This Mysterious Civilization Predates the Sumerians & Egyptians - Harappan Civilization

With grand symbols representing majesty and power, mythical gods and pharaohs, and great technological inventions that changed the world, we're accustomed to seeing Egypt and Sumeria as the oldest and most advanced civilizations in history. However, recent scientific research indicates that a mysterious ancient civilization located between Pakistan and India predates these two incredible cultures.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
With great symbols representing majesty and power, mythical gods and pharaohs,
and great technological inventions that change the world. We are
used to seeing Egypt and sumer as the oldest and
most advanced civilizations in history. However, recent scientific research indicates
that a mysterious ancient civilization located between Pakistan and India

(00:23):
predates these two incredible cultures. Indeed, researchers believe that this civilization,
known as the Harapan or Indus Valley civilization, is around
eight thousand years old, which means that it's even older
than the Great Sumerians. Its most famous city, Mohenjo Daro,
is a clear example of a well established and highly

(00:46):
advanced urban center, which includes sewage systems, roads, well organized houses, agriculture,
and art work, among other things. However, even with all
the information that researchers already have about these ancient people,
the Harapian civilization also remains one of the most mysterious

(01:07):
in history. Its script has not yet been deciphered. Its
urban planning and irrigation systems were more advanced even than
most cities in modern India, and the civilizations suddenly disappeared
for reasons that are still not entirely clear. How did
the Harapian civilization achieve such a degree of cultural and

(01:27):
technological development, What was their secret? Did someone help them?
Or were they the descendants of an even older advanced civilization?
And what is the mystery surrounding its sudden disappearance? Before
we start, make sure to like this video and also
subscribe to our channel by pressing the notification button so

(01:48):
you can receive more videos like this one. In a
study published in the Dawn Journal, researchers from the Archaeological
Society of India and the it Kudagpur examine different radiocarbon
based tests conducted on various fragments of ceramic pieces and
bones of domestic animals from a settlement in Verona, a
village located one hundred and forty miles northwest of New Delhi.

(02:11):
The researchers were able to establish that this settlement is
at least eight thousand years old. In this sense, the
harapan civilization from which this village was part would outdate
the ancient Egyptian and Sumerian civilizations by at least a
thousand years. This completely alters our perception of the ancient
world's urban settlements in that region. On the other hand,

(02:35):
this study has also helped to establish the different stages
that the Harapan civilization went through until it reached its
peak around three thousand BC, as well as its subsequent
decline and disappearance. Professor and India Sarkarf from the Department
of Geology and Geophysics at it Kiropper weighs in on

(02:55):
the relevance of this discovery. Our study pushes back the
antiquity to as uns old as the eighth millennium before
the present and will have major implications to the evolution
of human settlements in the Indian subcontinent. Additional studies indicate
that at its peak, this mysterious Harapan civilization had more
than five million inhabitants, an outstanding number at that time.

(03:19):
For a comparison, consider the Sumerian civilization, which was estimated
to have had a population of around one point five million.
The first time a trace of this lost civilization was
found was with the discovery of the lost city of
Harappa in nineteen twenty one. From this city came the
name of the civilization that we now call Harapan. Since then,

(03:41):
more than one thousand, fifty two cities and settlements have
been found. One of them is the city of Mohenjo Daro.
This city is located near the Indus River and is
a true gem of urban planning from the ancient era
and quickly became the most famous Harapan city. Although the
ruins of Mohenjo Daro were first found by a group
of archaeologists in nineteen eleven, professional archaeological excavations were actually

(04:05):
carried out from the nineteen twenties to the nineteen thirties
by Sir John Marshall, the General Director of the Archaeological
Survey of India. At first, the archaeologists didn't know what
to name the city, but after their excavations uncovered many
strange skeletons lying scattered in streets and houses, they ended
up naming it Mohenjo Daro, which means the mound of

(04:28):
the dead. Despite its bleak name, the city stands out
as the Indian subcontinent's first major urban center and its
sophisticated urban development is quite impressive. The people of this
city not only new urban planning, but also knew how
to farm, work with medals and expressed themselves in written language.

(04:49):
The city itself was arranged in grids, and its houses
had separate rooms for different activities, including a kitchen, living room, bedrooms, patios, bathrooms,
and drainage systems, much like a modern housewood This last aspect,
that of water control, is precisely one of the most

(05:10):
impressive developments of the Indus Valley civilization. Today, it's easy
to think that the populations that lived more than four
thousand years ago used extremely rudimentary systems to make use
of water and satisfy their various needs, for example, transporting
water in buckets from the river to the houses or
digging a hole in the ground to use as a toilet.

