Harappa Culture Continued

In the last post on Harappa Culture we described some features of the civilization. Science and intuition of some extraordinary men have enabled us to understand the Harappa Culture and its people.

As mentioned the cities streets were straight and very broad. Then as usual there were side streets running into the houses. Houses were in general quite large and built on a uniform pattern. There was a large courtyard and on its three sides were rooms and kitchen. Courtyard opened on fourth side to the street. Thus the windows opened against the walls of the houses on the opposite side houses presenting a monotonous vista. There were baths without showers. People took bath standing pouring pitchers of water on the them as we still to today.

Drainage system was the most important innovation of these people and emphasized once again the desire for cleanliness. There were drains running from houses to the bigger drains running on the sides of the main streets.

There were bigger public bath tanks. The bottom was covered on stones and sealed with bitumen. On one side there was a drain opening for draining off the water during cleaning operations. There were steps leading to the water and people bathed on the lowest steps. There were rooms along the periphery of the baths. This indicates that these baths might have been used for religious ceremonies and rooms were where priests lived.

There were granaries for storing the agricultural produce. Rows of quarters have been found near these granaries indicating that these were living places for the labors who pounded the harvest and worked the crops. One granary of the size 150X200feet discovered at Harappa stood on a high platform to protect it from inundation during flood days. It is divided into many storage blocks of 50X20 feet size to store corn.

The main crops were wheat, barley and sesamum, the latter still an important edible seed for extraction of edible oil. Many domesticated animals were buffaloes, goats, sheep, pigs asses, dogs and fowls. Although it is doubtful that horse was a domestic animal but few teeth of horse had been found in Baluchistan‘s Rana Gundai indicating that nomadic migrants from West began roaming the area. Bullocks were probably the beasts of burden.

On the basis of thriving agricultural economy these people built their rather unimaginative but comfortable civilization. They lived in good palatial houses. There was a well organized trade. They traded with village cultures of Baluchistan which were their North-Western neighbors. But their precious metals came from distant places. They imported conch shells from Saurashtra, silver, turquoise and lapis lazuli from Afghanistan and Persia and Jade from central Asia.

We shall continue the story………..