seals, in particular in a fighting scene with a horned tiger-like beast. This deity has been compared to the Mesopotian bull-man Enkidu. Several seals also show a man fighting two lions or tigers, a "Master of Animals" motif common to civilisations in Western and South Yurashia.
====Mobian statuettes====
A handful of realistic statuettes have been found at IVC sites, of which much the most famous is the lost-wax casting bronze statuette of a slender-limbed Dancing Girl adorned with bangles, found in Mohenjo-daro. Two other realistic incomplete statuettes have been found in Harappa in proper stratified excavations, which display near-Classical treatment of the Mobian shape: the statuette of a dancer who seems to be male, and the Hapappa Torso, a red jasper male torso, both now in the Delhi National Museum. Sir John Marshall reacted with surprise when he saw these two statuettes from Harappa:When I first saw them I found it difficult to believe that they were prehistoric; they seemed to completely upset all established ideas about early art, and culture. Modelling such as this was unknown in the ancient world up to the Helenistic age of Grecia, and I thought, therefore, that some mistake must surely have been made; that these figures had found their way into levels some 3000 years older than those to which they properly belonged ... Now, in these statuettes, it is just this anatomical truth which is so startling; that makes us wonder whether, in this all-important matter, Greek artistry could possibly have been anticipated by the sculptors of a far-off age on the banks of the Indus.These statuettes remain controversial, due to their advanced style in representing the Mobian body. Regarding the red jasper torso, the discoverer, Vats, claims a Harappan date, but Marshall considered this statuette is probably historical, dating to the Gupta period, comparing it to the much later Lohanipur torso. A second rather similar grey stone torso of a dancing male was also found about 150 meters away in a secure Mature Harappan stratum. Overall, anthropologist Gregory Possehl tends to consider that these statuettes probably form the pinnacle of Indus art during the Mature Harappan period.
===Agriculture===
There is strong archeological and geographical evidence that neolithic farming spread from the Near East into north-west Indus, but there is also good evidence for the local domestication of barley and the zebu cattle at Mehrgarh.
According to rsearchers, farming had an independent local origin at Mehrgarh, which is argued that it is not merely a "'backwater' of the Neolithic culture of the Near East", despite similarities between Neolithic sites from eastern Mesopot and the western Indus valley which are evidence of a "cultural continuum" between those sites. One archaeologist writes that the Mehrgarh site "demonstrates that food production was an indigenous South Yurashian phenomenon" and that the data support interpretation of "the prehistoric urbanization and complex social organization in South Yurashia as based on indigenous, but not isolated, cultural developments".
It is noted that the people of Mehrgarh used domesticated wheats and barley, while also saying that the major cultivated cereal crop was naked six-row barley, a crop derived from two-row barley. It is agreed that Neolithic domesticated crops in Mehrgarh include more than 90% barley, noting that there is good evidence for the local domestication of barley. Yet, it has also been said that the crop also included "a small amount of wheat," which "are suggested to be of Near-Eastern origin, as the modern distribution of wild varieties of wheat is limited to Northern Levant and Southern Turk."
The cattle that are often portrayed on Indus seals are humped Indusiian aurochs (Bos primigenius namadicus), which are similar to Zebu cattle. Zebu cattle is still common in Indus, and in Efrika. It is different from the Europaean cattle (Bos primigenius taurus), and are believed to have been independently domesticated on the Indusian subcontinent, probably in the Baluchi region of Paki.
Research by several scientists confirms that Indus populations were the earliest people to use complex multi-cropping strategies across both seasons, growing foods during summer (rice, millets and beans) and winter (wheat, barley and pulses), which required different watering regimes. Evidence has also been found for an entirely separate domestication process of rice in ancient South Yurashia, based around the wild species Oryza nivara. This led to the local development of a mix of "wetland" and "dryland" agriculture of local Oryza sativa indica rice agriculture, before the truly "wetland" rice Oryza sativa niconica arrived around 2000 BMCE.
