An Ancient Civilization Without Wars? | Harappa (Indus Valley)

This might be one of the absolute most fascinating ancient civilizations that I've ever researched. And this amazing civilization known as the Harappan or Indus Valley civilization was almost completely forgotten about until the 1800s and early 1900s when it was rediscovered and subsequently excavated. Seriously guys, I don't know how I made it through almost two decades of school without ever hearing about the Harappan civilization. So the Harappan civilization peaked from roughly 2500 BC to about 1500 BC in what is now Pakistan, northwestern India, and parts of Afghanistan. This civilization was incredibly advanced for its time. They had sophisticated urban planning with wide streets laid out in grids and elaborate sewage and drainage systems. This ancient people had indoor flushing toilets in roughly 2000 BC. But we'll talk more about the incredible achievements of the Indus Valley people in just a moment. But first, where did this civilization even come from? Well, as you'd guess from its name, the Indus River was critical to the development of civilization in this region. That's not surprising given the way other cultures were flourishing on the banks of the Nile, the Tigris, and Euphrates rivers at the same point in history. Oh, which by the way, artifacts from the Harappan civilization have been found as far away as Mesopotamia. So clearly there was some pretty serious long-distance trade going on back then. Archaeologists believe that the first significant agriculture in the region probably took place circa 7000 BC. The soil was highly fertile thanks to the Indus River and its silt deposits. But the flipside of the river's gifts of irrigation and fertile soil was there were periods of tremendous and devastating floods that the people living in the region had to contend with. Now things are somewhat fuzzy for a couple millennia after that, but it's clear that there were developments made in grain cultivation and that peoples in the region began raising cattle and other domestic animals. Then around 3000 to 2500 BC, the population in this area absolutely explodes. Settlements start growing into cities, and some estimates place the total peak population of the region at almost a million people. That's just incredible for the era. And this is where the hallmarks of Harappan civilization really start to appear. Water engineering, standardized building practices and materials, and large-scale long-distance trade. Now a couple cities out of over 1500 Harappan settlements have already been pretty extensively excavated. The two major cities were Harappa, where the name for the civilization comes from, and Mohenjo-Daro. Mohenjo-Daro is about 250 miles south of Harappa. And both of these cities have been estimated to have had populations of maybe 40,000 inhabitants each, which is an impressive level of urbanization for the era. But there's been more recent estimates as to the population of Mohenjo-Daro, and those place the population of Mohenjo-Daro at its peak at nearly 100,000 people, which would have been a very impressive city. And these cities were intricately laid out, with streets at right angles on east-west and north-south alignments. And this urban planning, this grid structure, wasn't confined just to the big cities, it's also been found in smaller settlements, seem to have been incredibly organized and paid special attention to detail in their building materials. Harappan houses were built with durable, baked clay bricks, is that they seem to have only come in a couple sizes, precise down to centimeters. And these same sizes of bricks were used all over the Harappan civilization's region, an area that covers almost 500,000 square miles, which is roughly the size of modern-day Peru. There are quite a few multi-story houses that have been found, and in Mohenjo-Daro, almost every house had a private bathroom, and a number of those had toilets made from brick. These consisted of a seat over a brick conduit that then led out into the city's drainage. Now granted, some other houses just had something resembling a chamber pot, but the level of water engineering across Harappan cities is very impressive. These people clearly had an advanced level of water engineering, as shown by the impressive systems of drains and gutters and even sewers. These wastewater-removing drains and toilets would have been a huge step forward in sanitation and hygiene in an urban environment. And now it's not clear what level of understanding the Harappans had in terms of medicine as we would perceive it, but one thing that is absolutely clear is that the Harappans were practicing some sort of basic brain surgery at a very early period in their history. A skull dating to 4,300 years ago was found during the excavation of a Harappan settlement. That skull shows evidence of some sort of trauma and then drilling a small hole or a series of small holes into the skull, perhaps to relieve some pressure. This skull shows significant evidence of healing around the drill marks, which indicates that the patient must have survived for some time after the surgery. The Indus Valley people seem to be some of the most hygiene-conscious in the ancient world. Mohenjo-Daro features huge public baths, and private baths have been found in Harappan houses all over. Baths and bathing platforms are common features in Harappan settlements, and Mohenjo-Daro had hundreds of private wells in addition to the city and public wells. And speaking of water, there's a Harappan port city called Dolavera that is extremely interesting for the way it was built. It was likely built with an understanding and an eye toward protection from tsunamis and storms. The way the Harappans built extremely thick walls around the city has drawn comparison to the coastal hazard management walls built by the United States and Japan today. This shows a significant level of architectural understanding and planning. Now this is where it gets really