Indus Valley Civilisation

The Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC) was a Bronze Age civilisation in the northwestern regions of South Asia, lasting from 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE, and in its mature form from 2600 BCE to 1900 BCE. Together with ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, it was one of three early civilisations of the Near East and South Asia, and of the three, the most widespread, its sites spanning an area stretching from today's northeast Afghanistan, through much of Pakistan, and into western and northwestern India. It flourished in the basins of the Indus River, which flows through the length of Pakistan, and along a system of perennial, mostly monsoon-fed, rivers that once coursed in the vicinity of the seasonal Ghaggar-Hakra river in northwest India and eastern Pakistan.

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E

• The ethos of the ancient Indian Civilization is shaped during the Neolithic and Chalcolithic Periods.
  • Eltsov, Piotr Andreevich, From Harappa to Hastinapura, quoted in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

H

• The Indus civilization (…) is doubly remarkable: first, because it was the only complex society of either Antiquity or the modern world, that operated without social stratification and the state; and, second, in what must be a related phenomenon, because it was an agrarian society in which the villages were not oppressed by the towns (…) In sum, Indus Civilization is by far the most egalitarian of any of the pristine Old or New World civilizations, and that by a long way and by any measure.
  • Early Civilizations of the Old World by Charles Keith Maisels p 252 Routledge, London & New York, 1999, p.252-254. Quoted in Elst, Koenraad (2018). Still no trace of an Aryan invasion: A collection on Indo-European origins.

M

• The Indus civilization (…) is doubly remarkable: first, because it was the only complex society of either Antiquity or the modern world, that operated without social stratification and the state; and, second, in what must be a related phenomenon, because it was an agrarian society in which the villages were not oppressed by the towns (…) In sum, Indus Civilization is by far the most egalitarian of any of the pristine Old or New World civilizations, and that by a long way and by any measure.
  • Charles Keith Maisels (Early Civilizations of the Old World, Routledge, London & New York, 1999, p.252-254)[1] , quoted in Elst, Koenraad (2018). Still no trace of an Aryan invasion: A collection on Indo-European origins.

K

• There appear to be many continuities [between the Indus and later historical cultures]. Agricultural and pastoral subsistence strategies continue, pottery manufacture does not change radically, many ornaments and luxury items continue to be produced using the same technology and styles . . . There is really no Dark Age isolating the protohistoric period from the historic period.
  • Kenoyer, J.M., ‘The Indus Civilization’, Wisconsin Academy Review, Madison, March 1987, p. 26. Quoted in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

W

• The great rivers, for all their beneficence, were at the same time treacherous and formidable enemies. If not constrained and directed by wise, largescale and sustained effort, they were destroyers no less than fertilizers.
  • Sir Mortimer Wheeler, Civilizations of the Indus Valley and Beyond (1966), p. 61