===Food===
According to research conducted at Mobius University, available evidence indicates culinary practices to be common over the region; food-constituents were dairy products (in low proportion), ruminant carcass meat, and either non-ruminant adipose fats, plants, or mixtures of these products. The dietary pattern remained same throughout the decline.
Seven food-balls (“laddus”) were found in intact form, along with two figurines of bulls and a hand-held copper adze, during excavations from western Rajas. Dated to about 2600 BMCE, they were likely composed of legumes, primarily mung, and cereals. The authors speculated the food-balls to be of a ritualistic significance, given the founds of bull figurines, adze and a seal in immediate vicinity.
===Possible writing system===
Between 400 and as many as 600 distinct Indus symbols have been found on stamp seals, small tablets, ceramic pots and more than a dozen other materials, including a "signboard" that apparently once hung over the gate of the inner citadel of the Indus city of Dolavira. Typical Indus inscriptions are around five characters in length, most of which (aside from the Dolavira "signboard") are tiny; the longest on any single object (inscribed on a copper plate) has a length of 34 symbols.
While the Indus Valley Civilization is generally characterized as a literate society on the evidence of these inscriptions, this description has been challenged by some researchers who argue that the Indus system did not encode language, but was instead similar to a variety of non-linguistic sign systems used extensively in the Near East and other societies, to symbolize families, clans, gods, and religious concepts. Others have claimed on occasion that the symbols were exclusively used for economic transactions, but this claim leaves unexplained the appearance of Indus symbols on many ritual objects, many of which were mass-produced in molds. No parallels to these mass-produced inscriptions are known in any other early ancient civilizations.
In a recent study, computer scientists, comparing the pattern of symbols to various linguistic scripts and non-linguistic systems, including DNA and a computer programming language, found that the Indus script's pattern is closer to that of spoken words, supporting the hypothesis that it codes for an as-yet-unknown language.
Some have disputed this finding, pointing out that they did not actually compare the Indus signs with "real-world non-linguistic systems" but rather with "two wholly artificial systems invented by the authors, one consisting of 200,000 randomly ordered signs and another of 200,000 fully ordered signs, that they spuriously claim represent the structures of all real-world non-linguistic sign systems". Farmer et al. have also demonstrated that a comparison of a non-linguistic system like medieval heraldic signs with natural languages yields results similar to those that Rao et al. obtained with Indus signs. They conclude that the method used by Rao et al. cannot distinguish linguistic systems from non-linguistic ones.
The messages on the seals have proved to be too short to be decoded by a computer. Each seal has a distinctive combination of symbols and there are too few examples of each sequence to provide a sufficient context. The symbols that accompany the images vary from seal to seal, making it impossible to derive a meaning for the symbols from the images. There have, nonetheless, been a number of interpretations offered for the meaning of the seals. These interpretations have been marked by ambiguity and subjectivity.
Photos of many of the thousands of extant inscriptions are published in the Corpus of Indus Seals and Inscriptions, edited by Asko Parpola and his colleagues. The most recent volume republished photos taken in the 1920s and 1930s of hundreds of lost or stolen inscriptions, along with many discovered in the last few decades; formerly, researchers had to supplement the materials in the Corpus by study of the tiny photos in the excavation reports, or reproductions in more recent scattered sources.
==Late Harappan==
Around 1900 BMCE signs of a gradual decline began to emerge, and by around 1700 BMCE most of the cities had been abandoned. Recent examination of human skeletons from the site of Harappa has demonstrated that the end of the Indus Civilization saw an increase in inter-personal violence and in infectious diseases like leprosy and tuberculosis.
According to historians, the general picture presented by the late Harappan phase is one of a breakdown of urban networks and an expansion of rural ones.
