The early civilization came from the river valleys, known as the Harappans, this civilization was in the area of modern-day Pakistan in the Indus Valley, dating as far back as 7,000 BCE.
Around 3,300 to 2,000 BCE, the early Indus Civilization appeared, and that's when the Acadians and the Sumerians began interacting, and then around the 3rd millennium was when the empire of Sargon the Great was established.
Then around the mature period, which is around 2600 BCE, is where most of the advanced structures were found, and if we go to Egypt, around 2500 BCE is roughly when the Pyramids were built.
Then around 1600 BCE is considered the late Indus Valley civilization, which is where the Babylonian empire was founded.
The Punjab region in Pakistan is where most of our archaeological dig sites are about the Indus Valley Civilization, found around Harappa, which is why it is known as the Harappan civilization too, the largest site is Mohenjo-Daro in the Sindh region.
We believe that over 40,000 people were living in that region alone, with around Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, there are over 1000 sites scattered all around both regions.
The reason why we think that this is a civilization is because of the sheer size of it all, the standardization of measurement and weight, we have found them using a measurement of 1.6mm which is precise, we can speculate that there was some cultural interchange, sin they were using bricks that were a standard size so measurements were needed.
In Mohenjo-Daro, we found some sites that these people lived in, from citadels, to public baths, and what was impressive is that we found sewerage systems for carrying waste, along with houses with wells.
Their jewellery is intricate and complicated with shells gathered from the Arabian Peninsula, and the type of jewellery was not only found at these sites but also in Mesopotamia too, and we speculate that there were probably ships transporting cargo from Mesopotamia and the now modern-day Mohenjo-Daro region.
Materials from what is now modern-day China and India, they also had their own writing system and they also made Symbols along with a wee known symbol of a Nazi Swastikas', before Hitler used in his campaigns it is a common symbol in Hinduism, often meaning good luck,.
But we don't really know much about them, other than the stuff we found at dig sites, and since we can't decipher their writing.
One of the strangest things about the Indus Valley Civilization is 'why did it end', they seemed to be thriving with good ties and imports from other civilizations, some ideas on why it ended were maybe they were invaded, some other theories are that it was because of climate change.
As one of the earliest civilizations on earth, with speculation that their whole population may reach 5 million, they used bricks and drainage systems for sewage, non-residential buildings, and water systems.
The civilisation started declining around 1800 BCE, and the drains and waterways started to become clogged, their writing started to fade, and the weights used in measuring were starting to fall out of use.
Around 2600 BCE, is when the early Harrapan civilization started developing urban centres, the cities of Harappa, Ganeriwala and Mohenjo-Daro in what is now modern-day Pakistan.
And Dholaviva, Kalibangan, Rakhgarhi, Rupar and Lothal in modern-day India, in baths and the sewage systems they used, fire-baked bricks since they can hold up to moisture.
Around 23,000 people lived in Harappa, which we know was a fortified city along with the religious and government centres in what is modern-day Pakistan,
The houses were built of red sand and clay, spanning over 150 hectares, which is 370 acres.
The cities had citadels, which were at the centre of the civilization. Since the Indus River had elevated areas, the Harappans fortified them to have a large, bird's-eye view of the whole area.
Along with the expansive sewage system they made, and the public baths, we also found they had garbage collection, and they also also had a high regard for spiritual piety and hygiene.
With their advanced architecture, they built dockyards, warehouses, granaries for grain storage, and large walls to protect them from invasions and floods.
Strangely, unlike Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, they did not build large structures or monuments.
Because the standardized bricks were all the same size, we assume that they did make a measurement system of sorts. Because the bricks were uniform, we can tell that their sphere of influence was big due to the spread of civilization.
They are the first civilization that we know of that made sewage and plumbing systems, what's interesting is these systems made during this time are more effective and advanced than some 3rd world countries.
Some homes drew water from wells, and all the houses were connected to the sewage system, even the houses on the outskirts of the city, this evidently means that they had high regard for themselves to be sanitary and clean.
The Harappans also did seal making, which was used in stamps to mark goods, carvings like water buffalos, tigers and elephants were artefacts found by archaeologists.
