Question

In what way did the Indus cities differ from Sumerian cities?

Answer 1

Overview

The Indus River Valley Civilization, 3300-1300 BCE, also known as the Harappan Civilization, extended from modern-day northeast Afghanistan to Pakistan and northwest India.
Important innovations of this civilization include standardized weights and measures, seal carving, and metallurgy with copper, bronze, lead, and tin.
Little is understood about the Indus script, and as a result, little is known about the Indus River Valley Civilization’s institutions and systems of governance.
The civilization likely ended due to climate change and migration.
Geography and time-frame

In 1856, British colonial officials in India were busy monitoring the construction of a railway connecting the cities of Lahore and Karachi in modern-day Pakistan along the Indus River valley.
As they continued to work, some of the laborers discovered many fire-baked bricks lodged in the dry terrain. There were hundreds of thousands of fairly uniform bricks, which seemed to be quite old. Nonetheless, the workers used some of them to construct the road bed, unaware that they were using ancient artifacts. They soon found among the bricks stone artifacts made of soapstone, featuring intricate artistic markings.
Though they did not know it then, and though the first major excavations did not take place until the 1920s, these railway workers had happened upon the remnants of the Indus Valley Civilization, also known as the Harappan Civilization, after Harappa, the first of its sites to be excavated, in what was then the Punjab province of British India and is now in Pakistan. Initially, many archaeologists thought they had found ruins of the ancient Maurya Empire, a large empire which dominated ancient India between c. 322 and 185 BCE.

The Sumerian civilization emerged upon the flood plain of the lower reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers about 4000 B.C. The social structure of the Sumerians was decidedly different from other societies of that and later times. The Sumerian communities were city states organized around a temple and ruled by a priesthood. The bulk of the people of the community were considered to be the servant-slaves of the god of the temple. The insecurities of life justified the role of the priesthood. When calamities occured despite the best efforts of the priesthood this was explained as being the result of the actions of other gods acting in concert which over-ruled the wishes of the local god.

There was a class of craftsmen in addition to the priests and peasants. The craftmen devoted most of their time to producing things for either the temples or the warrior-soldiers which protected the temple community. The people were to devote their lives to propitiating the gods to prevent calamities from befalling the community.

The political structure of Sumer was independent city-states. The map shows the important communities. Note that in Sumerian times the Persian Gulf extended to the area of the city-states. Since then the rivers have filled in hundreds miles of Gulf and Ur which was once almost on the coast is hundreds of miles from the sea. Along with the map of Sumer there is a schematic depiction of the layout of the city of Ur with a branch of the Euphrates River running through the city with a protected harbor at the city walls. There was another protected harbor at the city walls. The temple grounds were separated from the rest of the city.

Answer 2

The Indus Valley Civilization contained more than 1,000 cities and settlements

The region of Sumer was long thought to have been first inhabited around 4500 BCE.

Explanation:

Indus Cities

• In these cities there were well-organized drainage networks for waste water , garbage disposal systems & probably even granaries & baths. Individual houses used to draw water from wells, whereas waste water on the main streets was directed into covered drains.
• The houses opened exclusively to "inner courtyards & small lanes"  the smallest houses on the outskirts of the city, were considered to be linked with the system and further stated that cleanliness was an essential matter..
• Though the citadels & large walls existed temples, monuments & palaces  temples are not visible. Indus's new architecture was displayed with dockyards, granaries, storerooms, platforms of bricks and defensive walls.
• The massive walls probably defended the Indus cities against flooding and may have deterred military conflicts. However, major monumental buildings have not been built. There is the "Great Bath" in the city of Mohenjo-daro, that may have been an important "public bathing & social place".
• In the pottery, sheets, weights, & bricks with standardized size & weight, Indus' extraordinary uniformity is evident, which indicates some sort of control and administration.

Sumerian cities

• The world's first towns rose in Sumeria and Uruk is commonly considered the world's first true city. Sumer had grown quickly cities had become centres of commerce, learning and religion and had provided more opportunities for the country's people than life.
• By 2500 BCE, more than a half million people were living in Ancient Sumer. Around four of the five people living in the cities made Sumer the first urban community in the world. Small towns are connected to large cities to defend themselves. It established a city-states structure. The city-states contain the city and its surrounding agricultural land. Several smaller villages may be nearby.
• Those who worshiped the same Gods in ancient Sumer. The same language was used by them. They sailed freely & traded goods up & down the rivers. They hired one another and  signed agreements. They knew one another and each city had its own military & royal family.
• The biggest & most important structure in the city was the temple known as the Ziggurat. This was the city center of life instead of being only a shrine. It served as as a town hall. Since ziggurat priests operated irrigation systems, the people went to the priests with grain to pay for the service when they had wanted the access to river water for their crop irrigation and other things. The priests had control of the storage of surplus grain through the Sumerian system. The priests therefore also  much of the riches of a city and had great influence in the city.
• As Sumerian cities had slowly evolved, and the cities  had narrow, winding streets rather than a grid designed at right angles. The thick defensive wall of mud bricks surrounded each city. In general, in the town's walls, rulers, first then priests, later  merchants and craftsmen. However, farmers preferred to live at the outskirts of the settlement, closer to the river and its crops.
• Using the available resources, farmers have constructed their homes from the river reeds. The citizens constructed houses from mud bricks within city walls. The walls were several feet thick to keep the heat away. There were a collection of rooms constructed on a court surrounding a traditional Sumerian city building. The patio was generally paved with leaves of palm spread over a beam of wood. The loose layering of palm leaves protect the Sumerians from the Sun and enable smoke from cooking to escape.

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