Indus Valley Civilization

File:Mohenjo-daro.jpg

The Indus Valley Civilization, lasting from 2600 to 1900 BCE and with a population of five million people, has no strong evidence of having had warfare, inequality, or hierarchy. Named after the Indus River, it encompassed at least 800,000 square kilometers in land now known as "Pakistan, India and Afghanistan."

In a Journal of Archaeological Research article, archaeologist Adam S. Green posited, "The Indus civilization was egalitarian, but this is not because it lacked complexity; rather, it is because a ruling class is not a prerequisite for social complexity."

The Indus civilization included two major cities: Mohenjo-daro and Harappa. It's likely that Mohenjo-daro served as a religious center and Harappa as a trading center. Given the lack of any state or military, there was no domination of cities and towns over the countryside.

Explanations for the civilization's eventual collapsed include attacks from outsiders, climate change, and earthquakes.

Culture

Burial sites indicate that people were buried with roughly equal amounts of burial goods. Luxury goods including stoneware bangels, carnelian beads, and stamp seals, were available to the entire population. Within each community, there was not much difference in the sizes of peoples' houses.

The Indus Valley civilization had diffuse ritual practices and no state religion. There were no monumental representations of rulers, gods or even priests. There were no large temples and, according to Gelderloos, no strong evidence of there being priests. There were also no pictures of military conquest.

There were at least three recognized genders. In addition to women and men, there were hijras. Often intersex or assigned maleness at birth, they adopted feminine traits and tended to be either celibate or sexually involved with men.

It's unclear to what degree there may have been gender inequalities. In Harappa, "female figurines are generally dressed and ornamented more elaborately than males." However, Charles Keith Maisels claims that skeletal studies, though showing no class inequalities, do indicate "male/female inequalities which are even present in hunter-gatherer societies."

Even though wealth was distributed evenly throughout the city, Graeber and Wengrow speculate that an upper caste which lived in the Upper Citadel and the Great Bath reflected their concern with purity. This speculation has been criticized by some reviewers and sharply conflicts with Adam Green's interpretation. As Graeber and Wengrow acknowledge, the first known written reference to South Asian caste comes from the Rig Veda composed much later (around 1200 CE).

Maisels finds that a caste system emerged only in the civilization's late, declining period.

Decisions

There were no places, monuments to kings, or other indications of a state. One statue, theorized by earlier archeologists to be a "priest-king," is now widely considered to be a portrayal of a neighboring society.

Economy

The "urban planning, sewage, and hygienic systems were the best in the ancient world." Farmers grew millets and rice in the summer and wheat and barley in the winter. Domesticated animals were used for meat, hide, bone, and traction.

There were large collective works including the Great Bath and Pillared Hall at Mohenjo-daro and nonresidential structures at Harappa. It is estimated that one of the foundation platforms at Mohenjo-daro would have required 10,000 builders for more than one year. Andrew Robinson, writing in New Scientist speculates that some of this labor may have been coerced or even involved slavery, but Green emphasizes that there is no evidence of a ruling class and that large projects can be coordinated horizontally.

In Mohenjo-daro, although the Upper Citadel contained the grander non-residential buildings, wealth was evenly distributed throughout the city. Metals, gemstones, shells, clay figurines, writing, and weights and measurements were found widely dispersed in the so-called Lower Town.

City-Countryside Balance

Given the lack of any military or state, the cities did not subordinate rural areas. Maisels notes "villages were not oppressed by the towns. Doubltless the absence of royal or state capitals is significant in this; which is certainly not to say that towns and cities were absent, rather that they were not politically dominant." Green writes: "The diversity and flexibility of their agricultural practices indicates that Indus farmers were not likely trapped in subordinated tributary relations with a ruling class." Gelderloos notes:

"the lack of military structures suggests that the rural population traded their surplus more or less voluntarily with the artisans of the towns and cities; without a military, the cities could not subjugate the countryside or do anything worse than impose mildly unfavorable balances of trade"

Crime

Due to the absence of a state, conflicts were negotiated locally and often informally. There was, according to Maisels, "a negotiated, ideologically, constrained and consensual understanding of 'law', not a 'legal process' established through the courts of a central authority, but a localized, relatively informal, dispute resolution process."

Gelderloos writes: "it might be possible that collectively (and violently) enforced social norms were in place, leading to a decentralized practice of killing authoritarian would-be leaders as well as people engaging in behaviors perceived as anti-social, such as murder, rape, or theft."

Environment

When the Indus Valley civilization encountered an ecological crisis, which was not human-caused, residents "migrated upland to a territory that still had sufficient natural irrigation, and shifted to a more decentralized, small-scale settlement pattern."

Neighboring Societies

There is no evidence of military weaponry, and the artwork does not portray humans fighting other humans. The sole portrayal of a human fighting is a mythical depiction with the opponent represented as a female deity with goat horns and a tiger's body. Although Harappa had city walls, the walls were too low and weak to serve as defensive structures, and Harappa did not have an army.