(05:33):
But this wasn't the case with the Harapid civilization. The
houses had a water supply and plumbing system, with the
bathrooms and toilets well separated from the rest of the rooms.
The city also had more than seven hundred water wells
and an elaborate sewage system that allowed water to circulate
harmoniously throughout the city. Within a part of the city

(05:54):
known as the Citadel. They also built a nine hundred
square foot structure called the Great Bath, which they filled
by pumping water from the Indus River. Keep in mind
that the Romans only managed to build their famous baths
around seventy b C. So the people of the Indus
Valley were more than two thousand, five hundred years ahead.

(06:14):
As it turns out, this lost civilization had one of
the world's first sanitary systems. All of this is remarkable
considering that between twenty thousand and forty thousand people lived
together only in Mohenjo Daro, and Mohenjo Daro wasn't even
the biggest city of the Harapan civilization. That would be

(06:34):
the city of Rakigari, which was discovered only in nineteen
sixty nine and as of to day, just five percent
of the site is excavated. Who knows what secrets and
mysteries we may uncover about this lost civilization as the
excavation progresses. If Rakkigari is the largest city, could it
also have served as something of a capital of the

(06:56):
Harapan civilization? And if it did, just imagine how technologically
advanced it would be compared to Mahenjo Daro. Mahenjo Daro
itself had very sophisticated planning, combining a water supply system, buildings, markets, granaries,
and warehouses all located in the most convenient place. This

(07:18):
high level of planning was impossible unless the Harapan civilization
had some sort of elaborate system of weights and measurements
they used for all their activities, which is still unknown
to us. What we do know is that there was
a strict standardization in construction, with bricks corresponding to sizes
in a perfect ratio of four to two to one. Additionally,

(07:42):
the people who lived in cities like Mohenjo, Daro and
Harappa were true masters of farming. Because of the civilization's age,
experts continued to debate whether these people developed agriculture and
animal husbandry independently or learned them from other populations of
the time. To add to the mystery, some genetic studies

(08:03):
revealed that the farming populations of the Indus never became
closely related to their closest farming neighbors, who inhabited what
is now Iran and whom experts consider being the first
to develop agriculture in the region more than ten thousand
years ago. Today, it's accepted that the spread of agriculture
was carried out in different parts of the world thanks

(08:26):
to the export of this knowledge that some people made.
In fact, genetic studies conducted in Europe show that Stone
Age farmers took their knowledge to different parts of Europe
as they moved through the territory and intermixed with different populations,
But this didn't happen with the Indus Valley population since
their genetics are different from neighboring people that developed agriculture

(08:50):
before eight thousand BC. This means that the people of
the Indus Valley apparently come from an earlier civilization that
developed agriculture on its own, or perhaps learned it from
some one else. The question then, is who taught the
people of the Indus these advanced techniques. Considering that the
Indus Valley civilization is older than the Egyptian and Sumerian civilizations,

(09:15):
it is also worth asking were the people of the
Indus Valley the ones who transmitted this knowledge to the
ancient Egyptians and Sumerians. On the other hand, the development
of a complete standardized system of seals, measures, tools, and
utensils served the Harapid civilization to develop international trade with

(09:36):
populations as distant as those of the Arabian Gulf, Mesopotamia,
and southern India. As evidenced by seals found in those areas,
experts believed that most of the city's inhabitants were merchants
and craftsmen, skilled in working metals such as copper, bronze, lead,
and tin, as well as having great skill in working

(09:57):
ceramics and making bricks. In fact, they were so good
that many of their creations have been found in other
distant towns in the region, probably due to trade. Despite
all this high level of planning and development, one of
the aspects that have most attracted the attention of researchers
is the fact that the city in the Indus Valley
lacks palaces, temples, and monuments that could indicate any ceremonial practice.

