The Indus Valley Civilisation — also called the Harappan Civilisation after its first-excavated site — flourished across present-day Pakistan and north-west India, and one of its two greatest cities, Harappa, stood in west Punjab on an old course of the River Ravi. It was among the world's earliest urban cultures, and it is where Punjab's recorded story of city life begins. That the civilisation existed, when it flourished, and roughly how its cities worked is Well-established archaeology; what its people spoke, believed, and called themselves remains genuinely unknown.

The so-called Priest-King sculpture of Mohenjo-daro: a small steatite bust of a bearded man wearing a patterned robe over one shoulder.
The “Priest-King” of Mohenjo-daro, steatite, c. 2000–1900 BCE (National Museum of Pakistan, Karachi) — the single most recognisable Indus artefact. Its modern nickname is a guess: no one knows whether he was priest, king, both, or neither. Photograph via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA).

Chronology and setting

The civilisation's mature, urban phase is dated by archaeologists to roughly 2600–1900 BCE, growing out of earlier farming cultures that reach back several millennia further at Harappa itself. Harappa and its larger sister-city Mohenjo-daro (in Sindh, to the south) may each have held tens of thousands of people. Harappan Punjab also includes sites on the Indian side of the modern border, such as Ropar (Rupnagar) on the Sutlej and Sanghol between the Sutlej and the old course of the Ghaggar.

before 3300 BCE

Farming villages on the Ravi

Early agricultural settlement at Harappa; pottery and crafts develop over centuries.

c. 2600 BCE

The urban phase begins

Harappa grows into a planned city — streets on a grid, standardised bricks, drains beneath the lanes.

c. 2600–1900 BCE

The mature Harappan world

Weights, seals, and long-distance trade link the Indus cities to each other and to Mesopotamia.

from c. 1900 BCE

The cities fade

Urban networks break down gradually; life continues in smaller rural settlements.

What made it remarkable

Harappan cities are known for planned street grids, baked-brick houses, covered drainage and water-supply systems, and a system of standardised weights and measures — some divisions as fine as a couple of millimetres. The economy rested on surplus agriculture and long-distance trade that reached Mesopotamia. The people used a script that appears on seals and small tablets but which remains undeciphered; because of this, much about their language, religion, and social structure is genuinely unknown rather than merely debated. Strikingly, the cities show little of what usually announces ancient kings — no unambiguous palaces, royal tombs, or monuments to named rulers — and how Harappan society was governed is an open question.

Excavated ancient brickwork under an open sky at the archaeological site of Sanghol, Punjab, India.
Excavated brickwork at Sanghol, Punjab, India — an archaeological site on the Indian side whose layers run from the Late Harappan period through the Buddhist centuries (the stupa remains visible here are from the much later Kushan era). Photograph via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA).

Decline

From about 1900 BCE the cities were gradually abandoned. The evidence points to natural causes — a drying climate and shifting rivers — rather than a single invasion; scholars describe a breakdown of urban networks and a spread of rural life, not a sudden catastrophe. The environmental picture is Well-established; the specific causes and their weighting remain Under discussion.

Modern place-names

Harappa lies in Sahiwal District, Punjab, Pakistan, beside the modern town of the same name; Mohenjo-daro is in Sindh, Pakistan; Ropar (officially Rupnagar) and Sanghol are in Punjab, India. The River Ravi has shifted course since Harappan times — the city now stands kilometres from the water that once sustained it.