Ever wondered how an ancient civilization could thrive without war? Learn the secrets of the Indus Valley Civilization, one of the most advanced and peaceful societies of the ancient world. Join us as we unravel their enigmatic writing system, standardized weights and measures, and extensive trade networks that connected them with distant lands like Egypt, Anatolia, China, and Mesopotamia. We'll explore the dual role their sophisticated seals played as religious symbols and trade identifiers, offering clues to their influence on later cultures and possibly the early stages of Hinduism.
Imagine walking through the impeccably planned streets of the Indus Valley cities, with grid layouts that would make modern urban planners proud. Discover how these ancient engineers prioritized public health through advanced sewage and drainage systems, public baths, and stratified residential areas. We'll also discuss the innovative canal and irrigation systems that supported their agriculture and ensured a stable water supply, safeguarding against droughts. Learn about the vital role granaries played in food storage, tax payments, and trade, and examine the strategic dockyards and man-made canals that bolstered their trade activities.
We'll also take a closer look at the major cities like Harappa and Dholavira, exploring their strategic locations and the impacts of climate change that led to their eventual abandonment. Despite a lack of written records from the native people, foreign accounts from trading partners offer fascinating glimpses into this ancient society. Finally, we'll ponder the mystery of their peaceful existence and the eventual disappearance of this remarkable civilization, challenging earlier theories like the Aryan invasion. Join us as we piece together the legacy of the Indus Valley Civilization and its enduring influence on trade, culture, and religion.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome podcast listener.
I am Mike D and this is theHistory of Money, banking and
Trade podcast.
My goal is to expand yourknowledge of the history and
evolution of trade, along withmoney, banking and credit, from
ancient civilizations all theway to the present.
I truly hope you find theseepisodes to be informative and
entertaining.
Now, I'm not a historian but,like Dan Conlon likes to say, I
(00:27):
am a fan of history.
When we last left off, we weremore or less getting an overview
of the rise of the local Induscivilizations.
We discussed the earliestcivilizations in the region
before moving into the IndusValley phase of the region.
Then we also talked about thefact that they had a form of
writing, but unfortunately itcan't be deciphered, and also
(00:51):
the development of thestandardized weights and
measures.
But more importantly, wediscussed how the people of the
Indus Valley traded with othercities within the Indus Valley,
but also they had establishedlong-distance trade with other
civilizations as far away asinto Egypt and Anatolia and up
(01:11):
into China and, of course,mesopotamia.
You combine their ability togrow excessive crops and other
finished goods and this led to apopulation boom and the
expansion of the overall IndusValley civilizations.
Remember, these were manyindependent city-states in the
Indus Valley.
So each independent city-statewould more or less operate on
(01:33):
its own, independent of eachother.
But, like I said, all thesevarious city-states all had a
similar culture that kind ofpermeated throughout this
particular region.
So each city was different, butkind of the same, if that makes
sense.
In much of these ancientsocieties, religion would have
(01:53):
been as important, if not moreimportant, than trade.
However, because there's somuch that we just don't know
about these various Induscivilizations, we really don't
know what religion or religionsthey would have practiced.
There are certain breadcrumbsthat have been left, such as
statues that were found invarious ruins that give the
(02:15):
appearance of a worship of apotential fertility or mother
goddess, similar to that of whatwas practiced in ancient
Mesopotamian societies at thetime.
Quite a few people tend tobelieve that the religion of the
Indus Valley may have been theprecursor to Hinduism, due to
the fact that there are a lot ofsimilarities that have been
(02:38):
found in the Indus ruins.
The reason people tend to thinkthis is the case is because
certain seals have been locatedin the ruins.
For example, a seal was locatedthat looks very similar to Lord
Pashapati, who was worshippedin the Hindu religion and, let's
not forget, hindu wasoriginated in India.
(02:59):
So it's quite possible thatcertain religious aspects of the
Indus Valley would have beenpicked up by other civilizations
in India and Pakistan and usedfor their basis of their
religion.
But in the grand scheme ofthings, historians just don't
know what the people of theIndus Valley worshipped or how
they worshipped, because theydidn't find any temples or any
(03:23):
other major monuments dedicatedto certain gods.
A lot of the artwork that wasfound would have been dedicated
to certain animals, but theyweren't necessarily godlike, but
there still was a chance thatthere was some sort of worship
of living things.
These living things could havebeen animals or plants, but
could have also included otherthings like rivers or mountains
(03:45):
or other kind of spirits.
The reason that there might bethese possibilities is because
during the archaeological digsthey noticed a lot of carved
animals and seals that depictedcertain plants and animals, and
the one thing about the seal isthat it wasn't necessarily a
religious thing either.
And the one thing about theseal is that it wasn't
(04:07):
necessarily a religious thingeither.
Oftentimes the seals that wereimprinted on goods could have
informed the purchaser that themerchant had guaranteed the
contents of the container andthat it may have been tampered
with in transit if the seal wasbroken.
Also, each government officialhad their own design.
So, therefore, the independenttraders and the governmental
official had their own design.
So, therefore, the independenttraders and the governmental
(04:27):
officials had their own uniquekind of seals in various
different civilizations, andthey were all very distinct of
each other.
In fact, many of the IndusValley seals that were found in
Mesopotamia suggest that therewas a presence of maybe an Indus
Valley colony of traders inthis region.
So ultimately, the seals were agreat tool for the
(04:51):
archaeologists to kind of reallyfigure out where certain goods
may have originated from andalso who may have shipped the
goods.
To begin with they may not knowspecifically the person, but
they can always point to theseal and kind of get a general
idea of where it had actuallycome from.
So, in the end, the seals thatwere discovered could have been
(05:15):
a mix of a religious symbol,along with a unique identifier
of the individual or individualsthat were sending goods from
point A to point B.
Now, even though we really don'tknow what the people of the
Indus worshipped, there is apopular hypothesis that these
were the earliest Hindus, andI've already mentioned that
(05:37):
previously.
But it bears in mind the factthat it's quite possible that
the Hindu religion may havegotten a start in the Indus
Valley or at the bare minimumtook certain religious or social
aspects and incorporated theminto the Hindu religion and this
sort of lined up to what a lotof historians believe, because
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the scholars typically thinkthat the Hindu religion could
have started as far back as 2000BCE, so this would have been
virtually smack dab right in themiddle of the Indus Valley
civilization timeline.
In fact, the Rig Veda, thefirst Hindu holy books, were
(06:20):
probably written sometime around1500 BCE, but it was written in
Sanskrit, so we know forcertain that the people of the
Indus Valley did not write it,so it had to come from somewhere
else.
But, like I said, it's quitepossible that the authors of the
book got many of the ideas fromthe Indus Valley during some
(06:42):
kind of trade missions.
Because one thing we know is,whenever you trade with foreign
societies, a lot of informationwould be shared amongst the
people that live in farawayplaces and would have had
different social norms.
These social norms can evolvewhen you start trading with
other people, so you may have acertain religious or societal
(07:05):
viewpoint, but all of a suddenthese traders come in from far
away places and they starttalking to you and giving you
new ideas.
I mean, that's just howreligion typically would spread.
I mean barring the fact that alot of religion is spread
through the sword, but you know,also a lot of times it's spread
through trade.
A perfect example is Indonesia.
(07:26):
Islam took hold in Indonesia inlarge part because the
Christian traders were so brutaland the Islamic traders came in
and they're a lot more lenientto the local population.
So the population kind ofreally drifted towards the Islam
aspect of religion more so thanthe Christian aspect.
(07:46):
But kind of getting off track,and I apologize, but what I'm
getting at is that, you know,trade can affect social norms
and within social norms thatalso includes religious norms.
Now, getting back on track,probably the biggest piece of
archaeological evidence thatpoints towards Hinduism was a
(08:07):
Pashupati seal that wasdiscovered in the Indus Valley.
Now this particular sealappears to represent a god of
animals that appears to be aproto-Hindu god of Shiva.
In the end, this is a merehypothesis, because a lot of
moving parts seem to line up andit's quite possible that the
(08:29):
indus valley had nothing to dowith hinduism, because it is
pure speculation at this point,but it's also possible that the
people of the indus valley hadinfluenced hinduism at some
point and the fact that thepeople of the Indus Valley had
traded with the people infaraway places like China and
Mesopotamia and, of course,mainland India, then, of course,
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ideas could be shared andinfluenced amongst each other,
including the ideas of religion.
Now, as I mentioned prior, theydid trade with Egypt, but they
did not find dead bodies thatwere mummified like you would
find in Egypt.
However, the dead bodies wereoften found with certain types
of clothing, but they were alsoburied with household items like
(09:14):
pots and plates, and even foodand jewelry, so that gives the
appearance that they believed insome sort of afterlife, since
those types of objects wouldhave been needed if you were to
transcend after death.
But it doesn't necessarily showsigns of a specific religion.
Also, it's worth noting thatthey never found any bodies that
(09:37):
appear to have had cuts orother injuries associated with
war, and the people were notburied with weapons injuries
associated with war and thepeople were not buried with
weapons.
So, in the end, since thehistorians can't decipher their
writings, the fact remains is wejust don't really know their
religion, how they practiced itand who they worshipped, if they
(09:57):
worshipped at all.
Besides the fact that the peopleof Mesopotamia and China wrote
about the Indus Valley traders,the biggest reason we know that
these societies existed was dueto their complex cities that
were ultimately discovered.
It is highly likely that thesecities of the Indus Valley were
(10:18):
the first centrally planned citylayouts in history.
