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The Interesting Facts About Indus Valley Civilisation
The Interesting Facts About Indus Valley Civilisation
https://www.quora.com/What-arethe-interesting-facts-about-indusvalley-civilisation
1) IVC is the largest of the 4 ancient river valley civilizations.
The Indus Valley Civilization was spread out over an area of 1,260,000 km over modern
day Afghanistan, India and Pakistan. The geographical spread is appreciable particularly
when we consider the fact that all across this immense expanse, Indus Valley settlements
exhibit the same hallmark features of their civilization. At its peak the area must have
been inhabited by well over 5 million people.
2) They had the world's first planned cities with downtowns and residential
areas (and perhaps, some of the best planned cities in the sub-continent to
date).
A typical city would be divided into two sections, each fortified separately. One section,
known as the acropolis, was located on an artificially raised mound while the other level
was on level ground.
The acropolis contained the important buildings of the city, like the assembly halls,
religious structures, granaries and in the case of Mohenjo-Daro the famous Great Bath.
The lower section of the city was where the housing for the inhabitants was located. It
was here where some truly amazing features have been discovered. The city was well
connected with broad roads about 30 meters long which met at right angles. The houses
were located in the rectangular squares thus formed. Houses were built with
standardized baked bricks (which had a ratio of length to width to thickness at 4:2:1) and
many had spacious courtyards. Some of the bigger houses even had multiple stories
(levels) and paved floors.
3) They built urban sanitation systems non-pareil in the Ancient World till
much later.
The most unique aspect of the Indus Valley municipal systems was the attention given to
and the sophistication involved in urban sanitation systems. Every house had an
individual well, a separate drain connecting to the drains in the alleyways which
connected to the main street drains: all of which were covered. The street drains had
descending levels so as to enable filtering out of waste. They were completely leak-proof
due to the masonry expertise and even employed wooden nets at corbelled openings to
filter out solid wastes! No other civilization enjoyed such luxuries! Half of India to this
engineered dockyard.
It is speculated that Lothal engineers studied tidal movements, and their effects on
brick-built structures, since the walls are of kiln-burnt bricks. This knowledge also
enabled them to select Lothal's location in the first place, as the Gulf of Khambhat has
the highest tidal amplitude and ships can be sluiced through flow tides in the river
estuary.The dock also possessed a lock-gate systema wooden door could be lowered at
the mouth of the outlet to retain a minimum column of water in the basin so as to ensure
floatation at low tides.
11. Prior to deciphering cuneiform script, we understood the origins of certain aspects of
life in a very different fashion. Writing was thought to have originated in Phoenicia,
time-telling in China, schools in Greece, and the first love song in the biblical book of
The Song of Solomon. The Sumerians have taught us that Sumerians had written stories
concerning a fall of man and a great flood before the narratives much like the deluge in
book of Genesis.