The Indus Valley Civilization

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Written texts on clay or stone tablets were first found during the excavations of Harappa. They most likely dated back to the beginning of the civilization- around 3300-3200 BCE (Ibid). The language is indecipherable, because there are no similarities between the symbols used in the Mesopotamian writing system and the Indus Valley’s. However, researchers are using today’s technology in computer science to try to attempt to decipher the language. But it is especially hard because we do not know what language they spoke and there only a few texts that archaeologists have uncovered, and even then, some of the texts are damaged. There are even theories to how this language formed. The first theory was that the symbols on the tablets did not represent…show more content…
What historians do know is that they did not “morph” into the Indians and Pakistanis that live there today. One of the theories was an tribe called the Aryans or the Caucasus- a region at the border of Europe and Asia, by the Black Sea and Caspian Sea and invaded the cities and either conquered or merged with the Indus Valley Civilization (Crash course, Indus Valley Civilization). This theory was made by a man named Mortimer Wheeler, who shared the same title as John Marshall, from 1944-1948 AD (www.lumenlearning.com, The Indus River Valley Civilization). Unburied corpses have been found on the top level of the Mohenjo-Daro, suggesting that they were victims of a battle (Ibid). Others argued against his his theory and said that the unburied corpses were a resulted of a hasty burial. Later, Wheeler himself admitted that his theory could not be backed up. Since the Indus Valley Civilization was primarily peaceful, the war between the Harappans and the Aryans (or Caucasus) might not have lasted long…show more content…
Now, scholars are saying that the cause of the decline was because of climate change (www.khanacademy.org, The Indus River Valley Civilizations). They say that a tectonic event happened or the Saraswat River- part of the river system- dried up, or even a big flood from eastward moving monsoons occurred. Scientists believe that a big flood probably occurred because skeletal evidence says that many died of Malaria, which is transmitted by mosquitoes, which lay eggs in stagnant and shallow water (www.lumenlearning.com, The Indus River Valley Civilization). The climate change theory may have ultimately caused them to migrate to the Ganges River basin (www.khanacademy.org, The Indus River Valley Civilization). This migration moved the civilization further from Mesopotamia. Because their economy was so dependant on trade with Mesopotamia (and their loss of their geographical advantage), this probably explains why trade had declined around 1800 BCE (Ibid). Also, there was not as much rich soil for agriculture compared to the soil near the river system, which also affected their
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