(10:22):
There is also no evidence that there was any central authority,
such as a king or queen, regulating the activity within
the cities. This is something unheard of for a Bronze
Age civilization, as these cultures were highly autocratic, relying on
caste systems. A good number of studies suggest that Mohenjo
Daro was a city with a community government system, with

(10:43):
a designated group of people selected to carry out specific
government tasks. Every city probably had some sort of council
that in turn answered to a more central council that
was responsible for the entire country. Considering the distance between
all the various cities of the Harapan civilization, this structure
of government is highly impressive. The form of government of

(11:06):
the Haraban civilization even made the Unesco Courier Journal publish
an entire article titled the Indus Valley Civilization Cradle of Democracy,
theorizing the possibilities that democracy was invented by the Indus
Valley thousands of years before the ancient Greeks. Another surprising
thing is the lack of any huge temples for worship.

(11:29):
If we compare it with the Egyptian and Sumerian civilizations,
which were full of temples worshiping different deities, it will
make the Haraban civilization extremely unique. So far, the Great
Bath seems to be the only structure in the city
that could be considered a ceremonial monument. Apparently, the people
of the Indus had a particular preference for a cleanliness

(11:52):
and organization, so much so that some experts believe that
it's very likely that they had some kind of religious
or esoteric practice in which the concept of cleanliness or
purification was dominant. There are even indications that these religious
or ceremonial events were held in the citadel, which also
reinforces the idea that these people probably worshiped water in

(12:14):
some way. This characteristic is very different from the culture
of ancient Egypt, which is replete with temples, tombs, and
other majestic monuments, as well as deep worship of their
god kings we know as pharaohs. On the other hand,
archaeologists have found Indo seals and artistic figures that could
be related to some religious beliefs. A good example of

(12:35):
this is a figurine found during early excavations at Mohenjo Daro.
This figurine is known as the Priest King. However, many
experts believe that this figure doesn't represent any religious personality,
as there is no solid evidence to support this belief.
Another famous handicraft found at Mohenjo Daro is a female

(12:56):
figure of just four point twenty five inches made of
bronze that has been called Dancing Girl for its peculiar features.
In this figure, the girl holds her left leg and
hand seemingly ready to follow the rhythm of a dance,
probably of a ceremonial or religious type. Her left arm
features twenty five bracelets, apparently used to help shape her limbs.

(13:19):
This has been a common practice in some cultures around
the world, as is the case today with the Kayan,
a subgroup of Korani people. Some experts believe that these
figures and other items from the culture of the Indus
people may actually represent a variety of religious beliefs and practices,
or a variety of gods, just as they did in
ancient Egypt. Even with all these elements, none of them

(13:43):
represents concrete proof that the harapan civilization had a strictly
religious or esoteric practice, as this is only speculation and theory.
In the end, there is something on which most experts agree.
Much of the mystery behind the Harapian civilization can only
be unwrapped when the greatest of its mysteries is solved,

(14:03):
its script. Although experts have already managed to decipher much
of the culture's way of life and their city building methods,
most of its mysteries remain hidden behind the veil of
its script. Unlike what has happened with Egyptian hieroglyphics or
the Mayan language, the Harapan script is reluctant to be deciphered.
The mystery behind the undecipherable Harapin script baffled scientists for

(14:27):
so long that since two thousand and four, there has
been a ten thousand dollars cash prize for anyone who
can decipher a Harapan text of around fifty characters. Not surprisingly,
no one has managed to do that. With this culture
wrapped in so much mystery, deciphering its script could be
the only key that would allow us to unlock its secrets. Today,

(14:48):
hundreds of symbols belonging to the Harapan people have been
found on a large number of craft objects of all kinds,
including ceramic and metal handcrafts. The majority of these semls bulls,
depict animal and human figures. Others believe that the symbols
represent a series of seals used for commercial transactions. Another

(15:09):
aspect that works against the Herapin script as a form
of written language is that most of the inscriptions usually
have only four or five symbols drawn on small surfaces
about an inch long, and the longest known Harapin script
doesn't reach thirty characters. This is very different from what
can normally be seen in the writing systems of other

(15:29):
ancient civilizations, which often have more than one hundred characters. Nonetheless,
some studies comparing the Harapin script to other systems of symbols,
both linguistic and non linguistic, discovered that the Herapin script
closely resembles a written language in a high percentage of cases.
This similarity applies not only to writing systems based on

(15:50):
disordered codes like DNA, but also to ordered code systems
like computer programming languages. However, there are still many doubts
about the herrlp In script due to the great difficulties
it continues to present, even to be decoded by statistical
systems run by powerful computers. One of the main problems
with this script is that the messages are too short

(16:13):
and show few examples within each sequence, which makes things
difficult even for machines. On the other hand, the symbols
that appear next to images vary in each STEMP, thus
lacking homogeneity and clarity, which further complicates a standard interpretation
of this writing. This means that up to this point,
any interpretation made can be considered more conjecture than fact.

