Ancient India

Lecture Notes

As I mentioned in the introduction to this lecture, almost everything we know about Harappan civilization comes from the archeological excavations done at Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro. The next nine slides take you through a brief tour of the excavation and its findings. This slide pictures one of the central areas excavated at the Harappa site. From it and others like it archeologists have concluded many of the facts I presented in previous slides. In this particular picture you can see the complexity of the city plan and of the architecture itself. Also visible is the advanced engineering of the city's drainage. The city in fact had running water, and each house had its own bathing area which, in a feat of advanced technology, drained directly into the city's sewer system. Finally, and perhaps most obvious, are the foundations of the city's defensive walls, silent witnesses that this period must have seen its share of war.