The streets were laid out in agrid format, whereas the city
would be broken up into blocksthat ran in straight lines, and
if you want to get a good ideaof what a layout of a typical
Indus Valley city looked like,well, just go to any modern city
and look for yourself.
I mean, a perfect example forme is really Manhattan.
(10:41):
I mean, once you get outside oflower Manhattan, when you get
about, say, houston Street,everything is pretty much in
perfect grid format.
When you get downtown,obviously, things run a little
crooked and sideways or whatever.
But the fact remains is theIndus Valley really kind of
revolutionized the idea ofefficiently planned cities?
(11:02):
Now, within each city, theywould have had a layout where
they would have had more or lessdifferent classes of people
living in different sections ofthe city.
Within each section of the citythe houses would have been
generally the same size.
So the people in the upperclass of the Innis Valley, which
was typically in the upperelevations of the city, they all
(11:24):
would have had similar sizehouses that would have been
bigger than the houses in thepoorer sections of the city and
the people in the poorersections of the city would have
all had similar size houses.
So it would have been quiteeasy for a archaeologist to kind
of really do a dig and say ohwell, these houses in this
(11:44):
section of the city definitelyappear bigger than these houses
in this section of the city, butin each section of the city the
houses were relatively the samesize.
So you would have had this cityreally broken up into different
class structures and it wouldhave been quite obvious for who
was ever doing an archaeologicaldig in the area.
Also, with regards to the farms, they would have either been
(12:15):
located in the lower section ofthe city or would have been just
outside of the city.
So it sounds to me that withinthe different socioeconomic
classes there were a lot ofsimilarity in terms of income
distribution.
Ultimately, the city layoutwould have facilitated trade
because it would have made it alot easier for its citizens to
access and, more importantly,know where certain businesses
(12:37):
would have been located.
And to give you an idea how oldthis grid pattern was, it
appears that it would havestarted around 3000 BCE, which
is quite remarkable in myopinion.
Now, what really separates theIndus Valley from other
civilizations and societies wasthe fact that they had an
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advanced sewage and drainagesystem built right into the city
when they were designing it.
In fact, the drainage systemwould have been covered by mud
bricks and you would have beenable to access it through
certain manhole covers, justlike you see in modern cities.
Now you got to understand.
This drainage and sewage systemwas put in place and maintained
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thousands of years beforesomething like this would appear
in European cities.
In addition, a canal systemwould run through the city, so
the average person would havehad access to running water
inside their homes.
Many houses had a bath with adrain that led out of the house
and into the main drainagesystem near the street, and
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these drains took sewage awayfrom the city.
This may have been one of themore impressive things about the
Innis Valley, in that hygieneand cleanliness was taken very
seriously.
They may not have realized itat the time, but this probably
prevented a lot of disease andsickness.
And to give you an idea how faradvanced this was, most of the
(14:01):
complex plumbing systems thatwere set up in Inns Valley will
take thousands of years forother places to catch up.
Since cleanliness was soimportant, they had set up
public bath systems that wouldhave been similar to that of the
Romans, who would install itthousands of years later, of
which these public baths oftenwould have been fed through
(14:22):
their various canals that theyhad set up throughout the city
and also too.
One additional thing about thecanals is this would have really
helped ensure that the regionwouldn't be necessarily affected
by severe droughts.
They would be able to bringwater into the city from faraway
places.
Now, since the Innis Valley hada great irrigation system set
(14:45):
up through the canal system,they would have been able to
produce an abundance amount ofcrops.
Now, let's not forget that thisis an ancient society that would
have ultimately depended uponits farming, and therefore
granaries would have been ofutmost importance in the city,
and of utmost importance in thecity.
Now, in case you're notfamiliar with the granary, it is
(15:13):
basically a place that wasdesigned to safely store grains
for consumption or even forfuture trade.
The largest of the cities wouldhave had multiple granaries of
which they would have storedadditional foods like fruits and
vegetables.
The issues with fruits andvegetables is they kind of decay
quite quickly if not consumedin a short time period.
So to get around the perishableproblem, they would often dry
(15:34):
them and store them in pottery.
Also, these granaries often hada very Sumerian vibe to them in
that, outside of the farms,these granaries would have been
located right in the citadel.
Also, these granaries wouldhave been used to facilitate tax
payments and salaries that werepaid to local officials.
Depending upon the size of thegranary, some would have had
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walls built on the inside thatwould have allowed them to
separate the certain grains fromeach other, which ultimately
would have helped them measurethe specific amounts of each
grain that they could have usedfor consumption or trade.
So if you're not mixing them,you can kind of really really
detail which grain is which andhow much of that grain you have.
(16:18):
Now, not surprisingly, thecitadel would have been located
in the upper class of the cityand therefore the rich people
would have had much easieraccess to the grains.
I know it's shocking to believethat, but that's the case.
Also, the various cities wouldhave built up dockyards, which
would have been vital for trade,but also they would have
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created man-made canal systemsto facilitate the trade by
getting the goods from withinthe city to the Indus River that
could have been moved up anddown into various cities or
regions.
Furthermore, they createdman-made lakes that would have
helped store water for futureuse.
These lakes would havenaturally collected rainwater,
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but what they would have alsodone is created a fresh water
runoff drain that would havewent right into the lake, so
therefore they could build upeven a fresh water runoff drain
that would have went right intothe lake, so therefore they
could build up even more freshwater.
In addition, they would havecreated dams to help control the
flow of water from the riversystem, which ultimately would
have prevented catastrophicflooding, along with diverting
(17:20):
excess water into the man-madelake system.
Some of the larger cities wouldhave had walls built in to
prevent catastrophic flooding,as they would have built
basically a protective barrierfrom the city and any potential
raiders.
So the walls would have reallyserved two purposes One, when
you have excessive flooding andsomeone wants to come plunder
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the region.
But, like I said, if peoplewere plundering the region.
It doesn't appear that thepeople were harmed, so it's
quite possible that the wallswere more for building dams
around the city, more so thanfor defensive measures, because
if people were plundering thecity, you would ultimately most
likely find bodies with somekind of cuts or some kind of
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injuries, but they just weren'tfound.
Now, with regards to buildingthe walls, one thing that is
interesting is that the peoplein this valley had standardized
their bricks, so that each brickwould have been made basically
to the same size and weightratios, and these bricks would
have been used to build thewalls and the dams and even the
homes in the citadels.
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This was an ingenious way tobuild, because any architect
designing any brick structurewould always know the exact size
of the bricks that were goingto be used.
This would mean that the peoplecould achieve some sort of
economies of scale, and thisultimately meant that the
building process and evenmaintenance process would be
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much more efficient.
In 1922, archaeologistsdiscovered the ruins of
Mahenjo-Dara, which was one ofthe largest cities in this
valley, and it could have beenlocated in modern Pakistan and
may have had as many as 40,000people at its peak.
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It's possible that it was themost populous city in the world
at the time.
Like most other cities, thebuildings were made of mud
bricks and the city would havebeen a typical Indus Valley city
, in that a rectangular gridsystem and paved roads made of
mud bricks, along with palacesand religious buildings and even
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government buildings, were alllocated within the city, and
even government buildings wereall located within the city.
Now, historians aren't reallysure when, but the inhabitants
began to move away fromManjodhara as a result of
climate change.
As archaeologists tend to thinkthat the Saraswati River had
dried up, which obviously wouldhave caused a drought, and
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without any adequate watersource, the inhabitants were
essentially forced to move away.
Now, before I get to that point,I wanted to spend a few minutes
discussing the famous bath thatkind of encapsulates the Indus
Valley.
The Egyptians had the GreatPyramids of Giza, while the
Indus Valley had the Great Bathof Manjodhara, which may have
(20:13):
been built right around the sametime the Indus Valley got its
start, so it is believed thatthis Great Bath was built around
3300 BCE.
The Great Bath was large enoughto fit multiple people at once,
so from a modern perspective,we'd say it looked more like a
swimming pool.
Possibly the bath was builtwith mud bricks that were sealed
(20:35):
together with mortar and thatwas made of gypsum, and then
they would have added some kindof tar-like substance to seal
the cracks.
And, of course, this great bathwas in the citadel, but it did
not have running water, so thegreat bath had to be filled by
hand with buckets of water.
Now, since this is located inthe citadel, that means it would
(20:57):
have been located within theupper class of the city.
Therefore, it's kind of safe toassume that the rich people
would have had a much easieraccess to it and most likely
would have held some sort ofsocial significance as well,
similar to what you see inGreece and Rome, or even from a
modern perspective, like a localtennis club or a local club or
(21:18):
whatever right.
So you put these local clubs inthe rich part of town and you
pretty much make it so only theycan attend.
Now there were other bathslocated in other cities that
were similar in nature, but theywere much smaller.
In addition, it's worthrepeating that a large
percentage of the homes in theInnis Valley had their own
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personal baths within them, soone wouldn't necessarily need to
have a great bath in the city,as they could just bathe at home
, and this is something that wereally don't see in European
cities for thousands of years.
Probably the most important cityin the region may have been
that of Harappa.
In fact, many historians referto the general population
(22:02):
throughout the Indus Valley asthe Harappans.
This city may have been theoldest city in the region, as it
may have been settled around 31to 3400 BCE.
Like other cities, it was builton the banks of the river, the
Ravi River, and it probably hada similar feel to that of the
(22:23):
Egyptian cities, in that it wasbuilt right on the floodplain,
which made the land fertile andgreat for farming, but, more
importantly, it meant that itwas an ideal location to
facilitate trade with othercities inside and outside of the
Indus Valley.
