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were an insular, homogeneous, and egalitarian
Long in the shadow of its sister civilizations to the west, the Indus
bunch is being replaced by a view of a diverse
is emerging as the powerhouse of commerce and technology in the and dynamic society that stretched from the
3rd millennium B.C.E. But political and economic troubles dog Arabian Sea to the foothills of the Himalaya
and was eager to do business with peoples
archaeologists’ efforts to understand what made this vast society tick

CREDITS (TOP TO BOTTOM): © J. M. KENOYER, COURTESY DEPT. OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND MUSEUMS, GOVERNMENT OF PAKISTAN
from Afghanistan to Iraq. And the Indus people
worried enough about the privileges of their
THAR DESERT, PAKISTAN—Egypt has pyramids, temples, and mum- elite to build thick walls to protect them. “This idea that the Indus was
mies galore. Ancient Mesopotamians left behind the dramatic saga of dull and monolithic—that’s all nonsense,” says Louis Flam, an archae-
Gilgamesh, receipts detailing their most prosaic economic transac- ologist at the City University of New York who has worked in Pakistan.
tions, and the occasional spectacular tomb. But the third of the world’s “There was a tremendous amount of variety.”
three f irst civilizations had, well, good This radical overhaul of the Indus image, which has gone largely
Online
sciencemag.org
plumbing. Even the archaeologists who first unnoticed by the larger archaeology community, emerges from
discovered the Indus civilization in the 1920s recent visits to key excavations in India and Pakistan, including pre-
found the orderly streetscapes of houses built viously unknown sites here in the desert, and interviews with dozens
Podcast interview with uniform brick to be numbingly regi- of Indus scholars around the world. During the past decade, archae-
with the author of
this article. mented. As recently as 2002, one scholar ologists have uncovered entire Indus cities previously unknown,
felt compelled to some with unique features such as major
insist in a book that the remains left behind fortif ications. New methods have
by the Indus people “are not boring.” spurred the f irst detailed analyses of
Striking new evidence from a host of everything from climate to settlement
excavations on both sides of the tense border patterns to butchered animal bones.
that separates India and Pakistan has now Growing interest in the role of the ancient
definitively overturned that second-class sta- economy in spreading goods and ideas has
tus. No longer is the Indus the plain cousin of scholars tracing a vast trade network that
Egypt and Mesopotamia during the 3rd mil- reached to Mesopotamia itself, where at
lennium B.C.E. Archaeologists now realize least one Indus interpreter went native.
that the Indus dwarfed its grand neighbors in Even well-combed sites are still full of
land area and population, surpassed them in surprises: The city of Harappa may be
many areas of engineering and technology, 1000 years older and Mohenjo Daro far
and was an aggressive player during human- larger than once thought. And the dramatic
ity’s first flirtation with globalization 5000 Faces from the past. These small figurines are rare “Buddhist stupa” adorning Mohenjo Daro’s
years ago. The old notion that the Indus people examples of Indus human or deity statuary. high mound may in fact date back to the Indus

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 UNMASKING THE INDUS | NEWSFOCUS

Ancient alleyways. The 5000-year-old massive brick structures of Mohenjo Yet despite the impressive remains, there were bafflingly few clues
Daro, including the Great Bath (center), still rise from the plains of Pakistan. to the political or religious systems behind the urban complexes, which
seemed to lack the grandeur of Egypt and Mesopotamia. There are no
heyday around 2000 B.C.E. (see sidebar, p. 1280). “What has changed remaining life-sized statues, extensive wall carvings, or elaborate
is the mass of evidence from the past 15 years,” says archaeologist Rita building decorations. The Indus used a still-undeciphered script, but
Wright of New York University (NYU), assistant director of the chiefly on small seals, and some scholars believe it was not a script at
Harappa dig. “There is more data from landscapes and settlements, not all (Science, 17 December 2004, p. 2026). Indus scribes did not leave
just the cities.” the vast libraries of clay tablets or carved stone inscriptions that have
But piecing together a cohesive new picture is hampered by the yielded such insight into Mesopotamia and Egypt. Most burials
political discord between India and Pakistan. Many foreign archaeolo- include only a few modest goods, in contrast to the riches of Egyptian
gists steer clear of Pakistan because of political instability, while India’s tombs. And archaeologists could find no obvious temples or palaces.
government—scarred by colonialism—often discourages researchers The few monumental buildings—though given nicknames like “the
from collaborating with European or American teams. A virtual Cold Granary” and “the Monastery”—had functions still hotly debated.
War between the two countries leaves scientists and sites on one side Unlike the many pharaohs, kings, architects, and merchants who
nearly inaccessible to the other (see p. 1282). And although Indus sites show up in sculpture and texts in Egypt and Mesopotamia, few Indus
are finally receiving extensive attention, many unexcavated mounds individuals were recorded. Only a few small statues show individuals,
face destruction from a lethal combination of expanding agriculture, such as seated men wearing tunics and a tiny, lithe dancer. The Indus “is

