Tapestry of the Past · NCERT Class 6

The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation

More than four thousand years ago, along the river Sindhu, people built some of the world's first true cities — with straight streets, baked-brick houses, covered drains and busy workshops. We call them the Harappans, and though we still cannot read their writing, the bricks and seals they left behind tell an astonishing story. Learn where and when they lived, how they planned their cities, how they traded and crafted, and why their cities were finally abandoned. Tap each term to begin.

🌍 3 topics⏱ ~25 min📝 12-question quiz

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A four-thousand-year-old city in six terms

The Harappan world has its own vocabulary. Tap each term to see what it means and how the ideas — the civilisation, its town planning, drains and wells, trade and seals, crafts and the great decline — fit together.

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The three big ideas

One of the world’s earliest urban civilisations grew up along the river Sindhu (Indus) and its tributaries, so it is also called the Indus Valley Civilisation.
It is named Harappan after Harappa, the first of its cities to be excavated, in the 1920s.
It flourished in its mature phase roughly 4,600 to 3,900 years ago (about 2600–1900 BCE) — older than most other ancient civilisations.
Famous sites include Harappa and Mohenjo-daro (in present-day Pakistan), and Dholavira and Lothal (Gujarat), Rakhigarhi (Haryana) and Kalibangan (Rajasthan) in India.

Common mistake: imagining it was a single city. It was a whole civilisation of many towns and villages spread over a vast area, all sharing the same style of bricks, seals and weights.

Cities were carefully planned. Streets ran straight and crossed at right angles in a neat grid. Many cities had a raised part (a citadel) and a lower town where most people lived.
Standardised bricks. Houses were built of baked bricks made to a fixed size — the same proportions used across distant towns, a sign of shared planning.
An advanced drainage system. Covered drains ran along the streets, and many houses had bathrooms and wells, with waste water carried away neatly — remarkable sanitation for its age.
Great public works. Mohenjo-daro had the Great Bath, a large watertight brick tank, and several cities had big storehouses (granaries).

Worked example. How do we know the Harappans planned their cities, rather than letting them grow by chance?

The clues fit together: streets meeting at right angles, bricks of a standard size in town after town, and a city-wide system of covered drains. Such order across many sites could only come from deliberate, shared planning.

Trade. The Harappans used standardised weights and carved seals (often showing animals and a script we still cannot read). Their goods and seals found far away show long-distance trade.
Skilled crafts. They were expert at bead-making, pottery and metalwork in copper, bronze and gold, and were among the earliest people to grow and weave cotton.
Daily life. Farmers grew wheat, barley and peas and kept animals; children played with toys; people wore jewellery — and a famous bronze figurine of a "dancing girl" was found at Mohenjo-daro.
The decline. Around 1900 BCE the cities were gradually abandoned. The causes are still debated — likely a mix of climate change, the drying or shifting of rivers, and a fall in trade.

Common mistake: thinking the civilisation ended suddenly in a single disaster. The decline was gradual, and historians still weigh several possible causes together.

Where you'll meet it

The Harappans and us

City drains, then and now

The covered street drains of Mohenjo-daro solved the very same problem our cities solve today — carrying away waste water to keep streets clean. Good sanitation is one of humanity’s oldest engineering ideas.

Weights that made trade fair

Standard Harappan weights let buyers and sellers in different towns trust a measure. Every market today still depends on shared, standard weights and measures — a habit thousands of years old.

A puzzle still unsolved

The Harappan script remains undeciphered, so reading it is one of the great unsolved puzzles of history. It shows how archaeology is a living science — there is still much waiting to be discovered.