what is the sailent features of Indus valley civilization ?
Answers
The area formed a triangle and accounted for about 1,299,600 square kilometers. Recent Carbon-14 dating indicate the period of the mature Harappan civilization to be from C.2,800/2,900-1,800 B.C. Modern research on the Harappan civiliation, establishing evidence of their contact with the Mesopotamian Civilization also corroborates this dating.
Town Planning: The most remarkable feature of the Harappan civilization was its urbanisation. Each city was divided into a citadel area where the essential institutions of Civil and religious life were located and the lower residential area where the urban population lived.
In Mohenjodaro and Harappa, the citadel was surrounded by a brick wall. At Kalibangan, both the citadel and the lower city were surrounded by a wall. Usually, towns or cities were laid out in a parallel grammas form. The use of baked and unbaked bricks of standard size shows that the brick making was a large scale industry for the Harappans.
☆In the Indian subcontinent, the first cities came into being in the valley of River Indus. They were Harappa and Mohenjo-daro. Both are now in Pakistan. They were inhabited till about 3,500 years ago. Over time, however, they got buried under the ground and were lost and forgotten. In the early twentieth century, they were discovered and excavated. Later, many more cities were found. All of them appeared to belong to the same culture.
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Most of the early cities were found in the valley of the Indus river. That is why archaeologists and historians have named this culture as the 'Indus Valley Civilization'. It is also called the Harappan Civilization as Harappa was the first site to be excavated. The pattern of living in all the sites of the civilization, excavated later, resembles that of Harappa.
The civilization flourished roughly between 2500-1500 BCE, that is, about 3,500-4,500 years us. ago. At some places, it extended beyond this time period.