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intensive looting, and unregulated urban development (see p. 1284). something of a faceless sociocultural system,” says Possehl.
The small coterie of archaeologists from Pakistan, India, America, This led some early and mid–20th century archaeologists to con-
Europe, and Japan who study the Indus admit that they also
share some of the blame. Often slow to publish, this com-
munity can be reluctant to work together and lacks the jour-
nals and tradition of peer review common to colleagues
who focus on other parts of the world. “We’re at fault,” says
one Indus researcher. “We should be pushing harder to pub-
lish and collaborate.”
Despite these challenges, the wave of fresh material is
leading to a deeper understanding of a culture once consid-
ered obscure and impenetrable. The new data paint a far
more vibrant and complex picture of the Indus than the old
view of a xenophobic and egalitarian society that lasted for
only a few centuries before utterly vanishing. “We are
rewiring the discussion,” says archaeologist Gregory Possehl
of the University of Pennsylvania. Adds Wright: “The
Indus is no longer just enigmatic—it can now be brought
into the broader discussion of comparative civilizations.” Picking at the past. Workers at
Farmana in India uncover clues
to Indus architecture.
The faceless place
The very existence of the Indus wasn’t recognized until
more than 100 years after digs began in Egypt and Mesopotamia. It sider the Indus a nonhierarchical society. Others postulated rigid con-
was only in 1924 that archaeologists announced they had found two trol by a small elite. Given the lack of data to support either interpreta-
great cities from a previously unknown urban society that flourished tion, these ideas may have had more to do with socialist and totalitarian
at the same time as the Old Kingdom pyramids and the great ziggu- ideas popular at the time than with the ancient past.
rats of Sumer. The cities, Mohenjo Daro and Harappa, thrived for That first generation of archaeologists did agree that the Indus was
nearly 1000 years along the floodplain of the Indus River, which like an impressive but brief flash in the pan without deep roots. Because
the Nile, Tigris, and Euphrates irrigates vast swaths of land that oth- there was no evidence of previous settled life in the region, they sur-
erwise would be desert (see map, p. 1278). mised at the time that the Indus people absorbed urban ideas from
The discovery in what was then British India was stunning: Mesopotamia—2500 kilometers to the west—and rapidly created a
Mohenjo Daro covered at least 200 square hectares and may have quirky two-city state around 2600 B.C.E., which then vanished
housed from 20,000 to 40,000 people. Harappa, 400 kilometers to the equally abruptly by 1800 B.C.E. The 1947 partition of India, creating
north, was only slightly smaller. Both were comparable in size to con- the new nations of India and Pakistan, drew a line through the Indus
temporary cities such as Memphis on the Nile and Ur in today’s Iraq. heartland and left Indus archaeology largely an academic backwater
Unlike Egyptian and Mesopotamian cities of the time, however, the for nearly a half-century.
Indus builders created well-ordered streets and homes with sophisti-
cated water and sewer systems unmatched until Roman times. The Round to square
CREDIT: A. LAWLER/SCIENCE

Indus penchant for precise standardization—from tiny weights to The assumption that the Indus did not spring from local culture began to
bricks to houses to entire cities—was unique in the early historic unravel in the 1970s, when a French-led team excavated a Neolithic site
period. And at Mohenjo Daro, they used expensive baked brick rather called Mehrgarh dating to 7000 B.C.E. in the Baluchistan hills on the
than the cheaper mud brick favored in the Middle East, thus leaving western fringe of the Indus valley. The town included many of the trap-
behind the only Bronze Age city on Earth where it is still possible to pings of later Indus life, from mud-brick houses and copper tools to
stroll down ancient alleys shaded by intact walls. wheat, barley, sheep, goats, and cattle. Although some plants may have

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 NEWSFOCUS

arrived from the Near East, goats and cattle the earlier towns and new cities. But Mallah
were likely domesticated locally, and possibly and many of his colleagues say there is not
sheep as well. A partially worked elephant tusk enough evidence to make that leap. Whoever
demonstrates that craft specialists were already constructed the cities did make distinct
plying their trade, and lapis lazuli jewelry from changes, creating new pottery styles and intro-
Afghanistan and marine shells from the distant ducing metal forms such as razors and fish-
coast show long-distance trade networks. hooks. But they also drew on the long cultural
The site is now widely accepted as a precur- history of the region and don’t appear to be
sor to the Indus and clear proof of the indige- outside invaders, says Mallah.
nous nature of the later civilization. That idea In fact, new evidence suggests that not all
gets new support from surveys here in the Thar Burnt out. Qasid Mallah the major cities were built from scratch. At
Desert, on the eastern edge of the Indus valley. points to a burn layer at an ongoing dig at Harappa, led by Richard
This area was long assumed to have been Kot Diji, perhaps a sign Meadow of Harvard University and Jonathan
largely uninhabited before the rise of the Indus of ancient conflict. Kenoyer of the University of Wisconsin,
cities. But hundreds of small sites now show Madison, the team has found evidence of
that humans lived here on the plains, not just in the Baluchistan hills, for occupation dating to as early as 3700 B.C.E. By 3300 B.C.E.,
several millennia prior to the rise of the Indus, says archaeologist Qasid Harappa was a modest village of 10 square hectares but with streets