Around 2200 BCE, the populationmay have reached as high as
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80,000 people.
In fact, this city wasessentially around for the
entirety of the Indus Valleycivilization.
By around 1300 BCE, the peoplestarted moving out of the city
and moved into rural areas inthe region and, sadly, thousands
of years later, when railroadcompanies started building
(23:06):
railroads through the region,the railroad companies started
stealing mud bricks from theruins to use for local projects.
Then, to make matters worse,archaeologists that were digging
in the region cariously exposedold bricks to the air and the
weather while digging, causingthe site structures to erode at
(23:26):
a much faster pace than if theyhad taken their time and not
unearthed the site all at once.
Another large Indus Valley citywas Dulavera, which would have
been located in modern-daynorthwest India near the
Pakistan border.
The city would have originallybeen established in a marshy,
(23:48):
wetland area, which likely meantthat the land would have been
very fertile and great for trade.
Dulavera was quite a distancefrom Manjodhara and Harappa, so
this really kind of makes mefeel that the city grew
independently from the othercities, but would have shared
(24:09):
many of the same culturalpractices, including the
advanced sewage systems andwater delivery systems that we
had mentioned prior.
The biggest difference was thecity was built out of stone, not
the standard mud bricks that wehad discussed prior.
However, climate change tookits toll on this city, just like
it did in the other IndusValley cities and also parts of
(24:33):
Mesopotamia.
While we're at it, therefore,what ended up happening was the
region in which the city waslocated basically dried up, so
much so that even the irrigationsystems from the local streams
couldn't be saved.
So in the end, the city justwasn't habitable anymore and the
citizens had to migrate away,of which it appears that most of
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its citizens went eastward, toother parts of modern-day India.
Now, ultimately, I wanted tokind of highlight just a few
different settlements andvillages, as it is believed that
the people of the Indus Valleywould have traded goods into
Mesopotamia from these variouscities.
In fact, sargon the Great evenwrote about the people of the
(25:17):
Indus Valley as they sailed intoMesopotamia.
The people of Akkad would havereferred to these people of the
Indus as the Malua people.
Sargon was one of the first tomention that the Malua people
were sailing a merchant shipinto the dockyard.
Now, one thing I've mentionedpreviously was the fact that
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historians cannot decipher Induswritings.
So this gives us a strongindication that the people of
the Indus Valley were probablymaster shipbuilders by, say,
2300 BCE.
Centuries after Sargon, themerchants of the Indus Valley
began to take up asemi-residence in the region.
So we're talking anywhere from2400 BCE to 1700 BCE.
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One of the big reasons why thepeople of the Indus Valley could
sell to Mesopotamian peopleswas due to the fact that they
had an abundance of timber,which was often used for items
such as home furniture and, ofcourse, was often used for items
such as home furniture and, ofcourse, was also used to build
boats.
Now, on, these boats would havebeen one of the most popular
raw materials, such as carnelian, which was a type of redstone
that was often used to makebeads and other kinds of
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artworks and jewelry.
In addition, lapis lazuli,which was a fairly rare blue gem
that was used for jewelry andartwork, also would have been
traded, and, of course, copper,which was probably the most
often traded, but it was alsosome speculation as to where
this copper had originated from,but we know for sure that the
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copper was not in Mesopotamia,because Mesopotamia had very
little to no natural resources,so it's quite possible that this
copper would have been broughtin by the people of the Indus
Valley from modern day India,and it would have also traveled
its way through Mesopotamia andinto other parts of the Near
(27:15):
East.
The interesting thing aboutIndia was the fact that the
local native people did notcreate written records
discussing the people of theIndus Valley, which is kind of
unfortunate, because the Chineseand the people of Mesopotamia
had great records, and thereforewe probably lose a lot of
information that could have beenhelpful in trying to understand
(27:38):
in this population if we hadmore data coming from India and
Pakistan.
Instead, what we get is we getinformation by foreign people
who may not have their bestinterest.
To shed proper light upon thepeople of the Indus Valley.
Now going back to the IndusValley from Mesopotamia was
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sesame and sesame oil.
Eventually, the people of theIndus will actually take the
seeds back to the Indus andstart planting them for
themselves.
So I mean, it's not unusual forsomething like that to happen,
considering places like Irelandbecame very dependent upon the
potato, but the potatooriginated from South America,
(28:23):
not Europe.
I mean, we also see this withbananas, for example, where
bananas are native to Africa,but yet we probably grow more
bananas in South and CentralAmerica than any other place in
the world.
And then you have the mangoes.
The mangoes are native to Indiaand they're all over Florida,
for example, and Mexico andother places of the Americas.
(28:45):
But anyway, going back to thetrade between the Indus and
Mesopotamia, the fact remains isgoods were going back and forth
between the two differentplaces, and the thing is is we
know this for certain becausecertain inscriptions and other
seals that were found in theInnis Valley would indicate that
certain goods had come fromMesopotamia and vice versa.
(29:05):
We'd find the seals and otherinscriptions would have been
found in Mesopotamia that wouldhave originated from the Innis
Valley.
Now, I've mentioned seals a fewtimes, but I think I need to
add just a little bit more colorto it.
It is believed that these sealswere used to bundle certain
goods together for trade, andone additional thing is, if the
(29:27):
seal is broken, they can tellthat the items had been tampered
with.
Now, these seals would havebeen found in various places
throughout Mesopotamia,including Ur and Akkad, along
with Dilmun, an ancient EastSemitic-speaking civilization in
Eastern Arabia.
In the Babylonian episode, Ibrought up a person known as Ia
Nasir, who was a businessman whoorganized and financed maritime
(29:52):
expeditions from Ur all the waydown into the Persian Gulf to a
place known as Dilman.
As such, I kind of wonder ifmaybe he had direct contact with
the Indus people or not.
In the end, dilman was resourcerich and, in fact, it was a
major port for copper trade inwhich people from various Indus
(30:12):
cities would have sailed to andconducted trade.
Dilman was located in theeastern province of modern Saudi
Arabia, on the Persian Gulf.
Now, due to its location, thiswas an important city for any
kind of trade that would havebeen coming into and out of
Mesopotamia from the south.
So if any goods would have beenimported through the Persian
Gulf, they most likely wouldhave ended up in Dilman before
(30:36):
moving on to either places suchas in Egypt or up into
Mesopotamia.
So it's quite possible thatIndus traders transported goods
to Dilman before they ended upin Mesopotamia.
In addition, copper ingotsappear to have been imported up
to Lotho, which was thesouthernmost city in the Indus
(30:58):
Valley, and it appears thatthese copper ingots were
imported from a place known asMagan, which is in present-day
Oman.
So this kind of gives you anidea how trade was flowing south
into southern Arabia andflowing back and forth.
And, as I've said previously,the one thing trade does is it
(31:21):
not only moves goods from onelocation to another, but it also
moves ideas from one place toanother.
So while timber and rawmaterials and gems and other
finished goods were flowing fromthe Indus to Mesopotamia and
southern Arabia, the people ofthe Indus Valley were also
exchanging great ideas, whichultimately improved living
conditions and quality of life,since the people of the Indus
(31:42):
Valley had engineered greatdrainage systems.
It appears that they would havealso shared these engineering
know-hows with the people ofMesopotamia by the time we get
to the late period, which wouldhave been 1900 to 1300 BCE, the
people in this valley wereraising domesticated animals
(32:03):
that were used for trade.
Now, these animals would havetypically been sheep and even
dogs.
However, it appears that mostof the animals that were traded
were not raised by the localpopulation, but were in fact
captured and then traded.
These would have includeddangerous animals like lions and
elephants, but they would havealso included things like
(32:24):
monkeys and water buffalo and,of course, the animals that were
killed.
Well, they would have tradedthe byproducts of the animals,
such as ivory and wool, and thisgoes back to the fact that the
people of the Indus Valley hadsuch an abundance of timber that
they were able to build largeships that they could carry
these huge animals like buffaloand elephants.
(32:47):
The Chinese merchants inparticular really helped develop
the framework for the tradeinto China.
It appears that they were theones that actually designed and
set up the specific trade routesthat would have stretched from
China to the Near East intoplaces like Mesopotamia.
Now, since most of the traderoutes were over land, the
(33:09):
people of the Indus Valley wouldhave used donkey caravans to
transport the goods, just likethe people of the Mesopotamian
region did, as I had mentionedin the previous episodes.
So, by all accounts, it appearsthat the people of the Indus
Valley had real good relationswith people from outside the
Indus Valley and we think thisis because they had a lot of
(33:31):
great trading relationships thatwere established.
Now, also in the previousepisodes, I tried not to get
into too much detail into theMesopotamian warlike cultures
because I wanted to keep it inthe proper scope because, as you
can clearly see, it is easy todrift off into subject matters
that really don't have anythingto do with money, banking or
(33:52):
trade.
But the fact remains thatplaces like Assyria and
Babylonia were powerful andoftentimes brutal in warfare.
And, just to be clear,mesopotamia wasn't really
different than any other ancientsociety.
The fact remains is, nearlyevery single ancient society was
very much into the warlikefashion at one point or another.
Now I bring this up because thepeople in this valley may have
(34:19):
been the most peaceful people ofany ancient society in the
world, or ever for that matter.
Now, like I said, we can'treally decipher their writings,
but it appears that the peoplein this valley had no natural
enemies.
Now, this could be due to thefact that they were so isolated
from other societies and weren'twithin very close range of
(34:41):
potential enemies who were maybelooking to take assets or
resources from one another, butthey also didn't fight amongst
each other, as far as we couldtell.
