Indus Valley Civilization Research Paper

Objective of Study

The primary objective of this study is to document, analyze and understand the Indus Valley Civilization. This paper is a brief summary of the findings of the excavations conducted on the banks if the Indus River and its surrounding regions. The researcher is extremely interested in the field of archeology and Ancient Indian Cultures and therefore chose this topic, to better understand the Indus Valley Civilization.

This paper offers an Introduction to the great ancient civilization of the Indus Valley, and a short history of how it was discovered and excavated. It explores the geography of this Civilization and briefly narrates the Rise of the Harappan Civilization.

The crux of the report is the documentation and analysis

This culture flourished greatly between 2600 and 1900 B.C. Sometime around 1900 B.C. the Indus Valley Civilization entered a period of decline and ultimately disappeared sometime around 1400 B.C. At the peak of its civilization, the Indus Valley civilization extended across most of what are today- Pakistan, the western-most parts of India and some areas in Afghanistan. Its estimated area was over five hundred thousand square miles. According to mapping specialists, the Indus Valley Civilization spread throughout the North Western part of the Indian Subcontinent, in an area that is roughly the size of

Most of these have not yet been fully excavated. Hundreds of the sites unearthed are so large, that they can me called towns or villages. Of these, the biggest and most significant are cities called Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro. The names given are post-Indus Valley Civilization designations which refer to villages or towns that were built many years later, upon the remains or ruins of these ancient urban cities.

Archeologists speculate that, the two cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, may have in their heyday, housed a population as big as forty to fifty thousand people, which was enormous by ancient standards. The city of Harappa appears to be the capital of this great civilization. Therefore this culture is often known as the Harappan Civilization.

As mentioned before, the cryptic script of this great civilization has not yet been deciphered. Therefore all that is known about this sophisticated and intriguing culture is known through archeological evidence excavated and analyzed. To this date, we do not even know what the members of the Harappan Civilization called