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Mallah of Shah Abdul Latif University in Khairpur. Taking a reporter on running in a gridlike pattern and bricks of two standard sizes—clear
a tour across dunes covered in scrub, he pointed out huge piles of chert foreshadowing of orderly Indus construction. “And they were trading
used to make blades by the Neolithic predecessors of the Indus. lapis, shells from the coast, copper, and carnelian across a vast area,”
Still, the sudden appearance of fully formed urban areas remains a says Kenoyer. One of his graduate students, Randall Law, just pub-
puzzle. Indus cities appeared starting about 2600 B.C.E.—600 years lished a dissertation pinpointing for the first time the far-flung origin of
after the first cities sprouted in Mesopotamia—and typically arose on the many varieties of stone used by Indus artisans.
virgin soil rather than atop earlier settlements. Some older towns date At a site called Farmana in the intensely farmed region west of
back about a millennium earlier, but most of these appear to have suf- Delhi, across the Pakistan border from Harappa, this evolution from a
fered catastrophic fires and were abandoned at the dawn of the new village of huts to sophisticated urban architecture is remarkably visible.
urban era. A site called Kot Diji a short drive from the Thar Desert At this previously unexcavated site, Vasant Shinde of Deccan College
shows the scars, says Mallah. The mound is an archaeological layer in Pune and his team have uncovered remains of an oval-shaped hut
cake built up over centuries, with a dark layer of ash distinctly visible in dating to about 3500 B.C.E., a pit dwelling made with wattle and daub
a band several meters above the plain. and plastered walls, of a type seen today in the region. A few meters
Some scholars argue that these burn layers record conflict between away is a level from 1000 years later where the houses have morphed

THE INDUS REALM

AFGHANISTAN EAST OF EDEN. Sprawling between
Islamabad the Himalaya Mountains and the
Arabian Sea, the Indus civilization
us
Ind

covered a larger area than Egypt or

Mesopotamia (inset) and boasted at
PAKISTAN Harappa least a half-dozen large cities and
Kalibangan many smaller towns and villages.
Mehrgarh Pirak Trading posts stretched from northern
s kra
Sukkur Indu aggar-Ha Rakhigarhi Afghanistan to Oman, and goods
Lakhanjo Daro Gh Farmana
Ganweriwala traveled over both land and sea routes.
Gan

Khairpur
g

Thar Delhi
es

Mohenjo Daro
Kot Desert
Diji sites Black Sea
INDIA
Arabian Sea Caspian
Sea

Mediterran
ean Sea
MESOPOTAMIA
Indus region Dholavira
Ancient site INDUS
EGYPT
CREDIT: A. LAWLER/SCIENCE

Modern city VALLEY

Red
River Narmada Sea

Dry river
Modern border Arabian Sea

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 UNMASKING THE INDUS | NEWSFOCUS

into a rectangular shape and resemble those of the later Indus, except remains of an elderly man lie in a mud-brick chamber beside 70 pot-
for postholes on the periphery that may have held up a roof. A few tery vessels. At Harappa, another elderly man shares his tomb with
meters and 2 centuries from that trench is classic urban Indus: the clear 340 steatite beads plus three beads of gold, one of onyx, one of banded
outline of a large house with more than a dozen rooms, including a jasper, and one of turquoise. Another high-status Harappan went to rest
plastered bathroom, and a 20-meter-long wall fronting a long street in an elegant coffin made of elm and cedar from the distant Himalayas
nearly 4 meters wide. “You can see how beautifully this was planned,” and rosewood from central India.
Shinde says, pointing at the fine brickwork and straight lines. “There Urban house sizes also vary much more dramatically than early
are no postholes, and the bricks are of the same ratio as at Harappa.” excavators thought, says Wright, who works on the Harappa team.
Thus from both sides of the border, the newest evidence not only under- Then, as now, location was a matter of status: She notes that whereas
scores the local origins of the Indus, it also reveals in situ evolution. some larger dwellings have private wells and are next to covered drains,
Says Mallah, “We believe that urbanization was a gradual process.” more modest houses face open drains and cesspools.
Like elites everywhere, high-status Indus people were able to acquire
Gated communities high-quality goods from master craftsmen to denote their wealth. They
For the first half-century after its discovery, the Indus was virtually owned finely crafted beads made in a wide variety of stone, glazed pot-
synonymous with Mohenjo Daro and Harappa. No other major cities tery called faience, and ornamentation in gold, silver, copper, lead, tin,
were known. But along with 1000 and electrum (a gold and silver
smaller sites, archaeologists now alloy). For those with less means,

