One sheet page of facts on Indus Valley Civilization

1. What is civilization?
What does “civil” mean?
What makes an ancient culture count as a civilization?
How do archaeologists define civilization?
 If you can feed more people than yourself (cities rise up)
 Specialization (I get to do one thing, and I can trade it to you for the thing you do)
 Near or associated with Rivers (because they are surrounded by fertile land for growing more stuff)
Why the Indus valley?
Reliable flooding 2x yearly
Most archaeologists agree around 3000 bc
Evidence of trading with Mesopotamia as early as 3500bc
Largest ancient civilization - over 1500 sites identified
Timeline: 3500 BCE – 70 BCE
How do we know what we know about the Indus Valley
civilization?
Archaeology, digging up and studying cityruins and
artifacts
They did have a written language but we don’t know how
to read it. 
Amazing cities like Mohenjo Daro – pictures here:
http://www.mohenjodaro.net
 Uniform bricks
 Streets laid out in grids
 Indicates government – organization
 Catch wind
 Centralized drainage system – indicates large population
 Public bath / great bath largest public building
 Peaceful People – little evidence of warfare
 Almost no weapons ever found
Later Indiancivilizations had emphasis on ritual purity – might have been the purposeof the large bath (however, they are pretty sure
that the Indus civilizationdidn’t evolveinto thelater Indian civilizations, so maybenot).
Trade Relationships with Mesopotamia
Unique – seals/ Identification markers
Traded markers to Mesopotamia for cotton cloth
What happened to the Indus Valley People?
70 BCE faded away and disappeared - 3 theories:
 no weapons, could have been conquered by
Caucasians from the Caucasus
 Could have destroyed their own environment
through poor resource management
 Natural disaster – rivers dried up