Indus Valley Civilization | Early Civilizations | World History | Khan Academy

- [Narrator] As we've talked
about in multiple videos,

some of the earliest
civilizations we have found

have been around river valleys,

and that is no coincidence
because some of the first

agriculture emerged around river valleys

and the agriculture supported
higher population densities

and more sedentary populations,

and allowed for more specialization.

And we have talked about several of these,

the ancient Egyptians
around the Nile River,

the ancient Mesopotamians
around the Tigris and Euphrates.

And now we're gonna talk
about the ancient civilization

around the Indus River.

The Indus River runs mostly
in modern-day Pakistan,

and that's why it's called
the Indus Valley civilization.

Indus Valley Civilization.

It's also sometimes referred to

as the Harappan civilization,

which was the first site
where they found evidence

of this fairly extensive civilization.

Now to get ourselves acquainted in time,

this shows when archaeologists, historians

consider to be the main part
of the Harappan civilization.

There's evidence that
people had basic villages,

civilizations, agriculture here,

as far back as 7,000 BCE,

and that's just based on
the evidence we have today,

but when people refer to the
Indus Valley civilization

in particular, they're usually
staring around 3300 BCE

and in orange right over here,
this is the early period,

or you could say the early
Indus Valley civilization.

Now some of the biggest
structures and pieces

of technology that have been discovered

have been right over here,
which is often referred to

as the mature period for the
Indus Valley civilization,

and then it goes into decline.

We'll talk about why it
might have gone into decline,

although we're not really sure,

and this is called the late.

Now to put it in context
relative to these other

civilizations, remember
the ancient Sumerians were

starting to be quite, I guess
you could say civilized,

by about this period.

You start having a lot of intermingling

between the Acadians and the Sumerians

as you get into the late third millennium.

That's when you have the
empire of Sargon the Great,

the Acadian Empire.

As you get to the end
of this mature period

right over here, this is
close to or around the time

of Hammurabi, the Babylonian Empire,

and in Egypt, if you
go back to around 2500,

around this time, that's
when the pyramids were built

and you have the Egyptian Kings,

these god-kings that were
ruling for most of this period

right over here and as we'll
see, there was actually,

we believe, a good bit
of cultural interchange

between the significant civilizations.

Now just to appreciate how
extensive this Indus Valley

civilization was, I
will show you this map.

And this map, it's
zoomed in of that region

around the Indus Valley
that I just showed you.

This is a map of most of Pakistan here,

and these red squares are
places where they have found

evidence of the civilization.

The first place was
Harappa, right over here,

the Punjab region of Pakistan.

And that's why it's called
the Harappan civilization.

But as you can see, it's much
more than just around Harappa.

The largest site is at Mohenjo-Daro,

right over here in the
Sindh region of Pakistan

and it's believed that
as many as 40,000 people

lived in that city that
we now, or that site,

that we now call Mohenjo-Daro.

And so far, we have discovered
over 1,000 sites in this area

and we believe that as
many as five million people

might have been part of the civilization.

Now the reason why we
think it is a civilization

and now, and let me actually
keep scrolling around

so you appreciate the extent of it.

There's sites in mainly, many
in Pakistan that you see here.

There's also quite a
few in modern-day India

right over here, so it's
an extensive network

of these sites and the
reason why we think it's

one civilization, or at
least a connected culture,

is that you find a lot of standardization.

You find standardization in
their weights and measures.

In fact, they have a unit
of measurement that's

as small as 1.6 millimeters,
and the reason why that's

important is you wouldn't
create a unit of measurement

of 1.6 millimeters unless you
knew how to use something,

unless you know how to
make things that precise.

And one of the things that
they made that precise

are things like their structures.

They had these standard
bricks and this brick size

and many of these symbols that they used

were found throughout these sites.

Which said we don't know
whether they were controlled

by one ruler or one emperor,
but there was definitely

a lot of cultural interchange

to the point that they were
using the same size bricks,

they were using the same symbols,

they were using the same
units of measurement.

And also, as you can imagine,

having a unit of measurement that precise,

that small implies that
they were great builders.

And the evidence we find
today says yes, they were.

This is a picture of
the site at Mohenjo-Daro

in modern-day Sindh Pakistan,

and you can see how
tight this brick work is,

even by modern standards
this is quite good.

