Ancient River Valley Civilisation: The Indus Valley

Both Harappan men and women wore ornaments. Men wore fillets, necklaces, finger rings, and amulets, while women wore earrings, bangles, bracelets, necklaces, girdles, anklets, and head-dresses. The rich wore ornaments made of gold, silver and ivory, while the poor wore jewellery made of shell, bone and copper.

Two features of the religion of the Harappan people are:

1. Numerous clay figures of a female deity have been found. This was probably the Mother Goddess. A three-faced figure, seated in a yogic posture, surrounded by various animals, is engraved on some seals. Some historians believe it to be an earlier form of Pashupati (Lord Shiva). Hence, it is evident that the Harappan people believed in Mother Goddess and Pashupati.
2. The people of Harappa believed in life after death. This is evident from the fact that excavated graves contain pottery, jewellery and other articles, which they thought would be needed in the afterlife.

It is believed that their writing was pictographic. The script seems to have 250 to 400 pictographs. Writing was from right to left. The Harappan writing can be seen in inscriptions found on seals.

Three causes for the decline of the Harappan Civilisation are:

1. Ecological changes led to the decline of agriculture. Shifts in the monsoon pattern and changes in temperature made the area more arid. This forced the people to move to other areas.
2. Natural calamities, such as floods or earthquakes, may have destroyed the cities.
3. Changes in the course of the river Indus may have left the land dry and infertile, and not fit for agriculture.

rivers Tigris and Euphrates.

spectacular city planning.

RD Banerjee

Lothal

an earlier form of Pashupati.

i-c, ii-b, iii-d, iv-e, v-a

Mesopotamia

(a) The artefact appears to be made of terracota (reddish-brown baked clay).

(b) The fragment likely belongs to a Painted and Glazed pot of Harappan times.

(c) This artefact shows that the Harappan people were expert potters. They could create symmetrical and durable pots in various shapes and sizes using the potter's wheel. The pots were generally glazed and painted.

(a) Swasti is assuming that the Harappan script is advanced and complex because historians have not been able to understand or decipher the simple pictures on the seals.

(b) This assumption might be incorrect because historians have not been able to decipher the Harappan script mainly because the script is very short and pictographic, usually with only a few symbols, and there is no bilingual inscription to help understand its meaning. So, the difficulty in reading the script is not necessarily because it is complex, but because there is not enough information to decode it.

The land was left dry and infertile, and not fit for agriculture.