In 1826, explorer Charles Masson of the British East India Company was travelling across the Punjab. Well-versed in the classics, Masson was busy exploring the sites of Alexander the Great’s military campaigns when he stumbled across mysterious ruins near Sahiwal in what is now modern-day Pakistan. Impressed by the site’s size and large mounds, Masson mistakenly believed that he was at a site from the time of Alexander the Great. However, what he failed to realise was that he was standing at a site from one of the world’s oldest civilisations. A civilisation that, till this day, remains shrouded in mystery.
The Indus Valley Civilisation, also known as the Harrapan Civilisation, existed from 2600 to 1900 BC and existed in what is now modern-day Pakistan and Western India. A contemporary of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, the Harrapan Civilisation shared many characteristics with these other great civilisations, such as vast cities, a sophisticated writing system, and arts and crafts that were traded far and wide. It was also the most extensive urban culture of its time, larger than both Mesopotamia and Egypt. However, unlike its contemporaries, very little is known about the Harrapan Civilisation, and what is known continues to baffle historians to the present day.
Various large cities in the Harrapan Civilisation, such as Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, are incredibly well planned. Many are built on a grid pattern and contain sophisticated drainage and sewage systems that predate Rome by over 2,000 years. Most large Harrapan settlements were built on mudbrick platforms that elevated them above floodplains, and the civilisation had its own standardised measures of weight and brick size, large-scale storage systems, water management systems, and craft production areas. The Harappans even traded with Mesopotamia and independently developed their own writing system.
However, what really puzzles historians is that the Harrapan civilisation seems to lack any centralised government and appears strangely egalitarian for a civilisation of its time. The Harappans lack many of the grand tombs and palaces that could be seen across ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. Almost all Harrapan houses are of a similar size and decoration, burial practices appear uniform, and biological data seem to indicate that most Harappans had a very similar lifestyle and diet, challenging any idea of a highly stratified and unequal society. Furthermore, there is a remarkable lack of evidence that Harappans ever engaged in war. Evidence of weapons and standing armies is scarce, challenging many assumptions and ideas scholars have long held about the structure of ancient civilisations.
To this day, very little is known about this great Bronze Age civilisation. A major barrier to greater scholarly engagement with the Harappan Civilisation is that its writing system has yet to be decoded. While Egyptian hieroglyphics and Mesopotamian cuneiform have long been readable, the Harrapan script is still an anomaly and no attempts at decoding it have been successful. Equally obscure is how the civilisation ended. The civilisation appears to have vanished without a trace and remained forgotten until the early 20th century, when it was rediscovered. Even today, many sites related to the Harappans are yet to be excavated, and with so little known about the Harappans, only time will tell if the secrets of this once great civilisation will ever be known.
