Harappa revealed a Bronze Age peer of Egypt and Sumer
From 3300 to 1300 BCE—mature between 2600 and 1900—the Indus Valley Civilisation ranked with Egypt, Mesopotamia, and China among the ancient world's great river cultures. Planned brick cities, drains, and craft workshops housed tens of thousands at Mohenjo-daro and Harappa alone.
Also called the Indus Civilisation or Harappan after its type site, this Bronze Age society occupied northwestern South Asia from 3300 to 1300 BCE, maturing between 2600 and 1900 BCE. Alongside Egypt, Mesopotamia, and China it ranks among the four early centers of Old World urban civilization. Harappa, excavated early in the twentieth century in what was then British India's Punjab (now Pakistan), gave the culture its archaeological nickname; Mohenjo-daro followed soon after. Cities show grid planning, baked-brick housing, elaborate drainage and water systems, large non-residential compounds, and advanced craft and metallurgy.
Mohenjo-daro and Harappa likely each held thirty to sixty thousand people. More than a thousand Mature Harappan sites are reported and nearly a hundred excavated, yet only five major urban centers stand out: Mohenjo-daro (UNESCO-listed in 1980), Harappa, Ganeriwala in Cholistan, Dholavira in western India, and Rakhigarhi in Haryana. The Indus River system's alluvial plains hosted the first identified sites; many others lie along the Ghaggar-Hakra in northwest India and eastern Pakistan, prompting labels such as Indus-Sarasvati Civilisation.
Recent geophysics suggests the Ghaggar-Hakra was a monsoon-fed perennial network that turned seasonal about four thousand years ago as the civilisation waned—not the snow-fed Sarasvati of Rigvedic poetry. In its mature phase the Indus world was roughly contemporary with Nile Egypt, Tigris-Euphrates Mesopotamia, and Yellow/Yangtze China, proving South Asia belonged in the first rank of early urban experiments.
Source: Indus Valley Civilisation