So there's quite a bit ofspeculation as to why the people
in this valley had no naturalenemies.
I've read that some peoplethink that it was due to the
fact that they really didn'thave a centralized government.
(35:03):
That means that you couldn'treally have certain political
figures pushing for war or glory, and also that meant that you
wouldn't have certain politicalfigures that were looking to
basically steal land andresources from other nations.
The reason why they think thisis because when they did
(35:23):
archaeological digs, they wouldfind individual homes, and they
would also find like the GreatBaths, and they might find a
temple, but they didn't find anybuildings that really represent
a potential palace planningauthority, because the city was
(35:46):
laid out in a grid format, whichmeans that someone would have
had the overall responsibilityto ensure that the roads and the
homes were built in certainlocations.
So therefore, someone or maybeit was almost like a board of
governors or a co-op board, orsomebody would have had some
sort of responsibility for theoverall decision making within
the city or the village.
In addition, it doesn't appearthat the Indus Valley was united
(36:11):
between the cities, so in otherwords, each city would have had
its own representativegoverning body.
My first thought was well, thisis how the Greek city-states
worked, as Greek city-statesworked, as Greek city-states
didn't have one centralizedgovernment that controlled the
region.
Each individual city would haveacted as its own city-state and
(36:34):
quite possibly that was how theEnnis Valley kind of acted
within each city-state.
So they may have had a verysimilar setup to that which you
would have found in Greece.
The biggest difference was theIndus Valley didn't war with
each other like they did inGreece.
The Greek city states werealways at each other's throat,
(36:55):
and usually it's because onecity state wanted to be the
dominant player.
It didn't appear that this wasthe case in the Indus Valley, or
maybe it was, and we just don'tknow, because we can't decipher
their writings, but from anoutside perspective, without
really being able to decipherwhat they wrote, there certainly
isn't any evidence that therewere war between the various
city-states and, hypotheticallyspeaking, even if we could not
(37:17):
decipher any Greek writtenrecords, the fact remains is we
would know for sure that therewere definitely wars that were
definitely happening in Greeceand the various city-states.
Ultimately, there just wasn'tany proof that any sort of
military actions had happened inthe region.
In addition, archaeologistshaven't found any weapons in any
(37:39):
tombs or other burials.
And what's even crazier is thefact that when the
archaeologists exhumed bodies,they have not found any bodies
that had any kind of wounds orcut marks that would have been
associated with battle or war.
Furthermore, they haven'tdiscovered any areas that were
potentially burnt down, like yousee, in most military conquests
(38:01):
.
I mean, it's pretty obvious forarchaeologists to see that the
city of Babylon was sacked.
Through archaeological recordsand digs.
Nothing like that has beendiscovered in the Indus Valley.
That, right there, isabsolutely astonishing.
I mean, look at the UnitedStates.
We can't even go 10 yearswithout being in some sort of
military conflict, let alone2,000 years.
(38:23):
And in reality, I mean, hasthere ever been a society that's
lasted more than a few hundredyears that has not had any sort
of battle or war?
Yeah, as far as I can tell, theIndus Valley went 2,000 years
without a war.
Furthermore, as I've said a fewtimes, the written records that
(38:45):
we can decipher come fromforeigners in the ancient world.
In other words, our knowledgecomes from what the Chinese and
the Mesopotamians were writingabout the people of the Indus
Valley.
Now, these people did notmention of any wars or conflicts
that were occurring with theirtrading partners from the Indus
Valley.
Now it appears to me that theirtrading partners from the Indus
(39:07):
Valley.
Now it appears to me that ifthe people of the Indus Valley
were warring with anyone, if anyof their trade partners were
warring with them, well, thiswould have been written down
somewhere, like we might see atablet from Babylon or Assyria
indicating that, hey, theirtrade partner was at war with
another foreign state.
So, ultimately, the goingbelief is that the people of the
Innis Valley avoided war andconflict.
(39:30):
Now, despite the fact that thesepeople appeared to be very
peaceful, they eventuallydisappeared from the region.
Why this happened, no onereally knows for sure.
Now there are a bunch ofcolorful hypotheses that are
floating around, and one of theoriginal ideas was that they
started to disappear around 1300BC from the region because
(39:52):
there was an invasion by theAryans.
And, just to be clear, theAryans are not the German
population.
So, in other words, don't getconfused by the racist and
bigoted popular ideas from the1920s to the 1940s.
The Aryans would have come fromCentral Asia and then they would
have flowed down into thenorthern Indian subcontinent and
(40:15):
what it looks like has happenedis that they would have
migrated down into India.
Now this sounds like aplausible idea but, as I just
mentioned, the fact is is therewasn't any evidence of any war
or battles.
So therefore the idea seemskind of unlikely and in fact it
was pretty much abandoned by the1950s.
So, you know, no one's reallytaken seriously that these
(40:38):
people from Central Asia camedown and basically, you know,
wiped out the in this valleydown and basically wiped out the
Indus Valley.
And the reason why this hadgained some kind of traction was
it was noted that in the BronzeAge that these people from
various proto-Indo-Europeanlanguages who live primarily in
what is now like Turkmenistanand Afghanistan and Uzbekistan
(41:01):
to give you an idea well, someof these Indo-Iranian tribes had
basically flowed into, even asfar as into, china and then
eventually flowed down into theIndian subcontinent and, like I
said, they called them theAryans because it meant that
they were free, like they werefree people.
In fact, the name Iran meansthe land of the Aryans, the land
(41:23):
of the free people.
So people just said, well, lookhey, all these people started
kind of migrating down from thenorth.
So you know, maybe they tookover the population, but it
doesn't appear that there wasany kind of wars or anything
like that as to why the peoplein this valley kind of
disappeared.
People in this valley kind ofdisappeared.
(41:48):
Other ideas as to their declineare related to climate change.
One hypothesis was there wasexcessive flooding that would
have caused the population tomove.
Now, for me personally, thatdoesn't really make 100% sense,
because the local population hadengineered various water
management techniques.
So they probably could haveprotected their cities or at
least diverted the excess water,as we had mentioned prior.
(42:10):
So they could have diverted theexcess water into the lake
system that they had built andthey would have diverted away
from the farmland.
So maybe it became so excessivethat their engineering
techniques couldn't keep up.
Or maybe there was some sort ofbrain drain from the region and
the next generation of aquaticengineers were lacking in the
(42:32):
skills.
It's a hypothesis, but itdoesn't really seem to gain much
traction.
As far as I'm concerned, now,the most likely cause was that
there was a climate change thatcaused severe droughts and
ultimately led to the rivers andother water sources to dry up
completely.
Scientists have discovered aformer river that would have
(42:57):
been similar in size to that ofthe Indus River, but this river
started to dry out around 1900BCE.
Once that happens, there'salmost zero chance that a
society can last much longer,because they would almost
absolutely be forced to migrateto a more hospitable place or
they would die.
So it's more likely that thepeople living in Indus Valley
(43:21):
slowly moved out of the regionto live in other surrounding
areas, of which it appears thatmany had actually migrated to
the Ganges Basin.
In the end, the Indus Valleycivilization didn't have some
kind of dramatic cataclysm.
There wasn't any specific eventthat historians can point to and
(43:42):
say ah, that was the beginningof the end, or there wasn't some
kind of catastrophic event thatcaused the Indus Valley to come
to a close.
In reality, it was just a slow,drawn-out death of the culture,
and this is, in part, of theoverall mystery surrounding this
civilization.
Now, if some rose out of stoneis found and we could decipher
(44:08):
in this writings.
Well then, maybe we can findout what the collapse might be,
or maybe it just becomes moreapparent, but until this is
found, people will just have toput forth a hypothesis, as they
find it very difficult to proveat this point.
My best guess is it was climatechange, and thus the region was
(44:29):
no longer farmable andtherefore people had to move on
to a more hospitable place, andthis is even further backed up
by a 2018 archaeological studythat indicated that the Indus
Valley essentially went througha 900-year drought.
The archaeologists believe thatthis drought started around
2350 BCE and lasted until about1450 BCE.
(44:55):
This coincides with the timeframe for the collapse of the
Andes civilization.
The fact is, 900 years is a verylong time for people to hang on
in a particular region, and, inreality, trade just could not
have been sophisticated enough,or farming could not have been
on such a large scale that thepeople in this valley could have
(45:16):
imported all their foodstuffs.
In addition, a drought lasting900 years would mean that it is
virtually impossible to raisecattle and even hunt and fish.
I remember reading about theDust Bowl in the United States
and how it completely devastatedthe local populations in the
(45:37):
middle of the United States, andin fact, many had to just
abandon the region and move intoother places such as California
.
The Dust Bowl only lasted aboutsix years, starting in around
1934.
Now could you imagine a droughtlasting 900 years and the
devastation that it would bring?
(45:58):
Now I'm not sure I made it clear, though, but there still are
monsoons that would have takenplace.
So there are some potentialrainfalls, but it appears that
the amount of rain and the watercoming into the region had
dropped off tremendously.
And, just to make it clear,within this 900 year drought,
there would have been periodsthat had experienced excessive
(46:19):
flooding.
In fact, it sounds like theremay have been six major flood
events prior to the Indus beingabandoned.
So in the end, the people ofthe Indus would have most likely
just moved on and resettledinto other locations and
probably intermarried when hadchildren with these people of
(46:40):
this new location, and in theend, there would have been a new
culture that would have sprungup.
This particular hypothesis isdebated by many, but there are
old Tamil poems that discuss themigration of the peoples from
modern-day Pakistan down intoIndia.