You'd need to think of how
many things we would build

would last 5,000 years in this good,

being exposed to the environments.

They think this was a public bath.

You see a citadel in the background.

We've discovered defensive structures.

Perhaps most impressively, there is,

or most impressive,
there's sewage systems.

They think houses had wells, water.

So this was a technologically
advanced civilization

especially for that time.

In many ways, more advanced
than the other civilizations,

the contemporary civilizations
that we had talked about.

Here are some examples of their
sculpture or of their art.

This is, this one right
over here is a picture,

it's called Dancing Girl,
but she's not dancing,

but they think that
might be her profession.

It's all speculation by
archaeologists today.

This they believe is called Priest-King,

once again, it's all speculation.

This is an example of the
types of seals they made.

This is their jewelry, once again,

this is quite intricate jewelry,

and this jewelry was
not just discovered in

archaeological digs in
these various sites.

There's evidence of
their jewelry as far as

Mesopotamia in digs there.

And they believe that there
was actually a very active

maritime trade network
between these areas.

There's jewelry discovered
in these Indus Valley

civilizations that were based on shells

from the Arabian peninsula.

They have materials from China,

so there's materials from
other parts of India,

so once again, a very very
extensive trade network.

These civilizations would
have known about them.

But as we said, they were extremely,

they seemed somewhat organized.

Even though we can't read their writing,

in fact I have some examples
of their writing here.

And you might notice, so this is examples

of their writing and
you might notice there,

this is turned into a
somewhat infamous symbol now,

because of the Nazis, this is a swastika.

But the swastika was one
of the symbols they used,

it's a symbol in Hinduism,

it's considered a symbol of good luck.

It's something that the
Nazis kind of usurped

and turned it into a very negative thing,

but it does show this connection between

that Indus Valley or that
Harappan civilization

and modern cultures that are in India and

things like the Hindu religion.

Although once again, we do not know a ton

about their religion because
their language hasn't

survived and we cannot
decipher their actual writing.

But because of their
organization and the consistency,

or relative consistency
amongst these different sites

that are so far flung,

this is a large distance
even on modern day terms,

but especially if we're
talking about four or five

thousand years ago.

Because of that, we think that, okay,

there must have been at
least decent government

administration or organization
at a city-state level,

although we're unsure
whether there was a connected

empire, whether you had an
organization beyond that

or they all just decided to
take each other's standards

and symbols and brick
sizes and things like that.

Now, one of the key
mysteries of the Indus Valley

civilization is why did it end?

It seemed to be this
thriving civilization,

perhaps the most extensive one.

In other videos, I talk about right now,

the oldest wheel was
discovered in Mesopotamia,

but some people think that
the wheel might have been

used even earlier in the
Indus Valley civilization.

I talk about this period,
as early as 3300 BCE,

but there's evidence that the civilization

started much earlier.

In the site right over here in Mehrgarh,

right over here in Pakistan.

They think that humans
were having simple villages

and agriculture as early, there's evidence

as early as 7000 BCE

and that site was discovered just in 1974.

We might discover things that take us

even further into the past,

and when you have a
civilization that was around for

so long, if there were people
there as early as 7000 BCE,

we're talking about it was
there for thousands of years,

but all of a sudden, it starts to decline.

There's evidence of less
and less trade going on,

less and less sophistication,
and then it ends.

And it's one of the mysteries of history,

of archaeology today.

Why did this Indus
Valley civilization end?

Some of the older
theories were it was maybe

it was a foreign invasion,
maybe some of the ancestors

of the modern Indians invaded,

or maybe they assimilated it somehow.

More current theories don't
think that was the case.

They think it might be some
form of climate change,

that some of the
important rivers dried up,

made the agriculture much harder.

Some people think it might
have been a natural disaster,

it might have been a flood of some kind.

But we just don't know.

Or the people, for some
reason, decided to leave,

die, migrate to maybe
other parts of the region.

But needless to say, it was
a significant civilization,

and we're just scratching the surface

of what we know about it.

We know a lot and we
know it was impressive,

even though we can't read their script

and we don't know as
much about it as we know

about ancient Mesopotamia
and the ancient Egyptians,

but signs are that as more time passes,

we'll realize that it was
more and more sophisticated

and impressive than maybe
we even appreciate today.