![]() ![]() Sanskrit is a member of the Indo-European language family, as are almost all the languages of Europe, Persian (the modern name for Persia, "Iran", is from the same root as Aryan), the main languages of Afghanistan, Kurdish, Armenian, and some now-extinct languages spoken in Anatolia (now Asiatic Turkey) such as Hittite. The Aryans spoke Sanskrit, the language of the oldest Hindu sacred texts, the Vedas, and the ancestor of all the main modern languages of Northern India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the Maldives, as well as the Sinhala language of Sri Lanka. Aryan invaders arrived in about that time period, but it is not clear to what extent they conquered and to what extent they were assimilated by the more advanced Indus Valley culture. One theory is that it was caused by climate change, in particular floods of the Indus and droughts due to monsoon hiatus another attributes it to overly intensive farming destroying the land's fertility. The major IVC city of Mohenjo-daro was abandoned around 1900 BCE and the whole IVC declined from about then until there was nothing left by about 1300 BCE. While Ancient Egypt was better at constructing monuments and other civilisations also had their strong points, the IVC cities had the best urban infrastructure of the era for example, they had the world's first municipal sewage systems. The IVC was quite technologically advanced for the time with expertise in arts and crafts and great skills in metallurgy and hydraulic engineering. The cities handled grain storage, trade, crafts, government and education, and acted as the main religious centres. Like its contemporary civilisations, the IVC was primarily based on agriculture irrigation and flood control were important areas of engineering. China also had well-developed cities at around that time, but the Liangzhu Culture and Longshan Culture were still Neolithic (late Stone Age). Bronze Age cities contemporary with the major IVC cities included Thebes in Ancient Egypt, Nineveh and Ur in Mesopotamia and Knossos in Minoan Crete. ![]() Other civilisations were at a similar level of development in about the same time period, though none had as much territory as the IVC. Trading links extended at least to Central Asia, Persia and the great Mesopotamian civilisations of the period in what are now Iraq and Syria. It had outposts further afield, including one far to the north in Bactria. Over 1400 archaeological sites have been identified as belonging to this civilisation, predominantly in central and eastern Pakistan and northwestern India Wikipedia has a list.Īt its height, the Indus Valley Civilisation spanned almost all of what is now Pakistan and parts of what are now northern India, eastern Afghanistan and southeastern Iran. The Indus Valley Civilisation (abbreviated IVC), also known as the Harappan Civilisation, was a Bronze Age civilisation which flourished from 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE. ![]()
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