So in the end, the Indus Valleybasically just slowly petered
(47:04):
out, and it was probably all dueto the fact that the climate
had changed and it was no longersuitable to live in the region.
So, in conclusion, I wanted tojust make it clear that I found
these episodes to be extremelychallenging due to the fact that
there was just so manyquestions and really not enough
answers when it came to theIndus Valley.
(47:26):
In addition, I had little or noknowledge of the region to begin
with.
My only knowledge came from thefact that when you read about
other ancient civilizations,they would often bring up trade
with the Indus Valley.
So I figured why not look intothis a little further and maybe
make it a topic?
I tried to get as much tradeinformation as possible, but it
(47:47):
almost felt like I was trying tostick a round peg through a
square hole.
But either way, I hope youfound these two episodes to be
very enjoyable and hopefully youlearned something new, because
I know I have, because I know Ihave.
If you like what you hear andwant to donate to this show, you
can visit us at patreoncomslash history of money banking
(48:11):
trade or you can visit ourwebsite at moneybankingtradecom.
Also, you can help out thisshow a ton by leaving a 5-star
review along with telling afriend or two.
Thank you very much.
Talk to you soon.
Welcome podcast listener.
I am Mike D and this is theHistory of Money, banking and
Trade podcast.
My goal is to expand yourknowledge of the history and
evolution of trade, along withmoney, banking and credit, from
ancient civilizations all theway to the present.
I truly hope you find theseepisodes to be informative and
entertaining.
Now, I'm not a historian but,like Dan Conlon likes to say, I
(00:27):
am a fan of history.
When we last left off, we weremore or less getting an overview
of the rise of the local Induscivilizations.
We discussed the earliestcivilizations in the region
before moving into the IndusValley phase of the region.
Then we also talked about thefact that they had a form of
writing, but unfortunately itcan't be deciphered, and also
(00:51):
the development of thestandardized weights and
measures.
But more importantly, wediscussed how the people of the
Indus Valley traded with othercities within the Indus Valley,
but also they had establishedlong-distance trade with other
civilizations as far away asinto Egypt and Anatolia and up
(01:11):
into China and, of course,mesopotamia.
You combine their ability togrow excessive crops and other
finished goods and this led to apopulation boom and the
expansion of the overall IndusValley civilizations.
Remember, these were manyindependent city-states in the
Indus Valley.
So each independent city-statewould more or less operate on
(01:33):
its own, independent of eachother.
But, like I said, all thesevarious city-states all had a
similar culture that kind ofpermeated throughout this
particular region.
So each city was different, butkind of the same, if that makes
sense.
In much of these ancientsocieties, religion would have
(01:53):
been as important, if not moreimportant, than trade.
However, because there's somuch that we just don't know
about these various Induscivilizations, we really don't
know what religion or religionsthey would have practiced.
There are certain breadcrumbsthat have been left, such as
statues that were found invarious ruins that give the
(02:15):
appearance of a worship of apotential fertility or mother
goddess, similar to that of whatwas practiced in ancient
Mesopotamian societies at thetime.
Quite a few people tend tobelieve that the religion of the
Indus Valley may have been theprecursor to Hinduism, due to
the fact that there are a lot ofsimilarities that have been
(02:38):
found in the Indus ruins.
The reason people tend to thinkthis is the case is because
certain seals have been locatedin the ruins.
For example, a seal was locatedthat looks very similar to Lord
Pashapati, who was worshippedin the Hindu religion and, let's
not forget, hindu wasoriginated in India.
(02:59):
So it's quite possible thatcertain religious aspects of the
Indus Valley would have beenpicked up by other civilizations
in India and Pakistan and usedfor their basis of their
religion.
But in the grand scheme ofthings, historians just don't
know what the people of theIndus Valley worshipped or how
they worshipped, because theydidn't find any temples or any
(03:23):
other major monuments dedicatedto certain gods.
A lot of the artwork that wasfound would have been dedicated
to certain animals, but theyweren't necessarily godlike, but
there still was a chance thatthere was some sort of worship
of living things.
These living things could havebeen animals or plants, but
could have also included otherthings like rivers or mountains
(03:45):
or other kind of spirits.
The reason that there might bethese possibilities is because
during the archaeological digsthey noticed a lot of carved
animals and seals that depictedcertain plants and animals, and
the one thing about the seal isthat it wasn't necessarily a
religious thing either.
And the one thing about theseal is that it wasn't
(04:07):
necessarily a religious thingeither.
Oftentimes the seals that wereimprinted on goods could have
informed the purchaser that themerchant had guaranteed the
contents of the container andthat it may have been tampered
with in transit if the seal wasbroken.
Also, each government officialhad their own design.
So, therefore, the independenttraders and the governmental
official had their own design.
So, therefore, the independenttraders and the governmental
(04:27):
officials had their own uniquekind of seals in various
different civilizations, andthey were all very distinct of
each other.
In fact, many of the IndusValley seals that were found in
Mesopotamia suggest that therewas a presence of maybe an Indus
Valley colony of traders inthis region.
So ultimately, the seals were agreat tool for the
(04:51):
archaeologists to kind of reallyfigure out where certain goods
may have originated from andalso who may have shipped the
goods.
To begin with they may not knowspecifically the person, but
they can always point to theseal and kind of get a general
idea of where it had actuallycome from.
So, in the end, the seals thatwere discovered could have been
(05:15):
a mix of a religious symbol,along with a unique identifier
of the individual or individualsthat were sending goods from
point A to point B.
Now, even though we really don'tknow what the people of the
Indus worshipped, there is apopular hypothesis that these
were the earliest Hindus, andI've already mentioned that
(05:37):
previously.
But it bears in mind the factthat it's quite possible that
the Hindu religion may havegotten a start in the Indus
Valley or at the bare minimumtook certain religious or social
aspects and incorporated theminto the Hindu religion and this
sort of lined up to what a lotof historians believe, because
(05:59):
the scholars typically thinkthat the Hindu religion could
have started as far back as 2000BCE, so this would have been
virtually smack dab right in themiddle of the Indus Valley
civilization timeline.
In fact, the Rig Veda, thefirst Hindu holy books, were
(06:20):
probably written sometime around1500 BCE, but it was written in
Sanskrit, so we know forcertain that the people of the
Indus Valley did not write it,so it had to come from somewhere
else.
But, like I said, it's quitepossible that the authors of the
book got many of the ideas fromthe Indus Valley during some
(06:42):
kind of trade missions.
Because one thing we know is,whenever you trade with foreign
societies, a lot of informationwould be shared amongst the
people that live in farawayplaces and would have had
different social norms.
These social norms can evolvewhen you start trading with
other people, so you may have acertain religious or societal
(07:05):
viewpoint, but all of a suddenthese traders come in from far
away places and they starttalking to you and giving you
new ideas.
I mean, that's just howreligion typically would spread.
I mean barring the fact that alot of religion is spread
through the sword, but you know,also a lot of times it's spread
through trade.
A perfect example is Indonesia.
(07:26):
Islam took hold in Indonesia inlarge part because the
Christian traders were so brutaland the Islamic traders came in
and they're a lot more lenientto the local population.
So the population kind ofreally drifted towards the Islam
aspect of religion more so thanthe Christian aspect.
(07:46):
But kind of getting off track,and I apologize, but what I'm
getting at is that, you know,trade can affect social norms
and within social norms thatalso includes religious norms.
Now, getting back on track,probably the biggest piece of
archaeological evidence thatpoints towards Hinduism was a
(08:07):
Pashupati seal that wasdiscovered in the Indus Valley.
Now this particular sealappears to represent a god of
animals that appears to be aproto-Hindu god of Shiva.
In the end, this is a merehypothesis, because a lot of
moving parts seem to line up andit's quite possible that the
(08:29):
indus valley had nothing to dowith hinduism, because it is
pure speculation at this point,but it's also possible that the
people of the indus valley hadinfluenced hinduism at some
point and the fact that thepeople of the Indus Valley had
traded with the people infaraway places like China and
Mesopotamia and, of course,mainland India, then, of course,
(08:51):
ideas could be shared andinfluenced amongst each other,
including the ideas of religion.
Now, as I mentioned prior, theydid trade with Egypt, but they
did not find dead bodies thatwere mummified like you would
find in Egypt.
However, the dead bodies wereoften found with certain types
of clothing, but they were alsoburied with household items like
(09:14):
pots and plates, and even foodand jewelry, so that gives the
appearance that they believed insome sort of afterlife, since
those types of objects wouldhave been needed if you were to
transcend after death.
But it doesn't necessarily showsigns of a specific religion.
Also, it's worth noting thatthey never found any bodies that
(09:37):
appear to have had cuts orother injuries associated with
war, and the people were notburied with weapons injuries
associated with war and thepeople were not buried with
weapons.
So, in the end, since thehistorians can't decipher their
writings, the fact remains is wejust don't really know their
religion, how they practiced itand who they worshipped, if they
(09:57):
worshipped at all.
Besides the fact that the peopleof Mesopotamia and China wrote
about the Indus Valley traders,the biggest reason we know that
these societies existed was dueto their complex cities that
were ultimately discovered.
It is highly likely that thesecities of the Indus Valley were
(10:18):
the first centrally planned citylayouts in history.
The streets were laid out in agrid format, whereas the city
would be broken up into blocksthat ran in straight lines, and
if you want to get a good ideaof what a layout of a typical
Indus Valley city looked like,well, just go to any modern city
and look for yourself.
I mean, a perfect example forme is really Manhattan.
(10:41):
I mean, once you get outside oflower Manhattan, when you get
about, say, houston Street,everything is pretty much in
perfect grid format.
