The Harappan Period

The Harappan Period, generally dated from roughly 3300 to 1300 BCE and named for Harappa, one of its two largest excavated cities alongside Mohenjo-daro, is the archaeological era of the Indus Valley Civilization, one of the world's three earliest urban civilizations alongside ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, spread across what is now Pakistan and northwestern India. Its mature phase, from about 2600 to 1900 BCE, produced remarkably standardized city planning with grid-pattern streets, sophisticated brick-built drainage and sanitation systems unmatched anywhere else in the ancient world at the time, and a still-undeciphered writing system attested on thousands of small seals, evidence of an extensive trade network reaching as far as Mesopotamia. Unusually for a major Bronze Age civilization, no monumental palaces, temples or clear evidence of a centralized king or army have been identified, leaving Harappan political organization a genuine open question among archaeologists. The civilization declined after roughly 1900 BCE, likely from a combination of shifting river courses and climate change, and its cities were gradually abandoned well before the later Vedic Period's Indo-Aryan migrations into the region.