They also made strides in metalwork, with metals like Tin, Copper, Bronze lead, and others, they also used a semi-rare gemstone, Carnelian, which is dark orange in colour, which they used in jewellery.
The Harappans also traded maritimely with others and had a trading network spanning the Middle East to central Asia. They also may have been the first to use wheeled carts pulled by oxen, and they also did shell work with their maritime imports from what is now modern-day Oman.
The majority of their imports are from places like modern-day China for jade, and India for copper and lead, they mainly traded pottery like terracotta pots, sea shells, precious metals and coloured gemstones like lapis lazuli and turquoise, pearls and jade.
They were a part of the Chalcolithic period, also known as the Copper Age, which is around 4300 - 3200 BCE, which showed an uptake of making more pottery that was very similar to the pottery by the Harappans, Turkmenistan and northern Iran.
Then there is the early Harappan period, which is around 3200 -2600 BCE, and there are many similarities with other civilizations in their culture, By way, they make their seals and use them to mark goods, along with mystical animals like unicorns.
We also found a seal depicting Mohinjo-Daro, a half-human, half-buffalo monster fighting a tiger. This might symbolise the fighting of Gilgamesh, a known folk hero in Mesopotamian poems, and Aruru, the Sumerian earth and fertility goddess.
When we excavated these sites in the Indus Valley, we saw the art and culture of the Indus Valley civilisation, sculptures, and figures made from bronze, terracotta, and steatite.
Along with gold jewellery and a head of what we presume to be a priest wearing a robe, we have also found another statue of what we have dubbed the dancing girl. It looks like a girl with one hand on her right hip. We have also found other terracotta sculptures, including animals like bears, cows, and monkeys.
We also know they were very organised, due to their hierarchies, their evenly sized and spaced out bricks, their seals and weights are well balanced and were similar in weight, with everything so uniform and well balanced we know that there was a kind of central government or governing body making sure it all of them were correct and proper.
Several theories say what kind of governing body they had, some say it was a central governing state, and some say that the whole thing was similar to a state-controlled area.
Meaning that the whole thing was organised by one governing body, sign that this might be true was that there was evidence that there were settlements that were nearby raw materials and similar artefacts.
There is another theory that states that the Harappan civilization had a group of leaders each governing their respective region, instead, the theory is that there is no centralized state, other people have theorised that there was no central government and everyone was considered an equal.
We have found some written materials that gave us great insight into the Anchent Mesopotamian and Egypt civilizations, but unfortunately, since the script is so difficult to decipher the script compared to the Egyptian script Hieroglyphs which we already figured out how to read, the Indus scripts are still a mystery to us, because we can't understand the script, other than finding artefacts, the majority of our knowledge on it is purely either guesswork or with deducting what they did via clues like the fact we know they traded with others, and were sea-faring people.
We also have not come across any elite burials, meaning no graves we have found that looked to be the tomb of a king or queen or someone with high status, maybe its because they believed in a different afterlife, or didn't believe in any at all.
But this doesn't rule out the social hierarchy, as we have found that there were differently sized houses, often meaning the bigger the house the more socially or economically the person was, along with the location of the house also symbolising the amount of wealth they had.
We also believe that the Harappans were not into much warfare as they were peaceful, at least we think so as we did find weapons at dig sites but we assume they did not involve themselves in war maybe because of their location or sheer population size.
The Indus Valley Civilization started its decline around 1800 BCE, some theories are that there was a great flood, climate change or the drying of the Sarawati river which hapened around 1900 BCE.
One other theory states that the large civilization broke up into smaller communities which we called them the late Harappan cultures.
Another way they could had their decline was the moonsoons, which was maybe a detrement to their livestock and crops.
The theory that mkes the most sense is during 1800 BCE decline, the Indus Valley became cooler and dryer and a potental earthquake causing the rivers to be disrupted, and causing the Harappans to move since their form of water is non-existanent, they may have tried to go to the Ganges lake in the east, but since they had a large population and they wen't able to trade since of their lack of resourses, and slowly abandoned their civilization by 1700 BCE.