When you get downtown,obviously, things run a little
crooked and sideways or whatever.
But the fact remains is theIndus Valley really kind of
revolutionized the idea ofefficiently planned cities?
(11:02):
Now, within each city, theywould have had a layout where
they would have had more or lessdifferent classes of people
living in different sections ofthe city.
Within each section of the citythe houses would have been
generally the same size.
So the people in the upperclass of the Innis Valley, which
was typically in the upperelevations of the city, they all
(11:24):
would have had similar sizehouses that would have been
bigger than the houses in thepoorer sections of the city and
the people in the poorersections of the city would have
all had similar size houses.
So it would have been quiteeasy for a archaeologist to kind
of really do a dig and say ohwell, these houses in this
(11:44):
section of the city definitelyappear bigger than these houses
in this section of the city, butin each section of the city the
houses were relatively the samesize.
So you would have had this cityreally broken up into different
class structures and it wouldhave been quite obvious for who
was ever doing an archaeologicaldig in the area.
Also, with regards to the farms, they would have either been
(12:15):
located in the lower section ofthe city or would have been just
outside of the city.
So it sounds to me that withinthe different socioeconomic
classes there were a lot ofsimilarity in terms of income
distribution.
Ultimately, the city layoutwould have facilitated trade
because it would have made it alot easier for its citizens to
access and, more importantly,know where certain businesses
(12:37):
would have been located.
And to give you an idea how oldthis grid pattern was, it
appears that it would havestarted around 3000 BCE, which
is quite remarkable in myopinion.
Now, what really separates theIndus Valley from other
civilizations and societies wasthe fact that they had an
(12:57):
advanced sewage and drainagesystem built right into the city
when they were designing it.
In fact, the drainage systemwould have been covered by mud
bricks and you would have beenable to access it through
certain manhole covers, justlike you see in modern cities.
Now you got to understand.
This drainage and sewage systemwas put in place and maintained
(13:19):
thousands of years beforesomething like this would appear
in European cities.
In addition, a canal systemwould run through the city, so
the average person would havehad access to running water
inside their homes.
Many houses had a bath with adrain that led out of the house
and into the main drainagesystem near the street, and
(13:40):
these drains took sewage awayfrom the city.
This may have been one of themore impressive things about the
Innis Valley, in that hygieneand cleanliness was taken very
seriously.
They may not have realized itat the time, but this probably
prevented a lot of disease andsickness.
And to give you an idea how faradvanced this was, most of the
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complex plumbing systems thatwere set up in Inns Valley will
take thousands of years forother places to catch up.
Since cleanliness was soimportant, they had set up
public bath systems that wouldhave been similar to that of the
Romans, who would install itthousands of years later, of
which these public baths oftenwould have been fed through
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their various canals that theyhad set up throughout the city
and also too.
One additional thing about thecanals is this would have really
helped ensure that the regionwouldn't be necessarily affected
by severe droughts.
They would be able to bringwater into the city from faraway
places.
Now, since the Innis Valley hada great irrigation system set
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up through the canal system,they would have been able to
produce an abundance amount ofcrops.
Now, let's not forget that thisis an ancient society that would
have ultimately depended uponits farming, and therefore
granaries would have been ofutmost importance in the city,
and of utmost importance in thecity.
Now, in case you're notfamiliar with the granary, it is
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basically a place that wasdesigned to safely store grains
for consumption or even forfuture trade.
The largest of the cities wouldhave had multiple granaries of
which they would have storedadditional foods like fruits and
vegetables.
The issues with fruits andvegetables is they kind of decay
quite quickly if not consumedin a short time period.
So to get around the perishableproblem, they would often dry
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them and store them in pottery.
Also, these granaries often hada very Sumerian vibe to them in
that, outside of the farms,these granaries would have been
located right in the citadel.
Also, these granaries wouldhave been used to facilitate tax
payments and salaries that werepaid to local officials.
Depending upon the size of thegranary, some would have had
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walls built on the inside thatwould have allowed them to
separate the certain grains fromeach other, which ultimately
would have helped them measurethe specific amounts of each
grain that they could have usedfor consumption or trade.
So if you're not mixing them,you can kind of really really
detail which grain is which andhow much of that grain you have.
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Now, not surprisingly, thecitadel would have been located
in the upper class of the cityand therefore the rich people
would have had much easieraccess to the grains.
I know it's shocking to believethat, but that's the case.
Also, the various cities wouldhave built up dockyards, which
would have been vital for trade,but also they would have
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created man-made canal systemsto facilitate the trade by
getting the goods from withinthe city to the Indus River that
could have been moved up anddown into various cities or
regions.
Furthermore, they createdman-made lakes that would have
helped store water for futureuse.
These lakes would havenaturally collected rainwater,
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but what they would have alsodone is created a fresh water
runoff drain that would havewent right into the lake, so
therefore they could build upeven a fresh water runoff drain
that would have went right intothe lake, so therefore they
could build up even more freshwater.
In addition, they would havecreated dams to help control the
flow of water from the riversystem, which ultimately would
have prevented catastrophicflooding, along with diverting
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excess water into the man-madelake system.
Some of the larger cities wouldhave had walls built in to
prevent catastrophic flooding,as they would have built
basically a protective barrierfrom the city and any potential
raiders.
So the walls would have reallyserved two purposes One, when
you have excessive flooding andsomeone wants to come plunder
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the region.
But, like I said, if peoplewere plundering the region.
It doesn't appear that thepeople were harmed, so it's
quite possible that the wallswere more for building dams
around the city, more so thanfor defensive measures, because
if people were plundering thecity, you would ultimately most
likely find bodies with somekind of cuts or some kind of
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injuries, but they just weren'tfound.
Now, with regards to buildingthe walls, one thing that is
interesting is that the peoplein this valley had standardized
their bricks, so that each brickwould have been made basically
to the same size and weightratios, and these bricks would
have been used to build thewalls and the dams and even the
homes in the citadels.
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This was an ingenious way tobuild, because any architect
designing any brick structurewould always know the exact size
of the bricks that were goingto be used.
This would mean that the peoplecould achieve some sort of
economies of scale, and thisultimately meant that the
building process and evenmaintenance process would be
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much more efficient.
In 1922, archaeologistsdiscovered the ruins of
Mahenjo-Dara, which was one ofthe largest cities in this
valley, and it could have beenlocated in modern Pakistan and
may have had as many as 40,000people at its peak.
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It's possible that it was themost populous city in the world
at the time.
Like most other cities, thebuildings were made of mud
bricks and the city would havebeen a typical Indus Valley city
, in that a rectangular gridsystem and paved roads made of
mud bricks, along with palacesand religious buildings and even
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government buildings, were alllocated within the city, and
even government buildings wereall located within the city.
Now, historians aren't reallysure when, but the inhabitants
began to move away fromManjodhara as a result of
climate change.
As archaeologists tend to thinkthat the Saraswati River had
dried up, which obviously wouldhave caused a drought, and
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without any adequate watersource, the inhabitants were
essentially forced to move away.
Now, before I get to that point,I wanted to spend a few minutes
discussing the famous bath thatkind of encapsulates the Indus
Valley.
The Egyptians had the GreatPyramids of Giza, while the
Indus Valley had the Great Bathof Manjodhara, which may have
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been built right around the sametime the Indus Valley got its
start, so it is believed thatthis Great Bath was built around
3300 BCE.
The Great Bath was large enoughto fit multiple people at once,
so from a modern perspective,we'd say it looked more like a
swimming pool.
Possibly the bath was builtwith mud bricks that were sealed
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together with mortar and thatwas made of gypsum, and then
they would have added some kindof tar-like substance to seal
the cracks.
And, of course, this great bathwas in the citadel, but it did
not have running water, so thegreat bath had to be filled by
hand with buckets of water.
Now, since this is located inthe citadel, that means it would
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have been located within theupper class of the city.
Therefore, it's kind of safe toassume that the rich people
would have had a much easieraccess to it and most likely
would have held some sort ofsocial significance as well,
similar to what you see inGreece and Rome, or even from a
modern perspective, like a localtennis club or a local club or
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whatever right.
So you put these local clubs inthe rich part of town and you
pretty much make it so only theycan attend.
Now there were other bathslocated in other cities that
were similar in nature, but theywere much smaller.
In addition, it's worthrepeating that a large
percentage of the homes in theInnis Valley had their own
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personal baths within them, soone wouldn't necessarily need to
have a great bath in the city,as they could just bathe at home
, and this is something that wereally don't see in European
cities for thousands of years.
Probably the most important cityin the region may have been
that of Harappa.
In fact, many historians referto the general population
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throughout the Indus Valley asthe Harappans.
This city may have been theoldest city in the region, as it
may have been settled around 31to 3400 BCE.
Like other cities, it was builton the banks of the river, the
Ravi River, and it probably hada similar feel to that of the
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Egyptian cities, in that it wasbuilt right on the floodplain,
which made the land fertile andgreat for farming, but, more
importantly, it meant that itwas an ideal location to
facilitate trade with othercities inside and outside of the
Indus Valley.
Around 2200 BCE, the populationmay have reached as high as
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80,000 people.
In fact, this city wasessentially around for the
entirety of the Indus Valleycivilization.
By around 1300 BCE, the peoplestarted moving out of the city
and moved into rural areas inthe region and, sadly, thousands
of years later, when railroadcompanies started building
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railroads through the region,the railroad companies started
stealing mud bricks from theruins to use for local projects.