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count at least five major urban beaded necklaces of cheap terra
areas and a handful of others of cotta imitated those of semi-
substantial size. These sites precious stone. Anthropologist
reveal new facets of Indus life, Heather Miller of the University of
including signs of hierarchy and Toronto in Canada and Massimo
regional differences that suggest Vidale, a visiting professor at the
a society that was anything but University of Bologna in Italy,
dull and regimented. concluded in a 2001 paper that the
Take Dholavira, 800 kilome- Indus were capable of “technolog-
ters south of Harappa in the ical virtuosity.” A recent find at
Indian state of Gujarat. Covering Harappa tentatively dated to 1700
60 square hectares, it thrived for B.C.E. may prove to be the world’s
nearly 1000 years with perhaps oldest glass, says Kenoyer.
seasonal access to the Arabian Such goods are found across
Sea. Evidence from excavations the region, including at newly dis-
during the 1990s reveals a city covered cities. For example,
that apparently included differ- recent excavations at Rakhigarhi,
ent classes of society. “Here you 340 kilometers southeast of
have meticulous planning, mon- Harappa in rural India, turned up a
umental and aesthetic architec- bronze vessel decorated in gold
CREDIT: © J. M. KENOYER, COURTESY DEPT. OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND MUSEUMS, GOVERNMENT OF PAKISTAN

ture, a large stadium, and an and silver along with a foundry

efficient water-management sys- containing thousands of semi-
tem,” says R. S. Bisht, the Water works. This drain from Harappa is part of a sophisticated water system precious stones, demonstrating
Archaeological Survey of India that set the Indus apart from its Mesopotamian and Egyptian cousins. extensive craft production and
scientist who oversaw the digs. bolstering the notion of an elite. At
Although still largely unpublished, archaeologists around the world another new site called Ganweriwala, deep in the desert region south of
say Bisht’s finds are truly extraordinary. Harappa, preliminary fieldwork by Farzand Masih of Punjab Univer-
In Dholavira’s central citadel is an enormous structure—which sity in Pakistan has yielded finely made shell bangles and a variety of
Bisht dubs “the castle”—with walls that are an astounding 18.5 meters agate, terra cotta, and steatite beads.
wide at their base. Next to it is an enclosed area Bisht calls “the bai- Yet despite the trappings of wealth for some, there is little evidence
ley” that may have housed an elite. “This shows that Harappan of the vast divide that separated pharaoh from field hand in Egypt.
[Indus] society was highly structured,” says Bisht. “There was a hier- “This was an enormously innovative civilization,” says Michael Jansen
archy.” Nearby is a huge mud-brick platform adorned with rare pink- of RWTH Aachen University in Germany. “Rather than spend their
and-white clay decoration and what Bisht believes was a multi- time on monuments as in Egypt, they built practical things that bene-
purpose stadium ground stretching nearly the length of three foot- fited the inhabitants.”
ball fields and including terraces to seat thousands of people. No The newly discovered cities also reveal a surprisingly diverse urban
structures of similar size are found at other Indus cities. And though life. Rakhigarhi contains the usual Indus amenities—paved streets,
the acropolis of an Indus city is usually walled, Dholavira’s acropo- brick-lined drains, orderly planning—that are conspicuously lacking in
lis, middle town, lower town, and a series of water tanks are sur- the current town that covers the highest mound. But instead of follow-
rounded by an enormous wall measuring nearly 800 meters on one ing a grid, the ancient streets radiate from the city’s east gate. As at
side and more than 600 meters on the other. Harappa, there is evidence of settlement centuries before the urban
The finds at Dholavira are part of a growing body of data that lay to explosion rather than the clean-slate approach typical of other Indus
rest the idea of an egalitarian or a totalitarian society. For example, cities. Dholavira has its own peculiarities, including large amounts of
although most Indus graves are modest, at Kalibangan in India the dressed stone from a local quarry in addition to the standard baked or

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 Stupendous? The domed
structure at Mohenjo Daro
may date to Indus times, mud brick. A 10-symbol signboard was posted on the gate leading into
not later. the citadel, an unusual use of a script typically found only on small
seals or pots. Grave rites also seem diverse. At Mohenjo Daro, there is
no evidence for formal burials at all. At Dholavira, Bisht found a set of
tomblike chambers containing an unusual variety of grave goods such
as beads and pots but no traces of skeletons; he speculates that the bod-
ies may have been cremated.
How the Indus people viewed life after death remains elusive. And
the lack of temples adds to the difficulties in understanding their over-
all religious beliefs. A rare clue to religious practice may have emerged
from now-barren Ganweriwala, which once bloomed thanks to the
ancient Ghaggar-Hakra River. In his preliminary work there last year,
Masih found a seal with the figure of a person or god in a yogalike pose
and an apparent devotee below; on the reverse side is Indus script. The
seal is similar to others found at Mohenjo Daro and dubbed “proto-
Shiva” by some for its similarity to the Hindu deity. The seal has fueled
speculation that the religious traditions of the Indus lived on beyond the