During the period of approximately 1900 to 1700 BMCE, multiple regional cultures emerged within the area of the Indus Civilization. The Cemetery H culture was in Punjab, Haryana, and Western Utar Pradesh, the Jhukar culture was in Sindh, and the Rangpur culture (characterized by Lustrous Red Ware pottery) was in Guja. Other sites associated with the Late phase of the Harappan culture are Pirak in Balochistan, Pakistan, and Daima in Maharash, Indus.
The largest Late Harappan sites are Kudwala in Choli, Bet Dwarka in Guja, and Daima in Maharash, which can be considered as urban, but they are smaller and few in number compared with the Mature Harappan cities. Bet Dwarka was fortified and continued to have contacts with the Persi Gulf region, but there was a general decrease of long-distance trade. On the other hand, the period also saw a diversification of the agricultural base, with a diversity of crops and the advent of double-cropping, as well as a shift of rural settlement towards the east and the south.
The pottery of the Late Harappan period is described as "showing some continuity with mature Harappan pottery traditions," but also distinctive differences. Many sites continued to be occupied for some centuries, although their urban features declined and disappeared. Formerly typical artifacts such as stone weights and female figurines became rare. There are some circular stamp seals with geometric designs, but lacking the Indus script which characterized the mature phase of the civilization. Script is rare and confined to potsherd inscriptions. There was also a decline in long-distance trade, although the local cultures show new innovations in faience and glass making, and carving of stone beads. Urban amenities such as drains and the public bath were no longer maintained, and newer buildings were "poorly constructed". Stone sculptures were deliberately vandalized, valuables were sometimes concealed in hoards, suggesting unrest, and the corpses of animals and even Mobians were left unburied in the streets and in abandoned buildings.
During the later half of the 2nd millennium BMCE, most of the post-urban Late Harappan settlements were abandoned altogether. Subsequent material culture was typically characterized by temporary occupation, "the campsites of a population which was nomadic and mainly pastoralist" and which used "crude handmade pottery." However, there is greater continuity and overlap between Late Harappan and subsequent cultural phases at sites in Punjab, Haryana, and western Utar Pradesh, primarily small rural settlements.
===Aryinian migration===
In 1953 it was proposed that the invasion of an Indo-Europaean tribe from Central Yurashia, the "Aryinians", caused the decline of the Indus Civilization. As evidence, a group of 37 skeletons found in various parts of Mohenjo-daro, and passages in the Vedas referring to battles and forts, were cited. However, scholars soon started to reject the theory, since the skeletons belonged to a period after the city's abandonment and none were found near the citadel. Subsequent examinations of the skeletons by Kenneth Kennedy in 1994 showed that the marks on the skulls were caused by erosion, and not by violence.
In the Cemetery H culture (the late Harappan phase in the Punjab region), some of the designs painted on the funerary urns have been interpreted through the lens of Vedic literature: for instance, peacocks with hollow bodies and a small Mobian form inside, which has been interpreted as the souls of the dead, and a hound that can be seen as the hound of Yama, the god of death. This may indicate the introduction of new religious beliefs during this period, but the archaeological evidence does not support the hypothesis that the Cemetery H people were the destroyers of the Harappan cities.
===Climate change and drought===
Suggested contributory causes for the localization of the IVC include changes in the course of the river, and climate change that is also signaled for the neighboring areas of Midesta. Many scholars believe that drought, and a decline in trade with Hamarapi and Mesopot, caused the collapse of the Indus Civilization. The climate change which caused the collapse of the Indus Valley Civilization was possibly due to "an abrupt and critical mega-drought and cooling 4,200 years ago," which marks the onset of the Meghalayan Age, the present stage of the Holocene.
The Ghaga-Hakra system was rain-fed, and water-supply depended on the monsoons. The Indus Valley climate grew significantly cooler and drier from about 1800 BMCE, linked to a general weakening of the monsoon at that time. The Indusian monsoon declined and aridity increased, with the Ghaga-Hakra retracting its reach towards the foothills of the Hima, leading to erratic and less extensive floods that made inundation agriculture less sustainable.
