I. The Ancient Indus Valley

Harappa was a city in the Indus Valley civilization that flourished around 2,500 B.C. in the western part of South Asia.

The Indus Valley was home to the largest of the four ancient urban civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and China. It was not discovered until the 1920's. Most of its ruins, even its major cities, remain to be excavated. The ancient Indus Valley script has not been deciphered. Basic questions about the Indus people who created this highly complex culture remain unanswered.

The Harappans used the same size bricks and standardized weights across a wide swathe of South Asia. There were other highly developed cultures in the area. Some are thousands of years older. Skeletons testify to a continual intermingling of races. Harappa was settled before what we call the ancient Indus civilization flourished, and it remains a living town today.

In fact, there seems to have been another large river which parallel and west of the Indus in the third and ourth millenium B.C. This was the ancient Ghaggra-Hakra River or Sarasvati of the Rig Veda. Its lost banks are slowly being laid out by researchers. Along its bed, archaeologists are discovering a whole new set of ancient towns and cities.

Ancient Mesopotamian texts speak of trading with at least two seafaring civilizations - Makkan and Meluha - in the neighborhood of India in the third millennium B.C. This trade was conducted with real financial sophistication in amounts that could involve tons of copper. The Mesopotamians speak of Meluha as an aquatic culture, where water and bathing played a central role. One of its most well-known structures is the Great Bath of Mohenjo-daro. A number of Indus Valley objects have been found buried with Mesopotamians.

This site tells the story of the ancient Indus Valley through the words and photographs of the world's leading scholars in the US, Europe, India and Pakistan. It starts with the re-discovery of Harappa in the early 19th century by the explorer Charles Masson and later Alexander Burnes, and formally by the archaeologist Sir Alexander Cunningham in the 1870's. This work led to the the first excavations in the early 20th century at Harappa by Rai Bahadur Daya Ram Sahni, and by R.D. Banerji at another Indus Valley city, Mohenjodaro.

Since 1986, the joint Pakistani American Harappa Archaeological Research Project (HARP) has been carrying out the first major excavations at the site since before independence in 1946. These excavations have the shown Harappa to have been far larger than once thought, perhaps supporting a population of 50,000 at certain periods. These excavations, which are continuing in 1997, are rewriting assumptions about the Indus Valley. New facts, objects and examples of writing are being discovered each season.

Almost 600 slides from HARP appear this site, including 90 Slide Introduction to the Ancient Indus Valley, and a detailed look at the discoveries from 1995-1998 at the site, including the comprehensive evidence for a pre-Indus Ravi Phase dating to 3300 BCE. Another 90 slide section covers the finds from 2000-2001 and includes an essay on the early development of arts and technologies in the Indus Valley. Another section explores the mysterious so-called granary and circular platforms at Harappa. A fith 90 slide section covers further evidence for the Ravi and Kot Diji phases at the site. There is also a 103 slide series on Mohenjo-daro.