wild. Part of the reason researchers think those walls were built as storm protection measures rather than as standard defensive barriers is because the Harappan civilization seems to have been incredibly peaceful. These guys do not seem to have been a warlike people. Despite having tons of metalworking skills as shown by tools and jewelry and decorative pieces that have been found, no helmets or armor have been found in Harappan settlements. Now a few spears have been found, but there are no monuments celebrating battles or wars or conquests. Likewise, there's no depictions of warriors or warfare, which again are common in other Bronze Age cultures. In fact, what makes the Harappans so interesting is not only what they had, but what they didn't have. In over 700 years of history at Mohenjo-Daro, archaeologists haven't found any signs of destruction or warfare. There's no buildings damaged by battle or anything like that. There's been no human remains found showing battle wounds. There's also been no large tombs or palaces found at Mohenjo-Daro or Harappa. Nothing that looks like a public temple or central governing building. Although it's possible that what scholars once thought was a Buddhist stupa near Mohenjo-Daro belonging to a later era might actually have been a step pyramid dating to the Harappan civilization. I think the jury is still out on that one though. But in any case, there's hardly any evidence of organized religion or a central governing body in Harappan civilization. Most civilizations of this period have some depictions of kings, priests, and warriors, but there's nothing like that. So is it possible that the Harappans lacked both a governing state and an organized religion? Were the Indus Valley people simply a conglomeration of decentralized city-states that shared a common culture? Or were they unified in some sort of way that we don't yet fully understand? At least for now, the Harappans seem to have been a stateless society. So how did this society defend themselves then? Few weapons have been found and the ones that have been found, like stone maces, were already woefully obsolete by that period compared to the weapons of other cultures. And it's not like the Harappans were living in isolation completely cut off from the rest of the world. They were vigorous maritime traders. Their sailors likely took advantage of the monsoon winds to cover long distances by sea. And Dholavira, that port city, it had extensive dockworks, indicating there must have been quite a bit of boat traffic coming and going. And as mentioned before, Harappan seals have been found all over in various sites of other Bronze Age cultures. Was it the Harappans' huge population size that intimidated potential external enemies? Or did they have some flair for diplomacy that safeguarded their civilization for roughly a thousand years? Because Harappan cities and settlements don't look like places that were that worried about military threats. The perimeter walls aren't extensive, there's no signs of moats, and there's no concentric rings of fortifications that would indicate serious concern over military threats. So I guess the absence of depictions of warriors makes sense then, but in the absence of kings and priests and warriors, was there any sort of hierarchy in the civilization? So for a time, some imagined the Harappan civilization to be a sort of egalitarian paradise. But more recently, that idea has been seriously challenged. The cities of the Indus Valley might have been overseen by different clans. It might have been a merchant-based clan system. It certainly seems like in some cases, elites were living in walled compounds and there are good neighborhoods and maybe some not-so-good neighborhoods, as shown by the disparity in housing sizes. So probably there was some sort of hierarchy in place, some sort of stratification of wealth. The prominent role of the merchant class, though, might explain the standardized weights and measures that have been found all over the region. Little toy carts made from clay have been found, along with little toy boats that kind of resemble trading vessels, and that makes me wonder if maybe the merchant class was something to aspire to. Maybe it was something that one dreamed of growing up to, much in the same way that kids today have G.I. Joes and superhero action figures that they play with and imagine themselves ultimately growing into that heroic role. Even these toys and figurines are impressive in their own right, though. Many of them are of animals, and archaeologists have found a toy ox that has a head that can be rotated and moved around, and other animal figurines have been found with movable tails and legs and heads. Now, the Harappans didn't just depict animals as toys, they depicted animals all over, many of which were found on stone seals, and some of those look very much like unicorns. And these depictions of animals are often accompanied by inscribed symbols. The big question is, though, does this script represent a language, words that can be spoken, or is it purely symbolic and iconography? This is a pretty heated debate, actually, with loads of arguments on both sides. I can't really do it justice in a short period of time, so just know this, that this is just a very basic outline and summary of what is an extensive amount of scholarship, arguments back and forth, and a lot of disagreement. So the script has not been deciphered, despite decades of painstaking research in that regard. So part of the problem is that nothing like a Rosetta Stone has been found, no objects have been found with other languages on them that could then be used to triangulate what these symbols mean. And the other problem is that most of the inscriptions are pretty short, just a handful of symbols in most cases. There was a tablet found with a 17-symbol long inscription, but that's really about it, and there's nothing of any substantial length that people trying to decipher this script can use. So on that basis, some