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urban collapse of 1800 B.C.E. and helped lay the basis for Hinduism
(see p. 1281). Horned figures on a variety of artifacts may depict gods,
as they often do in Mesopotamia.
BUDDHIST STUPA OR INDUS TEMPLE? The frustrating lack of evidence has fueled other theories that
remain tenuous. Jansen and Possehl suggest that the Indus obsession
MOHENJO DARO, PAKISTAN— tures. Based on preliminary exca- with baths, wells, and drains reveals a religious ideology based on the
On the highest mound here rises vation of the mound, he even the- use of water, although other scholars are skeptical.
a ruined dome—the most dra- orizes that the original structure
matic structure in the center of may have been a series of plat- Masters of trade
the largest Indus city, set in a forms, perhaps similar to the Ur While evidence accumulates from Indus cities, other insights are com-
courtyard once surrounded by ziggurat in Mesopotamia built ing from beyond the region, as artifacts from Central Asia, Iraq, and

CREDITS (TOP TO BOTTOM): A. LAWLER/SCIENCE; © J. M. KENOYER, COURTESY DEPT. OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND MUSEUMS, GOVERNMENT OF PAKISTAN
buildings. But since the 1920s, around 2100 B.C., near the Afghanistan show the long arm of Indus trade networks. Small and
archaeologists have considered height of Indus urban life. Such transportable Indus goods such as
the dome to be a much later platforms were common from beads and pottery found their way
Buddhist stupa ringed by cells of Mesopotamia to Turkmenistan across the Iranian plateau or by
monks, built using Indus bricks during that era, but none have sea to Oman and Mesopotamia,
2 millennia after the city’s been clearly identified in the and Indus seals show up in Cen-
demise. Now, University of Indus region. tral Asia as well as southern Iraq.
Naples archaeologist Giovanni Other scholars are wary of An Indus trading center at Short-
Verardi says that this magnificent the ziggurat idea but agree that ugai in northern Afghanistan fun-
structure may actually be a mon- the evidence supporting a stupa neled lapis to the homeland. And
ument from Indus times. If he’s is slim. “I’m quite sure Verardi there is strong evidence for trade
right, it will force Indus scholars is right,” says Michael Jansen of and cultural links between the
to rethink the religious and polit- RWTH Aachen University in Ger- Indus and cities in today’s Iran as
ical nature of the civilization, many, who has worked here for well as Mesopotamia. Holding a pose? This rare seal may
long thought to lack grand tem- years. “We did a very careful Textual analysis of cuneiform hint at the ancient origins of yoga and
ples and palaces (see main text). survey of the area around the tablets coupled with recent exca- the Hindu god Shiva.
The original excavators citadel and found not a single vations along the Persian Gulf
assumed the dome was Buddhist Kushan shard.” Jansen also also show that Indus merchants routinely plied the Arabian Sea and
in large part because buried coins notes that Buddhist monks’ cells Persian Gulf, likely in reed boats with cotton sails. “They were major
dating to the Kushan Empire of of that period are not usually participants in commercial trade,” says Bisht, who sees Dholavira and
the 2nd and 3rd century C.E. were arranged around a stupa. other sites along the coast as trading centers thanks to monsoon winds
found at the site. They did note “What’s needed now is careful that allowed sailors to cross 800 kilometers of open waters speedily.
that the stupa was not aligned in restudy,” says Jansen, who “These people were aggressive traders, there is no doubt about it,” adds
typical fashion, that the plinth hopes to excavate at the site. Possehl, who has found Indus-style pottery made from Gujarat clay at
was of unusual height, and that After 2 decades, restoration a dig in Oman. Archaeologist Nilofer Shaikh, vice chancellor of Latif
certain pottery shards predated work has at last stabilized the University, takes that assertion a step further, arguing that “the Indus
the Kushan. Verardi, who carefully crumbling brick, and officials people were controlling the trade. They controlled the quarries, the
examined both the site and the plan to reopen excavations (see trade routes, and they knew where the markets were.”
original archaeological reports, p. 1284). “If it is indeed She points out that although Indus artifacts spread far and wide,
argues that the coins likely were [Indus], then this will turn our only a small number of Mesopotamian artifacts have been found at
buried later and therefore are of interpretations upside down.” Indus sites. Evidence suggests that some Indus merchants and diplo-
little value in dating the struc- –A.L mats lived abroad, although the trade was certainly two-way. An
inscription from the late 3rd millennium B.C.E. refers to one Shu-

