259. Indus & Vedic Age

The Indus or Harappan civilization is best read as a long cultural sequence, not as a single city. NCERT divides it into Early Harappan 6000-2600 BCE, Mature Harappan 2600-1900 BCE and Late Harappan 1900-1300 BCE. The mature phase supplies the core evidence: planned towns, baked and unbaked bricks, seals, weights, beads, copper-bronze tools and wide settlement distribution from Afghanistan and Baluchistan to Rajasthan, Gujarat and the Yamuna basin. Harappa (excavated by Daya Ram Sahni, 1921) became the type-site because the civilization was first identified there in the Punjab region on the Ravi. Mohenjo-daro (excavated by R.D. Banerji, 1922) followed one year later on the Indus in Sindh, and the two discoveries changed ancient Indian chronology by showing an urban Bronze Age older than the early historic textual record. The grid of Harappan sites also includes Kalibangan (Hanumangarh, Rajasthan), which anchors the Rajasthan lens: it sits on the Ghaggar and preserves both pre-Harappan and Harappan levels. Ahar-Banas culture (Mewar, Rajasthan) gives the neighbouring chalcolithic comparison, with black-and-red ware, copper objects and settlements at Ahar, Gilund, Balathal and Ojiyana. The core archaeological inference is that Harappan culture was not a river-only culture: craft goods, standard brick ratios, weights and seals recur across different ecological zones, while local water sources and crops changed from region to region. The distribution also explains why site maps, museum finds and river names must be read together: a feature gains meaning when its ecological setting is known. Harappan evidence therefore combines site-feature pairs with broad distribution facts. For Rajasthan history, this means the state is part of the broader north-western protohistoric zone, not a footnote after the Indus cities.