The Indus Valley Civilization was an advanced ancient civilization that existed from 3300 BC to 1500 BC in present-day Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan. They achieved engineering, agricultural, and artistic advancements, and traded with Mesopotamia. Over 50 cities have been excavated, indicating a large population. They created pictographs but did not have a true written language. They were skilled in measuring length, mass, and time and produced copper, bronze, lead, and tin.
The Indus Valley Civilization, abbreviated IVC, was a sophisticated ancient civilization that existed from 3300 BC, the Early Bronze Age, to 1500 BC, the Late Bronze Age. The peak of its flowering was around 1900 BC. The Indus Valley Civilization was remarkably advanced for its time, achieving achievements in engineering, agriculture, urban planning, and artwork unduplicated by other civilizations until hundreds of years later. As its name suggests, IVC was centered in the Indus Valley region of present-day Pakistan and parts of India and Afghanistan.
The Indus Valley Civilization was contemporary with Bronze Age cultures in Turkey, Mesopotamia, Egypt and Minoan Crete. These cultures were some of the first examples of widespread urbanization, with cities of thousands supported by highly productive farmers. The Indus Valley Civilization is known to have traded by sea with Mesopotamia and had complex systems of docks and tidal locks for their coastal cities. While no evidence of IVC irrigation exists, this may have been obliterated by repeated flooding. Their main crop was barley.
Among the structures built by the engineers are massive shipyards, warehouses, granaries, brick platforms, protective walls, covered drains, and numerous houses. Unlike the Egyptian and Mesopotamian cultures, there are no trials or palaces or temples, or kings, armies and priests for that matter. The cities of the Indus Valley Civilization may have been at peace with each other for over a thousand years. Had major battles taken place, presumably there would have been some evidence for them, as there is still ample evidence of battles between Greek city-states, for example. Cities placed great emphasis on sanitation, and a large bath complex was excavated in one city.
Over fifty cities of the IVC have been excavated since excavations began in 1921. These cities are spread over a larger area than the present-day nation of Pakistan, indicating a large country comprising many tens of thousands or even more one hundred thousand people. This was clearly one of the first well established civilizations on Earth.
Though the Indus Valley Civilization was not really educated, they created pictographs called Indus Valley scripts. Over 400 distinct symbols have been found on seals, pottery vessels and other supports, including a sign hanging above the gate of a citadel in the Indus city of Dholavira. But these symbols arrived in strings that were too short to represent a true written language: the longest length of symbols found in a single inscription is 26. Some of these inscriptions were mass-produced using molds, a phenomenon unmatched in other ancient civilizations. The Indus Valley Civilization was also skilled at measuring length, mass, and time. The smallest known length division for an Indus scale was about 1.7 mm, while the smallest unit of weight was about a gram. Advanced in their metallurgy, the Indus civilization produced copper, bronze, lead and tin.
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