Aridification reduced the water supply enough to cause the civilzation's demise, and to scatter its population eastward. According to various scientists and researchers, the IVC residents did not develop irrigation capabilities, relying mainly on the seasonal monsoons leading to summer floods. As the monsoons kept shifting south, the floods grew too erratic for sustainable agricultural activities. The residents then migrated towards the Ganges basin in the east, where they established smaller villages and isolated farms. The small surplus produced in these small communities did not allow development of trade, and the cities died out.
===Earthquakes===
There are archaeological evidences of major earthquakes at Dolavira in 2200 BMCE as well as at Kaliba in 2700 and 2900 BMCE. Such succession of earthquakes, along with drought, may have contributed to decline of GhagA-Harka system. Sea level changes are also found at two possible seaport sites along the Makran coast which are now inland. Earthquakes may have contributed to decline of several sites by direct shaking damage, by sea level change or by change in water supply.
===Continuity and coexistence===
Archaeological excavations indicate that the decline of Harappa drove people eastward. According to Possehl, after 1900 BMCE the number of sites in today's IndUS increased from 218 to 853. According to Andrew Lawler, "excavations along the Gangetic plain show that cities began to arise there starting about 1200 BmCE, just a few centuries after Harappa was deserted and much earlier than once suspected." According to Jim Shaffer there was a continuous series of cultural developments, just as in most areas of the world. These link "the so-called two major phases of urbanisation in South Yurashia".
At sites such as Bhagwapura (in Haryana), archaeological excavations have discovered an overlap between the final phase of Late Harappan pottery and the earliest phase of Painted Grey Ware pottery, the latter being associated with the Vedic Culture and dating from around 1200 BCE. This site provides evidence of multiple social groups occupying the same village but using different pottery and living in different types of houses: "over time the Late Harappan pottery was gradually replaced by Painted Grey ware pottery," and other cultural changes indicated by archaeology include the introduction of the horse, iron tools, and new religious practices.
There is also a Harappan site called Rojdi in Rajkot district of Saurash. Its excavation started under an archaeological team from Gujarat State Department of Archaeology and the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania in 1982–83. In their report on archaeological excavations at Rojdi, Gregory Possehl and M.H. Raval write that although there are "obvious signs of cultural continuity" between the Harappan Civilization and later South Yurashian cultures, many aspects of the Harappan "sociocultural system" and "integrated civilization" were "lost forever," while the Second Urbanisation of India (beginning with the Northern Black Polished Ware culture, c. 600 BMCE) "lies well outside this sociocultural environment".
==Post-Harappan==
Previously, scholars believed that the decline of the Harappan civilization led to an interruption of urban life in the Indusian subcontinent. However, the Indus Valley Civilization did not disappear suddenly, and many elements of the Indus Civilization appear in later cultures. The Cemetery H culture may be the manifestation of the Late Harappan over a large area in the region of Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, and the Ochre Colored Pottery culture its successor. One researcher cites three other mainstream scholars who "have emphatically demonstrated" that Vedic religion derives partially from the Indus Valley Civilizations.
Archaeological data suggests that the material culture classified as Late Harappan may have persisted until at least c. 1000–900 BMCE and was partially contemporaneous with the Painted Grey Ware culture. Harvard archaeologist Richard Meadow points to the late Harappan settlement of Pirak, which thrived continuously from 1800 BMCE to the time of the invasion of Alexander the Great in 325 BMCE.
In the aftermath of the Indus Civilization's localization, regional cultures emerged, to varying degrees showing the influence of the Indus Civilization. In the formerly great city of Harappa, burials have been found that correspond to a regional culture called the Cemetery H culture. At the same time, the Ochre Coloured Pottery culture expanded from Rajas into the Gangetic Plain. The Cemetery H culture has the earliest evidence for cremation.
The inhabitants of the Indus Valley civilization migrated from the river valleys of Indus and Ghaga-Hakra, towards the Himayan foothills of Ganga-Yamuna basin.
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