have argued that the script does not correspond to spoken language and that it's purely symbolic. They point to the relatively small number of distinct signs that have been found compared to other written languages, like Egyptian hieroglyphs. Further complicating things, those in the pro-language camp of the Indus script debate aren't in agreement over what language the script might be representing. Some say a form of Sanskrit, others say Dravidian, and it doesn't seem like there's a consensus on that front either. But there has been some statistical analysis done that at least shows the script has the structure of a written language. But again, nothing in this debate is really that conclusive yet. So I say that because I think this is one ancient history debate that might eventually be solved. The thing to keep in mind is only a very small percentage of Harappan sites have been excavated. We're talking about just 10% roughly out of over 1500 settlements. And that also assumes that no more settlements will be found, which in the advance of LiDAR and other technology might be a mistaken assumption. As many in the pro-language camp have argued, what if the Harappan civilization committed its longer pieces of writing to perishable materials? It might take only one chance to find preserved in a piece of pottery or some other container to completely change the whole conversation. So I'm optimistic about this mystery being solved. It seems like we're just scratching the surface, archaeologically, of the Harappan civilization. Which is good because there are so many mysteries about this civilization. And I should probably point out here, whether we call them the Harappans or Indus Valley civilization, we don't actually know what these people referred to themselves as or what they referred to their lands as. Even that most basic piece of information about this people remains opaque to us. And even more mysterious than that is what exactly happened to the Harappans? Where did this incredible civilization go? Most of the cities appear to have been abandoned starting around 1700 BC and by 1500 BC almost completely deserted. There's clearly a marked decline in civilization. Their script fell out of use, those amazing building standards and brick-making processes were abandoned, trade seems to have dwindled to almost nothing, and even the quality of art suffered. There are a few different theories about what happened. For a long time it was assumed that the Harappan civilization was conquered by external invaders, some sort of military conquest brought the Harappan civilization to an end. But of late, that theory seems to have fallen out of favor. Another theory is that some combination of famine and desertification occurred, while others have proposed that it was some combination of deforestation, earthquakes, flooding, etc. Either way, it seems like there's at least some agreement that it was a natural disaster of some kind that precipitated the rapid decline of the Harappan civilization. It might not be clear exactly what happened, but it is clear that whatever did happen was pretty bad. There are signs in Mohenjo-Daro that people left in a hurry. Skeletons have been found that show no signs of attempted burial. There were house fires, buildings collapsed, and it seems people left in such a hurry that they didn't even take with them things like jewelry, tools, and precious metals. And the people of Harappa seem to have suffered a pretty similar to the people of Mohenjo-Daro. From this exodus period, skeletons have been found showing signs of malnutrition and disease. After the Harappans moved out, a new culture moved in to what was left of their cities. But this culture shows no signs of trying to continue the advancements of the civilization that came before them. These post-Harappans made crude pottery and art and largely abandoned the sophisticated organization that the Harappans had before them. And then after that culture, another population came in, hot on their heels. This was a warlike people with superior weapons and horsemanship. By the time the Aryans entered the area, the Harappan civilization was already collapsed. But the scattered remnants of that once great civilization seems to have intermixed with the new arrivals. They likely shared their agricultural knowledge, aspects of their language, and other cultural artifacts. I might be overly optimistic again, but I think there's a good chance with continuing excavation and advances in technology like LIDAR that we might eventually have more conclusive answers about what happened to the Harappan civilization. There's just so many sites out there left to be excavated. There's so much out there to be discovered and deciphered that I think that we're going to learn so much more about this culture and what ultimately might have led to its decline. And this seems to me a critical question. What happened to this unusual civilization that built itself up through relatively peaceful means, or at least so it seems right now? Are there lessons that we can draw from the arc of this civilization and its ultimate decline that we could then apply to our own present and future? Because here's the thing. I sometimes talk to people who view ancient history as this dusty, old, stagnant subject that has no real bearing on our lives today. I naturally disagree with that sentiment. I think the evolution of knowledge of the Indus Valley people is a perfect example of the way in which ancient history is constantly evolving. It's being expanded and refined every year as new discoveries are made and reinterpreted that challenge our existing knowledge and assumptions. So on that note, I'll leave it right there. Thank you so much for joining me as we explore the ancient world together. I really appreciate you sticking around and I really appreciate if you consider liking this video so we can share our passion and excitement for ancient history with even more people. My name is Jay and I'll see you next time.