The Indus Valley Civilization: The First Planned Cities
The Indus Valley Civilization was the largest of the four ancient civilizations of the Old World — larger in area than Mesopotamia and Egypt combined. It flourished between about 2600 and 1900 BCE, at its height stretching across more than a million square kilometers of what is now Pakistan and northwest India. The two great cities of the civilization, Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, were among the largest in the ancient world, with populations of perhaps 40,000 each. Their streets were laid out on a regular grid, their houses were built of standardized fired bricks, and their sewers, wells, and bathing platforms were more sophisticated than those of contemporary Egypt or Mesopotamia.
The civilization is also the most mysterious of the four. Its script, found on thousands of seals, has not been deciphered. Its political system is unknown. Its religion is mostly unknown. After about six hundred years of urban life, the Indus cities were abandoned, and the civilization that built them disappeared, leaving behind only the ruins, the seals, and a long list of questions.
Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro had grid streets, standardized bricks, and private bathrooms four thousand years ago, and we still cannot read their writing. The Indus civilization is the great riddle of the ancient world — bigger than Sumer and Egypt combined at its height, and now known almost entirely through archaeology, since the script, the religion, and the political system have left almost no textual trace. Continue into the Vedic Period, Ashoka the Great, and the wider Silk Road world.