Then, to make matters worse,archaeologists that were digging
in the region cariously exposedold bricks to the air and the
weather while digging, causingthe site structures to erode at
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a much faster pace than if theyhad taken their time and not
unearthed the site all at once.
Another large Indus Valley citywas Dulavera, which would have
been located in modern-daynorthwest India near the
Pakistan border.
The city would have originallybeen established in a marshy,
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wetland area, which likely meantthat the land would have been
very fertile and great for trade.
Dulavera was quite a distancefrom Manjodhara and Harappa, so
this really kind of makes mefeel that the city grew
independently from the othercities, but would have shared
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many of the same culturalpractices, including the
advanced sewage systems andwater delivery systems that we
had mentioned prior.
The biggest difference was thecity was built out of stone, not
the standard mud bricks that wehad discussed prior.
However, climate change tookits toll on this city, just like
it did in the other IndusValley cities and also parts of
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Mesopotamia.
While we're at it, therefore,what ended up happening was the
region in which the city waslocated basically dried up, so
much so that even the irrigationsystems from the local streams
couldn't be saved.
So in the end, the city justwasn't habitable anymore and the
citizens had to migrate away,of which it appears that most of
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its citizens went eastward, toother parts of modern-day India.
Now, ultimately, I wanted tokind of highlight just a few
different settlements andvillages, as it is believed that
the people of the Indus Valleywould have traded goods into
Mesopotamia from these variouscities.
In fact, sargon the Great evenwrote about the people of the
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Indus Valley as they sailed intoMesopotamia.
The people of Akkad would havereferred to these people of the
Indus as the Malua people.
Sargon was one of the first tomention that the Malua people
were sailing a merchant shipinto the dockyard.
Now, one thing I've mentionedpreviously was the fact that
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historians cannot decipher Induswritings.
So this gives us a strongindication that the people of
the Indus Valley were probablymaster shipbuilders by, say,
2300 BCE.
Centuries after Sargon, themerchants of the Indus Valley
began to take up asemi-residence in the region.
So we're talking anywhere from2400 BCE to 1700 BCE.
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One of the big reasons why thepeople of the Indus Valley could
sell to Mesopotamian peopleswas due to the fact that they
had an abundance of timber,which was often used for items
such as home furniture and, ofcourse, was often used for items
such as home furniture and, ofcourse, was also used to build
boats.
Now, on, these boats would havebeen one of the most popular
raw materials, such as carnelian, which was a type of redstone
that was often used to makebeads and other kinds of
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artworks and jewelry.
In addition, lapis lazuli,which was a fairly rare blue gem
that was used for jewelry andartwork, also would have been
traded, and, of course, copper,which was probably the most
often traded, but it was alsosome speculation as to where
this copper had originated from,but we know for sure that the
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copper was not in Mesopotamia,because Mesopotamia had very
little to no natural resources,so it's quite possible that this
copper would have been broughtin by the people of the Indus
Valley from modern day India,and it would have also traveled
its way through Mesopotamia andinto other parts of the Near
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East.
The interesting thing aboutIndia was the fact that the
local native people did notcreate written records
discussing the people of theIndus Valley, which is kind of
unfortunate, because the Chineseand the people of Mesopotamia
had great records, and thereforewe probably lose a lot of
information that could have beenhelpful in trying to understand
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in this population if we hadmore data coming from India and
Pakistan.
Instead, what we get is we getinformation by foreign people
who may not have their bestinterest.
To shed proper light upon thepeople of the Indus Valley.
Now going back to the IndusValley from Mesopotamia was
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sesame and sesame oil.
Eventually, the people of theIndus will actually take the
seeds back to the Indus andstart planting them for
themselves.
So I mean, it's not unusual forsomething like that to happen,
considering places like Irelandbecame very dependent upon the
potato, but the potatooriginated from South America,
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not Europe.
I mean, we also see this withbananas, for example, where
bananas are native to Africa,but yet we probably grow more
bananas in South and CentralAmerica than any other place in
the world.
And then you have the mangoes.
The mangoes are native to Indiaand they're all over Florida,
for example, and Mexico andother places of the Americas.
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But anyway, going back to thetrade between the Indus and
Mesopotamia, the fact remains isgoods were going back and forth
between the two differentplaces, and the thing is is we
know this for certain becausecertain inscriptions and other
seals that were found in theInnis Valley would indicate that
certain goods had come fromMesopotamia and vice versa.
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We'd find the seals and otherinscriptions would have been
found in Mesopotamia that wouldhave originated from the Innis
Valley.
Now, I've mentioned seals a fewtimes, but I think I need to
add just a little bit more colorto it.
It is believed that these sealswere used to bundle certain
goods together for trade, andone additional thing is, if the
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seal is broken, they can tellthat the items had been tampered
with.
Now, these seals would havebeen found in various places
throughout Mesopotamia,including Ur and Akkad, along
with Dilmun, an ancient EastSemitic-speaking civilization in
Eastern Arabia.
In the Babylonian episode, Ibrought up a person known as Ia
Nasir, who was a businessman whoorganized and financed maritime
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expeditions from Ur all the waydown into the Persian Gulf to a
place known as Dilman.
As such, I kind of wonder ifmaybe he had direct contact with
the Indus people or not.
In the end, dilman was resourcerich and, in fact, it was a
major port for copper trade inwhich people from various Indus
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cities would have sailed to andconducted trade.
Dilman was located in theeastern province of modern Saudi
Arabia, on the Persian Gulf.
Now, due to its location, thiswas an important city for any
kind of trade that would havebeen coming into and out of
Mesopotamia from the south.
So if any goods would have beenimported through the Persian
Gulf, they most likely wouldhave ended up in Dilman before
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moving on to either places suchas in Egypt or up into
Mesopotamia.
So it's quite possible thatIndus traders transported goods
to Dilman before they ended upin Mesopotamia.
In addition, copper ingotsappear to have been imported up
to Lotho, which was thesouthernmost city in the Indus
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Valley, and it appears thatthese copper ingots were
imported from a place known asMagan, which is in present-day
Oman.
So this kind of gives you anidea how trade was flowing south
into southern Arabia andflowing back and forth.
And, as I've said previously,the one thing trade does is it
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not only moves goods from onelocation to another, but it also
moves ideas from one place toanother.
So while timber and rawmaterials and gems and other
finished goods were flowing fromthe Indus to Mesopotamia and
southern Arabia, the people ofthe Indus Valley were also
exchanging great ideas, whichultimately improved living
conditions and quality of life,since the people of the Indus
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Valley had engineered greatdrainage systems.
It appears that they would havealso shared these engineering
know-hows with the people ofMesopotamia by the time we get
to the late period, which wouldhave been 1900 to 1300 BCE, the
people in this valley wereraising domesticated animals
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that were used for trade.
Now, these animals would havetypically been sheep and even
dogs.
However, it appears that mostof the animals that were traded
were not raised by the localpopulation, but were in fact
captured and then traded.
These would have includeddangerous animals like lions and
elephants, but they would havealso included things like
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monkeys and water buffalo and,of course, the animals that were
killed.
Well, they would have tradedthe byproducts of the animals,
such as ivory and wool, and thisgoes back to the fact that the
people of the Indus Valley hadsuch an abundance of timber that
they were able to build largeships that they could carry
these huge animals like buffaloand elephants.
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The Chinese merchants inparticular really helped develop
the framework for the tradeinto China.
It appears that they were theones that actually designed and
set up the specific trade routesthat would have stretched from
China to the Near East intoplaces like Mesopotamia.
Now, since most of the traderoutes were over land, the
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people of the Indus Valley wouldhave used donkey caravans to
transport the goods, just likethe people of the Mesopotamian
region did, as I had mentionedin the previous episodes.
So, by all accounts, it appearsthat the people of the Indus
Valley had real good relationswith people from outside the
Indus Valley and we think thisis because they had a lot of
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great trading relationships thatwere established.
Now, also in the previousepisodes, I tried not to get
into too much detail into theMesopotamian warlike cultures
because I wanted to keep it inthe proper scope because, as you
can clearly see, it is easy todrift off into subject matters
that really don't have anythingto do with money, banking or
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trade.
But the fact remains thatplaces like Assyria and
Babylonia were powerful andoftentimes brutal in warfare.
And, just to be clear,mesopotamia wasn't really
different than any other ancientsociety.
The fact remains is, nearlyevery single ancient society was
very much into the warlikefashion at one point or another.
Now I bring this up because thepeople in this valley may have
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been the most peaceful people ofany ancient society in the
world, or ever for that matter.
Now, like I said, we can'treally decipher their writings,
but it appears that the peoplein this valley had no natural
enemies.
Now, this could be due to thefact that they were so isolated
from other societies and weren'twithin very close range of
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potential enemies who were maybelooking to take assets or
resources from one another, butthey also didn't fight amongst
each other, as far as we couldtell.
So there's quite a bit ofspeculation as to why the people
in this valley had no naturalenemies.
I've read that some peoplethink that it was due to the
fact that they really didn'thave a centralized government.
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That means that you couldn'treally have certain political
figures pushing for war or glory, and also that meant that you
wouldn't have certain politicalfigures that were looking to
basically steal land andresources from other nations.
The reason why they think thisis because when they did
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archaeological digs, they wouldfind individual homes, and they
would also find like the GreatBaths, and they might find a
temple, but they didn't find anybuildings that really represent
a potential palace planningauthority, because the city was
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laid out in a grid format, whichmeans that someone would have
had the overall responsibilityto ensure that the roads and the
homes were built in certainlocations.
So therefore, someone or maybeit was almost like a board of
governors or a co-op board, orsomebody would have had some
sort of responsibility for theoverall decision making within
the city or the village.
