-Think about what makes up a civilization.
-How is this shared idea of civilization reflected in the region's art, religion, philosophy and daily life?
-What survives of this civilization today?
-Explore and discover the ancient city of Mohenjodarofamily members
-Choose five objects from your room. What could an archaeologist from the future tell about you from these objects? As an explorer, write a story about the person based on the five found objects.
Indus Valley Civilization
Keywords: Indus Valley Civilization, Harappa, Mohenjodaro, Lothal, Indus Valley seals, Great Bath at Mohenjodaro, grannary, Priest King statue, ancient civilizations, ancient urban settlements, ancient artifacts, interpreting artifacts, archaeologist, trade, barter, medium of exchange, city-state, primary and secondary sources of data, AD/CE, BC/BCE
What is a civilization?
- Learn about the geographic features, government, agriculture, trade, architecture, music, arts, religion, roles of men, women and children in the sites of the Indus Valley.
- How do you interpret archaeological evidence when there is no written record?
- Think like a scholar as you compare maps, timelines, primary and secondary sources of data and multiple cause and effect criteria to explain historical events.
Children are often fascinated by the pyramids
of Egypt and many know and relish all kinds of information and
facts about that era.
The remains from the Indus Valley Civilization are from
roughly the same period.
The links and information compiled here are about the people who
lived from 3500 to 1700 BCE in the Indus Valley in modern day
Pakistan and India and other countries of the region. The people of
this region developed a sophisticated and technologically advanced
urban culture. There is archaeological evidence of urban
planning, a system of uniform weights and measures, city wide
drainage systems in the settlements and knowledge of
metallurgy.
-
Some basic information about the ancient Indus Valley Civilization
-
Go on an expedition with famous explorer Professor Indus Meet Professor Indus. He is on a mission to find the ancient city of Mohenjodaro. Join him on his mission. Professor Indus and you go on a mission to find the city of Mohenjodro, explore the site when find it, dig for artifacts, put them in a museum and find out about the mysterious priest king.
(Image reproduced with permission of the BBC)
-
"Around the Indus in 90 slides" The author tell us that, "The Indus Valley Civilization was one of the world's first great urban civilizations. It flourished in the vast river plains and adjacent regions in what are now Pakistan and western India. The earliest cities became integrated into an extensive urban culture around 4,600 years ago and continued to dominate the region for at least 700 years, from 2600 to 1900 B.C. It was only in the 1920's that the buried cities and villages of the Indus valley were recognized by archaeologists as representing an undiscovered civilization.
This is a rich resource from the producers of www.harappa.com with simple text and lots of photographs at this link. -
A day with a bread maker's son in an ancient city: Read a fictional story about a boy living around 2100 BCE. The story is based on artifacts found at an Indus Valley excavation site. From the British Museum.
How the Indus Valley Civilization sites were discovered
Devised by Judith
Evans at Rosebery School in Loughborough.
http://www.collaborativelearning.org/indusvalley.pdf
In the village of Harappa (in
modern day Pakistan) there was a very old ruined castle built on a
hill. Nobody knew who had lived there but local legend said that it
had been the home of an evil Rajah (a kind of king), who had been
punished by the gods for the bad things he did, by a huge fire that
burned down his castle. The ruins had stood for hundreds of years
and children used to play on them.
Whenever visitors came they were shown the ruins.
In 1826 an English visitor called Charles Masson saw the
ruins. Some years later
another visitor, an archaeologist named Sir Alexander Cunningham,
visited Harappa, but the ruins had been knocked down and all that
was left was a huge mound of stones and rubble.
Four hundred miles away from Harappa was a large area of
ruined brick mounds.
The people who lived nearby thought that it was a very old burial
site, and called it Mohenjo-daro or 'Mound of the Dead'.
Historians used to think that the oldest cities in India and
Pakistan were built in 500BCE.
Charles Masson was an English traveler who visited North West India
in 1823. He wrote about the things he saw: 'In Harappa a ruined
brick castle with very high walls and towers, built on a hill'.
In 1853 Sir Alexander Cunningham went to study the ruins in Harappa.
The buildings had been completely knocked down, but he looked very
carefully through everything he could see. He found some small
square stones that were very polished. They had engravings of
animals and designs that no-one in India had found before. In
the 1920s R D Banerji found polished stone seals just like the ones
at Harappa. He was excavating at Mohenjo-daro, which was miles away
near the Indus River. He found these seals in the remains of a large
city and it was at least 3500 years old.
Since
these early excavations more and more archaeological work has been
done in the Indus valley area. Thousands of settlements and some
cities have been found. They all have the stone seals and artifacts
just like the ones at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro.
When
the British ruled India they built railways to make their lives
easier. An engineer called Robert Brunton ordered workers to knock
down some old walls and empty buildings. They laid the railway
tracks on the stones. In 1921 the Indian government paid an
archaeologist named Daya Ram Sahni, to find out more about Harappa.
A trench was dug along the top of a mound. In the bottom were
lots more of the stone seals like the ones Sir Alexander had found.
Mr. Sahni dug further down and found seven or eight layers of
houses, one on top of the other. It was an enormous city. It
was also a very old city, from about 2500 BCE. This meant that
it was as old as the pyramids in Egypt.
The cities at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro had streets, baths and
storage for grain. In
the houses archaeologists found gold and silver objects, toys made
from stone and jewelry made from precious stones. Nobody knows much
about the people who lived in
the Indus valley 4500 years ago, but we do know they were
some of the first people on earth to live in cities.
Indus Valley Civilization: Museum exhibits online
-
Guimet Museum of Asian Art, Paris, France http://www.museeguimet.fr/Indus-and-Mehrgarh-archaeological
-
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA: The Metropolitan Museum created this web feature, which surveys the flourishing of the world's earliest civilizations in Mesopotamia and surrounding regions - stretching from the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean across Iran and Central Asia to the Indus Valley http://www.metmuseum.org/explore/First_Cities/firstcities_main.htm http://www.metmuseum.org/explore/First_Cities/clothing_indus.htm
-
National Museum, Delhi, India http://www.nationalmuseumindia.gov.in/phis_ill.html
Questions and Talking Points Around the Slide Show
For young children:
-
What do you think their toys were like? Are they like your toys? What were they made of? Why?
-
Are their houses like ours?
For 2-5 graders:
-
Where is the Indus Valley?
-
How long ago did these cities exist?
-
What can we learn from the artifacts found there? Eg the seals tell us that they had a written language.
-
What did they do with the seals?
Grades 6 and Up:
-
Encourage the older child to read the essay http://www.harappa.com/indus3/e1.html
-
What can we infer about the people and their way of life from the buildings, city planning and absence of weapons?
-
What can we infer about trade and their contact with the rest of the world from the seals and weights and measures found?
Updated March 2011