The Indus Valley civilisation
History · Key Stage 2 · The School
Cities built to a plan
The big cities of the INDUS VALLEY civilisation grew up around 2600 BCE. Its cities were in what is now Pakistan and north-west India. Mohenjo-daro and Harappa were two of its biggest cities. Most of its cities were built on a grid. Straight streets crossed at right angles. The layout looks carefully planned.
Water and drains
Homes, or groups of homes, got water from wells. Some houses had a space for washing. Covered drains ran along the main streets. Waste water from houses ran into the street drains. Archaeologists call these drains well planned. They were advanced compared with many other societies of the time. It took careful planning and real engineering skill.
A writing nobody can read
The Indus people left short marks, most often on small stone seals. This is called the INDUS SCRIPT. Nobody has ever worked out what it says. Some scholars doubt it records a language at all. The marks are very short, about five signs on average. We cannot tell if a king's name or a story is among them. The mystery is more than a hundred years old.
Imagine you dig up a brick in an Indus city and measure it. It is 7 cm thick. Double that and you get 14 cm, the width. Double 14 and you get 28 cm, the length. So the sides go 1, 2, 4. A museum in Mumbai runs a study gallery. Its page on Harappan bricks says house bricks averaged about 28 by 14 by 7 cm. It also says the length, width and height were in a 4 to 2 to 1 ratio. Your brick fits that pattern. A tape measure can show the shape of a brick. It cannot show who made the rule. Nobody can read the Indus script, so we cannot check if the rule was ever written down.