Indus River Valley Research Paper

What is the Indus River Valley? Although it is not as thoroughly researched and documented as Egyptian or Mesopotamian civilization, the Indus River Valley is known to be one of the earliest successful civilizations in history. However, similar to many civilizations in history, the Indus River Valley civilization had an external geography that protected it from invasion, counted on internal geography that lead to its uniqueness, was discovered by Charles Masson during the British Empire expansion, achieved many outstanding accomplishments, but eventually declined as other civilizations.

The external geography of the Indus River Valley helped prevent invasion for a long period of time. Its geography counts with prominent mountain ranges including

The valley stretched to 300 square miles, which was twice the size of Egypt and Mesopotamia. It had 1,000 cities and towns, an accomplishment that had not been done until the Roman Empire. Additionally, the Indus River Valley had paved roads, established planed cities and modern-day blueprints, invented the first flushable toilet, sustained equality, produced 410 different symbols used for identification, grew cotton, managed to domesticate chicken, and so forth. These accomplishments contributed to the success of the Indus River Valley

There are several theories for the cause of the Indus River Valley decline. For instance, in 1944, Sir Mortimer Wheeler led the ASI and discovered that the Indus Valley was subjected to Aryans invasion. He stated that the proof of invasion was in a sentence in the Rig Vedas and gave physical evidence of a group of 37 skeletons found in different places of Mohenjo-Daro. Wheeler also concluded that those who were not killed left the city, which brought the city into social decay, and unable to have the walls around the city to prevent the invasion. In the 1960s, George Dales questioned Wheeler’s theory. He argued that Wheeler’s theory was too vague. In order to support his argument, Dales showed evidence that the walls were used to protect from floods, not to protect from Aryan armies. He also re-examined the 37 bodies and concluded that the bodies were from different time periods. Similarly, in 1984, a biologist and scientist inspected the 37 bodies and concluded that the bodies showed signs of healing. As a result, she questioned if the invasion caused the death, or if it was caused by other circumstances such as the fact that the place in which the bodies were found was uninhabitable. Another possible reason for the Indus River Valley civilization’s decline is based on evidence of a volcanic eruption