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 UNMASKING THE INDUS | NEWSFOCUS

ilishu, an interpreter from Meluhha, reports NYU’s Wright in a forth- was once seen as a monolithic state was actually a highly diverse set of
coming book. What may be Shu-ilishu and his wife are featured on a multiple centers of power that negotiated across a large landscape.”
seal wearing Mesopotamian dress. There is some evidence for a village With barely one-tenth of the 1000-plus known Indus sites exam-
of Indus merchants between 2114 and 2004 B.C.E. in southern Iraq. ined, archaeologists say the next frontier is the smaller sites that could
And “a man from Meluhha” knocked out someone’s tooth during an reveal more about day-to-day life. That could fill in the gaps about how
altercation and was made to pay a fine, according to a cuneiform text, the Indus people worshipped, traded, and governed themselves. “There
hinting at a life that was neither faceless nor boring. are thousands of villages,” says Shinde during lunch break at the Far-
Indus archaeologists still confront fundamental research questions, mana dig. “And it is our fault that we only go to the big sites.”
including how a far-flung array of cities adopted standardized meas- Researchers are also bringing the latest archaeological tools to bear on
ures. There is little or no data on how the Indus people governed them- Indus artifacts, closely examining the origins of stone used in bead-
selves, what language they spoke, and whether they engaged in war. work, the prevalence of certain animals and plants, and even the meth-
Some researchers envision a collection of city states, while others ods used in butchering. Archaeologists also recognize an urgent need to
imagine regional powers that jockeyed for influence but generally chart climate change throughout the region during the Indus era. “It’s a
cooperated. What is clear is that the organization differed from the great tragedy,” says Bisht. “It is a book waiting to be read.” Whatever
pharaonic ways of Egypt and the rival kingdoms of Mesopotamia. “We archaeologists uncover in coming years, the revised story of the Indus
don’t need to use the models from the Near East,” says Kenoyer. “What civilization is sure not to be a dull read. –ANDREW LAWLER

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Indus Collapse: The End or the Indian subcontinent until much later.
This anomaly is the most puzzling and con-

Beginning of an Asian Culture? troversial issue surrounding the Indus civiliza-

tion, which thrived from 2600 B.C.E. until
1900 B.C.E. (see timeline). Droughts, floods,
The puzzling downfall of an ancient civilization more than 3 millennia ago sparks tectonic shifts, ideological turmoil, and for-
debate today in both scientific and political circles eign invasions have all been invoked to explain
a spectacular collapse that long appeared both
While Egypt was in chaos and the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia sudden and total. But new research suggests that the end may not have
collapsed in the 22nd century B.C.E., the marketplaces of Mohenjo been as dramatic or complete as scholars long assumed. Some cities
Daro in today’s Pakistan were booming. Carts pulled by water buf- lingered for up to 500 years after others were deserted, and the next
falo jauntily decorated in henna carried luxury goods along the city’s wave of urbanism arose far earlier than once thought.
wide, paved streets. Artisans worked lapis lazuli from distant The rise of Hindu nationalism in today’s India has thrust this schol-
Afghanistan into beads and shaped local steatite into delicately arly debate into the political spotlight. Hindu nationalists’ push to see
carved seals. Citizens drew water from one of the city’s 700 wells or the roots of their religion in the 5000-year-old Indus civilization creates
relaxed under the colonnades around a large brick-and-tar lined bath yet another barrier between Indian archaeologists and their mostly
in the center of town. Muslim counterparts in Pakistan (see sidebar, p. 1282). “There is no
Yet 2 centuries later, the carefully planned metropolis was aban- place in the world where the people and culture of the 3rd millennium
doned, and the number of settlements on its outskirts dwindled B.C.E. are more important,” says archaeologist Gregory Possehl of the
from 86 to a mere half-dozen. The cultures of Egypt and University of Pennsylvania.
Mesopotamia recovered in time, but not so the Indus. Mohenjo Archaeologists have theorized about the end of the Indus for
Daro and other great cities were never rebuilt, a set of sophisticated decades. In the 1940s, excavator Mortimer Wheeler suggested
symbols was forgotten, and vibrant urban life vanished from the that Aryan tribes who swept in from the northwest triggered the
CREDITS: (LEFT) HARAPPA.COM; (BOTTOM AND RIGHT) GIANNI DAGLI ORTI/CORBIS

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 NEWSFOCUS

downfall. These Aryans were long thought to have brought Vedic

culture—considered the root of Hindu tradition—to India at the
expense of the Indus people. “Indra stands accused,” Wheeler famously
wrote, referring to the chief Aryan deity. But there is no archaeological
evidence for an invasion during this period. Many scholars agree that
people did migrate into the region from north and east but not until after
the decline of the Indus.
More recently, some researchers have proposed that climate indi-
rectly affected the Indus. They postulate that the drought-related col-
lapse of Egypt and Mesopotamia and the loss of those markets at the
turn of the 2nd millennium B.C.E. led to an economic crisis that
upended the Indus system a century or two later. Mentions
of Meluhha, presumed to refer to the Indus, vanish from
Mesopotamian texts about 2000 B.C.E., says Harvard
University Assyriologist Piotr Steinkeller.
Climate may have hit the Indus directly as well.
According to a 2003 paper, cores drilled from the Arabian Spinning wheel. Modern carts in today’s Pakistan
Sea indicate that during the 22nd century B.C.E., the resemble toy carts (inset) crafted by Harappans