In addition, it doesn't appearthat the Indus Valley was united
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between the cities, so in otherwords, each city would have had
its own representativegoverning body.
My first thought was well, thisis how the Greek city-states
worked, as Greek city-statesworked, as Greek city-states
didn't have one centralizedgovernment that controlled the
region.
Each individual city would haveacted as its own city-state and
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quite possibly that was how theEnnis Valley kind of acted
within each city-state.
So they may have had a verysimilar setup to that which you
would have found in Greece.
The biggest difference was theIndus Valley didn't war with
each other like they did inGreece.
The Greek city states werealways at each other's throat,
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and usually it's because onecity state wanted to be the
dominant player.
It didn't appear that this wasthe case in the Indus Valley, or
maybe it was, and we just don'tknow, because we can't decipher
their writings, but from anoutside perspective, without
really being able to decipherwhat they wrote, there certainly
isn't any evidence that therewere war between the various
city-states and, hypotheticallyspeaking, even if we could not
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decipher any Greek writtenrecords, the fact remains is we
would know for sure that therewere definitely wars that were
definitely happening in Greeceand the various city-states.
Ultimately, there just wasn'tany proof that any sort of
military actions had happened inthe region.
In addition, archaeologistshaven't found any weapons in any
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tombs or other burials.
And what's even crazier is thefact that when the
archaeologists exhumed bodies,they have not found any bodies
that had any kind of wounds orcut marks that would have been
associated with battle or war.
Furthermore, they haven'tdiscovered any areas that were
potentially burnt down, like yousee, in most military conquests
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.
I mean, it's pretty obvious forarchaeologists to see that the
city of Babylon was sacked.
Through archaeological recordsand digs.
Nothing like that has beendiscovered in the Indus Valley.
That, right there, isabsolutely astonishing.
I mean, look at the UnitedStates.
We can't even go 10 yearswithout being in some sort of
military conflict, let alone2,000 years.
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And in reality, I mean, hasthere ever been a society that's
lasted more than a few hundredyears that has not had any sort
of battle or war?
Yeah, as far as I can tell, theIndus Valley went 2,000 years
without a war.
Furthermore, as I've said a fewtimes, the written records that
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we can decipher come fromforeigners in the ancient world.
In other words, our knowledgecomes from what the Chinese and
the Mesopotamians were writingabout the people of the Indus
Valley.
Now, these people did notmention of any wars or conflicts
that were occurring with theirtrading partners from the Indus
Valley.
Now it appears to me that theirtrading partners from the Indus
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Valley.
Now it appears to me that ifthe people of the Indus Valley
were warring with anyone, if anyof their trade partners were
warring with them, well, thiswould have been written down
somewhere, like we might see atablet from Babylon or Assyria
indicating that, hey, theirtrade partner was at war with
another foreign state.
So, ultimately, the goingbelief is that the people of the
Innis Valley avoided war andconflict.
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Now, despite the fact that thesepeople appeared to be very
peaceful, they eventuallydisappeared from the region.
Why this happened, no onereally knows for sure.
Now there are a bunch ofcolorful hypotheses that are
floating around, and one of theoriginal ideas was that they
started to disappear around 1300BC from the region because
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there was an invasion by theAryans.
And, just to be clear, theAryans are not the German
population.
So, in other words, don't getconfused by the racist and
bigoted popular ideas from the1920s to the 1940s.
The Aryans would have come fromCentral Asia and then they would
have flowed down into thenorthern Indian subcontinent and
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what it looks like has happenedis that they would have
migrated down into India.
Now this sounds like aplausible idea but, as I just
mentioned, the fact is is therewasn't any evidence of any war
or battles.
So therefore the idea seemskind of unlikely and in fact it
was pretty much abandoned by the1950s.
So, you know, no one's reallytaken seriously that these
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people from Central Asia camedown and basically, you know,
wiped out the in this valleydown and basically wiped out the
Indus Valley.
And the reason why this hadgained some kind of traction was
it was noted that in the BronzeAge that these people from
various proto-Indo-Europeanlanguages who live primarily in
what is now like Turkmenistanand Afghanistan and Uzbekistan
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to give you an idea well, someof these Indo-Iranian tribes had
basically flowed into, even asfar as into, china and then
eventually flowed down into theIndian subcontinent and, like I
said, they called them theAryans because it meant that
they were free, like they werefree people.
In fact, the name Iran meansthe land of the Aryans, the land
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of the free people.
So people just said, well, lookhey, all these people started
kind of migrating down from thenorth.
So you know, maybe they tookover the population, but it
doesn't appear that there wasany kind of wars or anything
like that as to why the peoplein this valley kind of
disappeared.
People in this valley kind ofdisappeared.
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Other ideas as to their declineare related to climate change.
One hypothesis was there wasexcessive flooding that would
have caused the population tomove.
Now, for me personally, thatdoesn't really make 100% sense,
because the local population hadengineered various water
management techniques.
So they probably could haveprotected their cities or at
least diverted the excess water,as we had mentioned prior.
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So they could have diverted theexcess water into the lake
system that they had built andthey would have diverted away
from the farmland.
So maybe it became so excessivethat their engineering
techniques couldn't keep up.
Or maybe there was some sort ofbrain drain from the region and
the next generation of aquaticengineers were lacking in the
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skills.
It's a hypothesis, but itdoesn't really seem to gain much
traction.
As far as I'm concerned, now,the most likely cause was that
there was a climate change thatcaused severe droughts and
ultimately led to the rivers andother water sources to dry up
completely.
Scientists have discovered aformer river that would have
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been similar in size to that ofthe Indus River, but this river
started to dry out around 1900BCE.
Once that happens, there'salmost zero chance that a
society can last much longer,because they would almost
absolutely be forced to migrateto a more hospitable place or
they would die.
So it's more likely that thepeople living in Indus Valley
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slowly moved out of the regionto live in other surrounding
areas, of which it appears thatmany had actually migrated to
the Ganges Basin.
In the end, the Indus Valleycivilization didn't have some
kind of dramatic cataclysm.
There wasn't any specific eventthat historians can point to and
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say ah, that was the beginningof the end, or there wasn't some
kind of catastrophic event thatcaused the Indus Valley to come
to a close.
In reality, it was just a slow,drawn-out death of the culture,
and this is, in part, of theoverall mystery surrounding this
civilization.
Now, if some rose out of stoneis found and we could decipher
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in this writings.
Well then, maybe we can findout what the collapse might be,
or maybe it just becomes moreapparent, but until this is
found, people will just have toput forth a hypothesis, as they
find it very difficult to proveat this point.
My best guess is it was climatechange, and thus the region was
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no longer farmable andtherefore people had to move on
to a more hospitable place, andthis is even further backed up
by a 2018 archaeological studythat indicated that the Indus
Valley essentially went througha 900-year drought.
The archaeologists believe thatthis drought started around
2350 BCE and lasted until about1450 BCE.
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This coincides with the timeframe for the collapse of the
Andes civilization.
The fact is, 900 years is a verylong time for people to hang on
in a particular region, and, inreality, trade just could not
have been sophisticated enough,or farming could not have been
on such a large scale that thepeople in this valley could have
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imported all their foodstuffs.
In addition, a drought lasting900 years would mean that it is
virtually impossible to raisecattle and even hunt and fish.
I remember reading about theDust Bowl in the United States
and how it completely devastatedthe local populations in the
(45:37):
middle of the United States, andin fact, many had to just
abandon the region and move intoother places such as California
.
The Dust Bowl only lasted aboutsix years, starting in around
1934.
Now could you imagine a droughtlasting 900 years and the
devastation that it would bring?
(45:58):
Now I'm not sure I made it clear, though, but there still are
monsoons that would have takenplace.
So there are some potentialrainfalls, but it appears that
the amount of rain and the watercoming into the region had
dropped off tremendously.
And, just to make it clear,within this 900 year drought,
there would have been periodsthat had experienced excessive
(46:19):
flooding.
In fact, it sounds like theremay have been six major flood
events prior to the Indus beingabandoned.
So in the end, the people ofthe Indus would have most likely
just moved on and resettledinto other locations and
probably intermarried when hadchildren with these people of
(46:40):
this new location, and in theend, there would have been a new
culture that would have sprungup.
This particular hypothesis isdebated by many, but there are
old Tamil poems that discuss themigration of the peoples from
modern-day Pakistan down intoIndia.
So in the end, the Indus Valleybasically just slowly petered
(47:04):
out, and it was probably all dueto the fact that the climate
had changed and it was no longersuitable to live in the region.
So, in conclusion, I wanted tojust make it clear that I found
these episodes to be extremelychallenging due to the fact that
there was just so manyquestions and really not enough
answers when it came to theIndus Valley.
(47:26):
In addition, I had little or noknowledge of the region to begin
with.
My only knowledge came from thefact that when you read about
other ancient civilizations,they would often bring up trade
with the Indus Valley.
So I figured why not look intothis a little further and maybe
make it a topic?
I tried to get as much tradeinformation as possible, but it
(47:47):
almost felt like I was trying tostick a round peg through a
square hole.
But either way, I hope youfound these two episodes to be
very enjoyable and hopefully youlearned something new, because
I know I have, because I know Ihave.
If you like what you hear andwant to donate to this show, you
can visit us at patreoncomslash history of money banking
(48:11):
trade or you can visit ourwebsite at moneybankingtradecom.
Also, you can help out thisshow a ton by leaving a 5-star
review along with telling afriend or two.
Thank you very much.
Talk to you soon.
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