Indus River Valley

The Indus River Valley, located in modern-day Pakistan, is bigger than Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia squashed together.

 

Unfortunately, archaeologists have to use a lot of guesswork when studying the Indus River Valley. Why?

 

Nobody has yet decoded the language of the Ancient Indus civilization. So we don't know about their gods or whether they had any. Their language appears pictographic but we don't know what words they represent. Most sentences/words seem pretty short.

 

Also, there seems to be no temples in the ruins of the Indus River Valley. This could mean that they made the temples out of wood, may have worshipped outside, or maybe did not believe in gods.

 

We do know that the Indus River Valley people could make metal, lead, and tin, domesticated camels, pigs, traded with the Sumerians, and wore colorful cotton robes.

 

Like the Ancient Egyptians, the women of this civilization wore lipstick; they lived in houses of one to two stories high with private bathrooms, sewer systems, carts with wooden wheels; and had primitive dentists.

 

We're also pretty sure that they had engineers with mathematical skills who planned out their cities. We know that they have mathematical skills from their system of weights and measures.

 

They had figurines of dancing girls, monkeys, bears, and cows. Swastikas have also been found in designs.

 

During the British occupation of India, the British tore down an entire ancient city just so that they could use the rubble for building railroad tracks.  

 

Nobody knows what really happened to this civilization. There are many theories, but there is a lot of controversy over which of these theories are correct.