Donny Stewart
Proctor, Wiggs, Wiltshire
World Dynamics
4 September 2013
Culture
The Indus river valley civilization had a theocracy. According to Dictionary.com, a theocracy is a government run by priests or other religious leaders. Their religion was a polytheistic religion. According to Dictionary.com, a polytheistic religion is one with many gods. According to Brown, it was a Vedic religion with 8 main deities. They are Dyuas Pytar (father-god) , Prithivi Matar (mother goddess) , Indra (god of war and storm) ,Mitra (god of faithfulness and loyalty) , Agni (god of fire) , Rudra( mountain god) , Varuna ( god of cosmic order) , and Soma (god of soma plant). The Vedas and the Upanishads are the religious texts. They believed in life after death (Brown).
The Indus valley people were very artistic. They made clay pottery and statues. According to Guisepi, They statuettes differed from those of many cultures because of the attention given to the hair and jewelry. According to BBC, the statues were thrown into rubbish pits. It is thought to have been for good luck. They also made beads, seals, and toys. The dishes they made were of silver, bronze, and copper. Bronze was also used to make the weapons, tools, and mirrors. The Indus river valley people were the first to use cotton in weaving.
Slavery wasn’t a part of this civilization. The buildings in the cities were built by laborers, but they weren’t forced. The Indus valley people were believed to be very peaceful. According to Guisepi, their spears, tipped in bronze, would crumble on contact. They were inadvanced in weaponry, which is most likely the reason the civilization ended.
According to studies done by UCLA, the civilization began in 3000 B.C. It supposedly started a thousand years before Ancient China. It flourished beginning in 2600 B.C. It stayed this way until about 1900 B.C. Thats when it began to slowly dwindle down. By 1500 B.C, the civilization was on the verge of collapsing. According to research done by UCLA, Mohenjo-daro was burned down and Harappa was supposedly flooded.