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The Indus River Valley is located in modern India and Pakistan.
It was settled by nomads, or people that traveled together not living in one place for very long.
When the Harappans came upon the Indus River, they noticed it was very good for farming
and so they were the first to create cities there.
Today, we may think of cities as just a lot of people living in one place.
But inventing this idea is a lot more complicated than that, and so creating a city is a very big deal.
Imagine you're going on a camping trip.
Before you leave, you need to plan it, otherwise things could go very badly for you.
Since you're not camping alone, you'll have help planning the trip, so you'll remember
to bring what you need.
You'll need to bring food, drinking water, someplace to sleep, protection from animals
and... a way to deal with bathroom breaks.
You can bring what you'll need, it's probably heavy, but it's just for a few days.
Now imagine you decide to stay camping out forever, and you've got about 40,000 people
with you.
You're going to need a new plan.
This new city is going to need systems to keep people alive and happy there.
Getting fresh water, growing and storing food and good homes for shelter are going to be important.
There's also other problems people create that will need to be solved and your nose
would let you know that pretty quickly.
Creating systems that get rid of waste and allow people to bathe aren't just for the
sake of smell, they're very important for the health of everyone living in a city.
Diseases spread quickly when people live close together.
Around 3300 BCE, Harappan villages gathered around what would become the cites, the planned
cities of Harappa, Lothal, Mehrgarh and Mohenjo-Daro were built around 2600 BCE.
Let's have a look at Mohenjo-daro, one of the most famous cities in the Indus River
valley, because its structures were very well-preserved.
Mohenjo-daro and other cities had hundreds of wells throughout the city to provide clean water to its people.
Homes were built from clay bricks hardened by fire and were located in the lower city,
arranged in a grid pattern, a system of organizing buildings into "blocks" still used today.
In the lower city was also a granary, a large building used to store grains they farmed
that could feed people year-round.
Public buildings that were used to govern and used everyone in the city were located
in the citadel, and included a great bath that may have even been heated.
One of the most important innovations that allowed the city to grow was a sewage system,
which is necessary for city homes to have bathrooms.
Homes had a bathroom, a room dedicated for bathing and... other things bathrooms are
used for.
People would use a bucket to wash things away (since there was no water running into the
homes) these bathrooms had a slanted floor that would bring all waste to a hole in the
wall that would go into the sewers that were underneath the streets.
A sewage system needs to go to every home, takes away waste from toilets, bathing and
any water that leaves city homes, and it must prevent waste from polluting water used for
drinking and bathing.
Without a sewage system, illnesses from one home would easily infect other homes, often
making almost an entire city sick.
You may be wondering, if cities need this much planning and have all these problems
that need to be solved, why build them?
What were the advantages?
Great coffee shops, restaurants, music, museums and arguing with other cities about who has
the best pizza?
Well, people outside of cities often spent a lot of time on chores necessary for survival.
Getting water alone would often occupy many hours in a day.
When people shared wells and lived near each other, trading for necessities and luxury
items also became easier as more people were closer, so exchanging goods, services and
ideas was more accessible and faster.
Spending less time on survival and more time with each other also allowed people to have
more leisure time.
Evidence of toys, games, arts and hobbies have all been found in Harappan cities.
While noisy neighbors and traffic aren't anyones idea of fun, we have ancient cities like the
Harappans created to thank for making life more culturally enriching and fun.
The Indus River valley's cities were very peaceful.
They had city walls, but those walls wouldn't have been helpful against attacks by other
armies, they appear to have been to protect the city from wild animals.
There are few weapons that have been found in the artifacts of the cities.
Lasting peace is uncommon for civilizations of this time and it's not entirely clear why
it was this way.
There was writing in the Indus River Valley which could tell us more about their society,
but, it is still unable to be deciphered, or understood today.
What we know about the Indus Valley is from relics and cities archaeologists have found
in the region.
What we do know is that the Harappans traded with other groups.
A standard system of weights and measures, the first, was invented in the Indus River
Valley and was important for trade as well as construction and crafts.
Having a standard system helped people to share information on how to make and build
things.
Understanding and agreeing on units of measurement is necessary for trade knowing how much of
something you're getting is important when trying to buy or trade something, or else
things can go very wrong.
The Harappans produced food; cotton and textiles; metal, mineral, gold and gem jewelry; and
pottery and carpentry crafts, all items that other groups wanted for trade.
Trade with Mesopotamia and others to the west helped the Harappans gain more materials for
building, spread their influence and also may have encouraged peace because different
groups trading each others' resources, goods and skills creates interdependence between
cultures.
The city of Lothal to the south was a port city, its location and technology connected
the Indus River and its cites to the Indian Ocean to transport goods for trade.
Lothal had giant buildings to store and move goods for trade, and the city was built in
its location because they were able to build passages that allowed large ships in and out
of the ocean year-round even when tides and weather effected the river's depth and flow.
Artifacts from the Harappans have been found as far as Mesopotamia and Egypt, including
uniform seals with the Harappan script and art to identify the craftspeople that made
goods.
Around 1900 BCE, around a thousand years after the Harappan cities were built, they mysteriously
disappeared.
It is a mystery since historians don't really know and don't agree on the causes of these
cities becoming empty, and since the writings of the Harappans hasn't been deciphered, only
the remains of the city can give us clues.
We do know that during this time, in Mesopotamia the Akkadian empire was falling and it was
a very unstable period, so trade to that region would have stopped.
Since the Harappans were very involved with trade, this caused a great deal of economic
disruption.
Those with jobs dependent on trade: craftspeople, dock workers, sailors, lots of people would
have had difficulty supporting themselves.
As these cities disappeared, the Indo-Aryans were migrating into the Indus River Valley.
The Indo-Aryans were great warriors with weapons technology more advanced than the Harappans.
A few historians believed that the Indo-Aryans went to war with the Harappans, explaining
their abandoned cites, but there isn't evidence in the city sites to suggest that, very few
weapons or violent injuries have been found.
This began the Vedic period in the Indus River Valley.
The Vedic period is also when Hinduism and Buddhism began, and their system of writing
was Vedic Sanskrit, a language that is understood today.
Since there is a lot to say about this period, we are going to split this video into two parts.
So, urban planning, early city sanitation systems, a standardized system of weights
and measures and bathrooms are all innovations we can thank the Harappans for.
There's a lot that is still left to be discovered about this period because we haven't been
able to read what they wrote yet.
Someday, there may be more clues about why these great cities emptied.
Maybe the future historian or archaeologist is sitting in your classroom right now?
We hope you enjoyed this video, see you in Part Two!
Bye for now, thanks for joining us.




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