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Indus River and its tributaries discharged significantly thousands of years ago.
less water, a sign of drought. By 2000 B.C.E., people
near Harappa in today’s Pakistan were trying to cope with a drying they can’t be sure what caused the Indus
climate by planting different crops, according to recent research led by decline. “There are a lot of theories but little evidence,” complains
Rita Wright of New York University (Science, 18 May 2007, p. 978). Harvard archaeologist Richard Meadow, who co-directs current

CREDITS (TOP TO BOTTOM): A. LAWLER/SCIENCE; © J. M. KENOYER, COURTESY DEPT. OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND MUSEUMS, GOVERNMENT OF PAKISTAN; A. LAWLER/SCIENCE
“People were making adjustments; there was a change in their way of excavations at Harappa.
life,” Wright says, although she cautions against making sweeping But the collapse was likely as varied as the civilization itself.
claims because her data are from only one region. Mohenjo Daro and the region of Cholistan, between that city and
Although Wright and others argue that climate and society are Harappa, declined dramatically after 1900 B.C.E. However,
deeply intertwined, Possehl scoffs at the idea that drought explains the while rural settlements near Harappa contracted from 18 to four
collapse. “We should stop thinking about the physical world and start at this time, life in the city surprisingly continued for at least
looking at the fabric of society,” he suggests. He believes that the end of another 500 years, says archaeologist Jonathan Kenoyer of the
the Indus was primarily a matter of ideology, like the collapse of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, co-director of the Harappa dig.
Soviet Union. Possehl and Michael Jansen of RWTH Aachen Univer- And to the northeast, in today’s India, the number of sites increased
sity in Germany note that the Great Bath at the center of Mohenjo Daro rapidly from 218 to 853 after 1900 B.C.E., according to data from
was abandoned a century or two before the city, suggesting change in a surveys gathered by Possehl.
society that they say emphasized water-related rituals. In Gujarat in southwestern India, urban life and even trade with
In the end, Wright, Possehl, and other scholars acknowledge that the Arabian side of the Persian Gulf appears to have continued well

Farzand Masih,
excavator at
TRENCH WARFARE: MODERN BORDERS SPLIT THE INDUS
Ganweriwala, FARMANA, INDIA—Vasant resulting from the bitter partition the Indus plain in one nation or
Pakistan. Shinde and Farzand Masih work a of British India in 1947 runs the other.
mere 200 kilometers apart, each through the middle of what was Each country has fought seri-
perhaps an hour or so from the once the Indus civilization, one of ous skirmishes in the Himalaya,
border between India and Pak- the world’s first great urban soci- built nuclear weapons with their
istan. But neither archaeologist eties from 2600 B.C.E. to its puz- adversary in mind, and laid claim
can visit the site of the other. “I’m zling collapse in about 1800 B.C.E. to the Indian state of Kashmir. The
excavating at Farmana,” says (see main text). Back then, Indus politics make it difficult if not
Shinde of Deccan College in Pune, merchants may have traveled impossible for archaeologists from
India. “On the other side is Gan- freely over the region’s plains one side to roam the countryside
weriwala—but I can’t know what’s and hills. But today the Indus’s of the other. “Secret police would
going on there or talk to the 1 million square kilometers are follow us every step—if we could
archaeology team.” Masih of Pun- split between Pakistan and west- get a visa,” says one South Asian
jab University in Lahore, Pakistan, ern India (see map, p. 1278). The archaeologist.
leads that team and says he’s cities of Mohenjo Daro, Harappa, Scientists on both sides say
eager for international collabora- and Ganweriwala are in Pakistan, that a host of research topics
tion, but for now including Indians while Dholavira, Rakhigarhi, and would make more sense if done
is beyond his power. Nor can he Farmana lie just across the bor- collaboratively. For example,
visit Shinde’s site. der in India. Hundreds of other understanding the complex geo-
That’s because the fault line settlements are spread across morphology of the Indus and its

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 UNMASKING THE INDUS | NEWSFOCUS

