Original subtitles

ln the 19th century. lndia was regarded as the mother of civilisations.

But the great civilisations could only be Middle Eastern, Egyptian.

Mortimer Wheeler, one of the great British archaeologists in lndia.

called lndia "the Cinderella civilisation" because it was the last born.

Some even thought it a pale copy of Mesopotamian civilisations

before it was realised that it was in fact unique.

When archaeologists started to dig

they found nothing resembling the Mesopotamian civilisations.

But they soon realised they were uncovering huge cities.

Some sites cover 200 to 300 hectares.

ln area, Mohenjo-Daro is probably the largest of all ancient cities.

Big rivers were vital to the growth of the lndus civilisation

as they are to all agrarian civilisations.

The rivers facilitate agriculture. which then feeds cities

where a new. non-peasant population appears.

a population of labourers and craftsmen.

ln the past. the lndus spread across a huge plain

which was cultivated

at the risk of one's fields disappearing every year.

There is satellite imagery.

Secondly. the kind of earth we have here

is clearly a dried-up riverbed. where we are standing.

Water from the past is still there. Otherwise none would lie there.

lt's not a pond.

it's part of the riverbed.

So this is clear evidence.

We have a fairly good idea of the strength of their economy.

The great cities of the lndus. especially Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa.

had well-developed crafts

that produced items only this civilisation could make.

like particular types of near-industrial ceramics.

not to mention all that's been lost.

The lndus civilisation must have produced a lot of textiles.

of food processed using the technologies of the time.

No traces remain of all that. it's all disappeared.

But today. some of its products would qualify as industrial-quality

and they were widely exported. from the Gulf to Mesopotamia.

One problem with the lndus civilisation

is that its people wrote.

We know that.

we have thousands of documents.

But they wrote on perishable media.

so we don't have their writings.

only what we'd call street signs.

signs on key rings.

everything that remained solid

while the other media disappeared.

So we don't know. We have no texts.

So we saw a civilisation emerge that had writing.

but we thought it was just for magic rituals.

when in fact it probably had a political and administrative system

like Egypt and Mesopotamia.

Clearly. so long as we can't decipher the writing.

which means finding a text that is long enough

to decipher with the classic techniques.

we won't even know what language they spoke.

The maritime trade of the lndus civilisation

has been studied over the past 20 years or so.

We knew the rivers were used for trade between the lndus cities.

lts maritime trade is more tricky.

We know that items from the lndus reached the Oman peninsula.

that is. today's United Arab Emirates and Oman.

as well as Bahrain and Mesopotamia.

More than that. we have Mesopotamian texts.

a text by Sargon of Akkad from around 2300 BC.

saying that in his harbour were ships from Dilmun.

which is the Kuwait-Qatar region centred on Bahrain...

boats from Magan. today's Oman peninsula.

and from Meluhha. the land of the lndus.

lt was probably a multilateral trade

involving people from the whole region.

lt seems that the first people to take to the sea

were not people from the lndus.

We must bear in mind that today's lndus delta

is subject to huge tides.

lt's extremely difficult to navigate.

And its sea coast is also very difficult to navigate.

But at some stage. everyone took to the sea.

And at that time.

in the middle of the third millennium BC.

a time of increased international trade.

like the trade in jewellery.

for example. large carnelian beads.

which only people from the lndus knew how to make

but also the trade in fabrics. including precious fabrics.

produced and exchanged in both the lndus and Mesopotamia.

And also all sorts of goods that came from afar.

like combs made of ivory. and all sorts of other items

from as far as the jungles of the Ganges valley.

How did these people communicate?

A Sumerian text. from Mesopotamia around 2000 BC.

mentions a translator from Meluhha

who spoke the languages of the lndus and Sumeria.

Pity he didn't leave a dictionary!

But we must imagine that this whole ancient world.

where people constantly exchanged things.

was multilingual.

lt's in our world

that people now speak a single language plus English.

ln that ancient world

a language was often spoken by just a few thousand people.

The neighbouring group spoke a different language.

So all these people had to be able to communicate.

How did the lndus civilisation vanish?

First. it didn't suddenly disappear.

What we know is that from a certain date

that can be established at around 2000 BC

something we call "regionalisation" occurred.

This vast cultural unity was replaced by regional entities

that lasted quite a while.

The large cities were abandoned. that's certain.

That happens quite often.

And the reason the large cities are abandoned

is that the way society functions

can no longer support them economically.

But that doesn't mean the people just left.

lt means they started to live differently.

in a manner less visible to archaeology.

The problem is. archaeologists can't see everything.

Subtitles SBS Australia 2007