(16:37):
Another factor that also plays against the decoding of the
Indus Valley texts is the absence of any multi lingual inscription.
That is, a text written in two or more known
and unknown languages that say exactly the same thing. The
best example of this is the famous Rosetta Stone, the
ancient inscription that has text written in two forms of

(17:00):
Egyptian script and one in ancient Greek script, which greatly
helped to decipher the language of ancient Egypt despite all
the obstacles and problems against it. The work to try
to decipher the Harapan Script continues. Hopefully, one day we'll
be able to decipher the script and discover the secrets
to civilization hids. What we know is that the Indus

(17:22):
Valley civilization ended around seventeen hundred BCE, but what happened
exactly is still a mystery. Were their cities abandoned, or
were they attacked by hordes of invaders from other regions,
or perhaps something else happened which we still can't understand.
Oddly enough, these questions still remain unanswered, as experts have

(17:43):
yet to find hard evidence to date. Most scientists are
basically divided into two groups, those who believe that the
cities were abandoned due to a great flood or drought
of the Indus River or the Gagar Hawkra River, and
those who believe that its inhabitents were massacred by invaders. Precisely,
this last theory is the one that contributed to giving

(18:05):
the name to the city of Mohenjo Daro. As we
already mentioned at the beginning of the video, Mohenjo Daro
means the mound of the dead. This refers to a
number of human skeletons found in the city's ruins when
excavations began in the nineteen twenties. However, aside from broken
statues and structures, only these human skeletons, which were around

(18:27):
forty were found. What happened to the rest of the
forty thousand inhabitants that the city was supposed to have.
Some experts consider that it's necessary to discard the theories
about the end of the harapan civilization at the hands
of armed invaders since there are several elements that don't
fit in this story. First, there is no major evidence

(18:47):
that a full scale invasion occurred. For example, there are
no signs of burned fortresses, no destruction on the walls,
no remains of weapons or armor, and no large number
of skeletons of civilians and soldiers scattered everywhere. This is
quite mysterious considering that, according to the massacre theory. The

(19:08):
invaders were the ancient Aryans, a people who settled during
prehistoric times in what is now Iran and a northern
Indian subcontinent. If there was a big battle, where are
the skeletons of the fallen combatants and civilians? It is
as if the earth had suddenly swallowed them. However, the
theory of the massacre still remains in the minds of many.

(19:30):
When the first excavations began at Mohenjo Daro, the first
thing that impressed the researchers was to discover that these
skeletons were found in strange positions. A certain number of
skeletons were found in the lower town area, a kind
of residential district, in what would appear to be some
kind of unconventional burial ritual. But another group of skeletons

(19:52):
was found with a strange attitude, specifically as if they
wanted to escape from something or someone. It's as if
if death had come from inside the city and not
from outside. On the other hand, the Vedic texts could
give some clues about what really happened in Mohenjo Daro.
Some Vedic hymns indicate that Indra, the main god of

(20:14):
these texts attacked the fortresses of the Dasiu by setting
them on fire. In this context, Adasiu represents any non
Aryan enemy, such as the people of the Indus Valley.
Although there are many strange theories, including a theory that
suggests that some sort of advanced weapon was used to
destroy the inhabitants of the cities, some researchers point out

(20:36):
that the end of the Indus Valley civilization most likely
came by more natural means. Some experts believe that a
flood or a severe drought could have been the causes
that forced the people of the Indus to migrate to
other territories. However, researchers also point out that this natural
disaster continued over time, and that the inhabitants endured as

(20:58):
much as they could, changing a large part of their diet,
as evidenced by the remains of food found in the area.
One of the most technologically advanced civilizations of the Bronze Age,
the Harapian civilization, continues to be shrouded in mystery, and
its discovery only led to more questions than answers. Although
there is still much to discover, the most important thing

(21:21):
is that we now know that this ancient civilization left
an important historical and cultural legacy. And if such an
important civilization was lying underground for thousands of years and
we only discovered it one hundred years ago, just imagine
what other secrets and mysteries still remained hidden beneath the ground,

(21:41):
What other chapters of the development of human civilization remain undiscovered,
And how advanced were ancient humans really