into the 2nd millennium B.C.E., although exactly how long is a today. Traces of all these scenes can be found at Indus archaeolog-
matter of dispute. At the site of Pirak in eastern Baluchistan in ical sites and imprinted upon seals.
today’s Pakistan, a small town appears to have thrived continuously Did the Indus directly seed what eventually grew into the second
from 1800 B.C.E. to as late as the arrival of Alexander the Great in wave of Indian civilization? That is a hot political as well as scholarly
India in 325 B.C.E., says Meadow. Later settlements, however, lack topic. “This plays a significant role in today’s India,” says Possehl. The
the sophisticated urban planning of even smaller sites from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which ruled India from 1998 to 2004,
mature Indus phase. declared the Indus to be the progenitor of Hindu civilization, a contro-
The persistence of settlements raises the question of how much versial claim in a country with a large Muslim population. While in
of the Indus culture survived the urban decline. For power, BJP pumped additional funding into Indus-
decades, most archaeologists assumed that the related digs, and its influence over archaeological mat-
Indus’s abrupt end and long hiatus in urban life ters remains strong. Last fall, the Archaeological Sur-
meant that few if any of its traditions survived. But vey of India (ASI) was harshly criticized in Parliament
now it appears that the Indus collapse drove people for asserting in a report that the underwater ridge con-
to the east, into the watershed of the Ganges, which necting India and Sri Lanka was natural rather than the
spreads as far as the Bay of Bengal. Excavations remains of a bridge built by the traditional hero Rama.
along the Gangetic plain show that cities began to Under pressure, ASI suspended two senior employees
arise there starting about 1200 B.C.E., just a few involved in the report. In May, members of India’s
centuries after Harappa was deserted and much ear- Supreme Court expressed sympathy for a lower court

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lier than once suspected. That means that some con- decision ordering ASI to investigate the formation.
tinuity between the first and second wave of Indian Some Indian scholars argue that early Hindu texts
civilization is conceivable, says Possehl. can be used as guides, much as the Bible has been used
There is no doubt that the hallmarks of the Indus in Near Eastern archaeology. Respected ASI archaeolo-
disappeared with its cities, including its unique set gist R. S. Bisht, who excavated Dholavira and can quote
of specific symbols, sophisticated standardization long passages from Hindu scripture, suggests that the
of weights and bricks, and rectilinear urban plan- Climate chronicler. Rita Wright Indus people were one and the same as the Aryans
ning. Later urban areas along the Ganges are radi- tracks the Indus response to whom Wheeler saw as invaders. That theory finds little
cally different in layout; the new writing system that drought around Harappa. purchase with foreign scholars. And one Western
eventually emerged is unrelated to Indus symbols; archaeologist complains that such talk makes for a
and standardization is missing. volatile mix of science and religion that is “needlessly inflammatory to
But archaeologists such as Possehl see deeper connections. our Pakistani colleagues.”
“There is continuity,” he says. A handful of Indus seals showing a The intense emotion surrounding the debate is exacerbated by
deity with three faces in a yogic-style posture may link today’s the many questions that remain about the Indus’s decline. “There is
Hindu god Shiva and yoga practices with the Indus civilization. no silver bullet; there were clearly multiple factors,” says Meadow.
And a variety of technologies and traditions, such as tandoori “And we still don’t know what was the trigger.” But, he says, rec-
ovens, oxcarts pulled by water buffalo, and cattle marked with ognizing that complexity is itself a big step forward.
henna are a regular part of village life around Mohenjo Daro even –ANDREW LAWLER

tributaries can’t be done without “We need to be able to put together ity, Shinde helped create the Soci- Vasant Shinde,
cross-border studies. Comprehen- all the pieces,” says Qasid Mallah, a ety of South Asian Archaeologists excavator at
sive analyses of ancient climate professor at Shah Abdul Latif Uni- in 2005. Most Indian and Pakistani Farmana, India.
require regional sampling. And versity in Khairpur, Pakistan. “That archaeologists couldn’t afford to
because the research communities includes the Indian portion too.” go to international conferences, so
are so divided, discoveries in one Adds Shinde: “It would be more he proposed a new organization—
country may go unnoticed in the beneficial if we could all work in registered under the Indian gov-
other; archaeologists say they have both India and Pakistan, particu- ernment but classed as a private
CREDITS (TOP TO BOTTOM): SUSAN WRIGHT; A. LAWLER/SCIENCE

little knowledge of what takes larly for the students.” group—to hold meetings closer to
place across the border. Given the Politicians and administrators home. For the first conference in
lack of published papers and per- in both countries have shown little Mumbai in 2006, a few Pakistanis
sonal connections, even digital interest in using archaeology as a secured visas, although others did
and virtual collaboration is rare. tool for détente. The director gen- not. The second meeting was held
Foreigners can make the trip eral of the Archaeological Survey 25 to 27 May in Shiraz, Iran, on
between the two countries with rel- of India, Anshu Vaish, says her neutral ground, and the next gath-
ative ease, and a few European, organization has no plans to push ering is to be held in Sri Lanka in
Japanese, and American for more cooperation. And the 2010. Shinde says that despite
researchers frequently work on both recent elections in Pakistan, which growing pains, the group now has
sides. But archaeologists from India resulted in an uneasy coalition, 400 members from six countries. In
and Pakistan have only rare and make dramatic initiatives from the meantime, he and Masih will go
fleeting opportunities to meet, such that side unlikely. about their respective business, so
as at international conferences. To circumvent the political real- close, and yet so far. –A.L.

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 Boring No More, a Trade-Savvy Indus Emerges
Andrew Lawler (June 6, 2008)
Science 320 (5881), 1276-1281. [doi:
10.1126/science.320.5881.1276]

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