Harappans
Harappan Seal
The first people seem to have reached India from Africa
around 40,000 BC. At first they were hunters
and gatherers, like other
people around the world at this time. But by around 4000 BC, these
people had begun farming
and by 2500 BC settled in the Indus river valley, where they began to
live in cities and use irrigation
to water their fields. This is a little later than in West
Asia, probably because India was not as crowded as West Asia at
this time. A lot of people think that the reason they began to farm,
and then build cities was that a gradual warming
trend was making it harder to get water, and harder to find wild
plants to eat, every year. So every year more and more people moved
into the Indus river valley, where there was still plenty of water.
When it got really crowded there, people began to build cities.
There were two main cities that we know of, Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro,
about 400 kilometers (250 miles) away. Both are in modern Pakistan.
The people of these cities lived in stone houses
two and three stories high, and had sewage systems. They used bronze
tools. They may have learned to make bronze from the Sumerians.
The Harappa people used an early form of writing
based on hieroglyphs,
like the Egyptians.
But we can't read it, because there isn't very much left of it.
Why did people want to punch Socrates?
Where did Egyptians bury your liver?
How old are the Rocky Mountains?
What does a half-timbered house look like?
How do you spin wool?
(a project)
By around 2000 BC, though, the Harappan civilization had collapsed. We don't know what caused this collapse. Most people think the most likely reason is that the warming trend continued until there wasn't enough water even in the Indus river valley to support these cities and the farmers who fed them. Some people probably starved to death, while others moved up into the hills, where it was cooler and some rain fell.
But by 1500 BC, the Indus river valley saw an invasion of Indo-Europeans, like similar invasions in Greece and Italy a little earlier.
Learn by Doing - Harappan Seals
To find out more about the Harappans, check out these books from your local library or from Amazon:
The Young Oxford Book of Archaeology, by Norah Moloney (2000). A general introduction to archaeology, but with a good chapter on the Harappans.
Eyewitness India, by Manini Chatterjee (2002). Written for kids.
Ancient India, by Virginia Schomp (2005). Written for middle schoolers. Very good for reports.
A Peaceful Realm : The Rise And Fall of the Indus Civilization , by Jane McIntosh (2001). All about the Harappans, but written for adults rather than kids.
On to the Aryan invasion
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