10. They Were Ahead Of Their Time
An artist’s reconstruction of the gateway and drain at the city of Harappa (image via; sci-news.com)
An extremely sophisticated and technically advanced culture of its time is evident throughout the Indus valley civilization. The cities that were built by them were absolutely amazing, particularly “Harappa” and “Mohenjo-Daro”. They had the dense cluster of multistory nonresidential buildings, homes that were constructed using uniformly sized baked bricks, some homes were in a special orientation to catch the wind and provide natural form of air conditioning, they even had their own version of flushing toilets.
The people of Indus valley civilization placed high priority on hygiene too. Harappa and mohenjo-daro had the world’s first sanitation system. Most homes were connected with the centralized drainage system to carry waste and water with the help of gravity, this kind of system was pinnacle for 18th century Europe. The ancient Indus sewage and drainage system that were used throughout the Indus region, were leagues ahead of any contemporary urban city of middle east. It is also believed that their drainage system was more efficient than those in many areas of today’s India and Pakistan.
There’s an apparent indication of some kind of government that were taking and implementing complex decisions. Construction of cities were done in highly uniform and a well planned grid pattern. They probably didn’t have monarchy system, but had different rulers for different cities.
9. The Great Bath of Indus Valley Civilization
One of the most captivating things about the Indus valley civilization is that the largest built structure by them wasn’t any temple or monumental building, which is commonly seen in contemporary civilizations like Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, instead it was a public bath in Mohanjo-Daro named The great bath.
The 11×7 meters bath had the depth of around 2.5m. It had two wide staircases from north and south that served as the entry to the pool. A hole was also found at the end of the bath, which might have been used to drain water into it. The floor and walls of pool was water tight due to finely fitted bricks and the mud laid with gypsum plaster. The sides and the floor of the pool were covered with a thick layer of waterproof tar.
Although the exact purpose of the great bath is still much debated. But most scholars believe that it was built for religious purposes, a kind of ritual which is still practiced today in India, but mostly among Hindus, Jains and Buddhists. Indus valley people may have believed that the water purify and renew the soul of bather.
8. They Had Highly Skilled Craftsmen
The Engineering skills of Indus valley people were remarkable, they developed some new techniques in metallurgy and produced elements like copper, bronze, lead and tin. Various sculptures, seals, vessels pottery, gold jewelry and anatomically detailed figures have been found in archaeological sites that are made out of various materials such as terracotta, bronze, gold and satellite. Those people had mastered many crafts including shell working, ceramics, agate and satellite bead making. They were also obsessed with ornaments like necklaces and bangles, which is evident in almost all phases of Harappan culture. Some of these crafts are still practiced in the subcontinent today. Their extraordinary craftsmanship is manifest with highly detailed dancing figures of females with cylindrical limbs that they made using terracotta. Some historians call these crafted figures almost impossible to be developed by the people of 3rd millennium BCE.
7. Astonishing Seals
It’s now widely accepted among historians that people from Indus valley civilization traded goods with Mesopotamia and probably Egypt. Perhaps they were even the first people to use wheel transport. But the most interesting things that they produced were “seals” that they used as identification markers on goods and clay tablets.
These seals contain a written language that we still can’t read and a lot of interesting designs of fantastical creatures, animals and people (probably gods). But the most famous and profound seal is the one called Pachupati seal. In this seal a three headed man with Buffalo horns on his middle head is sitting between a tiger and a bull. The exact meaning of the image isn’t well understood but it’s purported to be the earliest depiction of Hindu god “Shiva”, who’s also regarded as the “lord of animals”. The man is sitting with legs bent in a position that he seems to be doing medication, some believe that it could also be the earliest example of practicing Yoga.
6. They Pioneered Buttons And Stepwell
The inventions and discoveries made by Indus valley civilization doesn’t sound interesting today, but they were great achievements at their time. We’re talking about the age when the rate of innovations was much lower than the modern time period, while number of inventions and discoveries done by humans didn’t skyrocket until 15th century or perhaps industrial revolution.
People of Indus valley civilization actually developed and used Buttons around 2000 BCE for ornamental purposes. Buttons were made out of seashells, some of them were carved into various geometric shapes. They had holes pierced into them, so that they can be attached by using thread. Earliest known button is found in Mohenjo-daro which is believed to be about 5000 years old.
Earliest apparent evidence of stepwell is also found in Indus valley civilization’s archeological site Mohenjo-Daro. It probably had religious significance which also seems to explain why later Buddhist and Jains adapted stepwells into their structures, both the ritual of bathing and stepwell reached other parts of the world with Buddhism.