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The Indus or Harappa civilization is one of the big enigmas of ancient times and even its very existence went unrecognised up until fairly recently. Even as late as the 1920's the rise of high culture was equated with the arrival of the cattle herding Aryans, that is an Indo-European speaking migratory wave, these are the famous Aryans that are detailed in the ancient holy books, The Rig Veda. The main problem with what is generally termed the Indus Valley Culture is that it seems to have sprung up fully formed.

The area around the Indus Valley and the Persian Gulf had a low sophistication peasant culture but it was the arrival of the Aryan migrants around 1500 BC that really kicks off the rise to high civilization in the area. The cities that grew up in the area Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro rival Sumerian and Egyptian cities in size and sophistication. Unfortunately this period also marks a "dark age" in Indian history and like similar periods in other histories marks a point where our knowledge of the culture vastly diminishes.

It is through pottery and the linguistic records that much can be learned, as both are traceable to distinct population groups and their movement and integrations with other peoples offers some interesting insights. The Indus Valley culture was once seen to be purely the result of the Aryan invaders, but is now believed more likely to be the result of the assimilation of the new migrants and the Dravidic population that was already in the area. This begs the question of where did the Aryans come from.

The Aryans arrival in the Indus Valley seems to be the later phase of a dispersal that came out of southern central Russia and lead to them peopling Assyria in the west and the Punjab in the east as well as forming the well documented Mitanni empire in Mesopotamia

Recent work on skeletal remains from Harappa itself showed that genetically the people that were living here three and a half thousand years ago are not that different to the people living in North west India today.

Learn more about this author, Dave Franklin.
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