1. The Earliest South asian Civilization
Sept. 12, 2013

2. review When did human beings (homo sapiens) appear in China?
How is the Neolithic age different from the Paleolithic age?
Is the Shang a neolithic or a bronze age society?
When did writing appear in China?
Was Zhou larger than Shang? In what other ways was it different from Shang?

3. Three Key Terms Culture: shared beliefs, values, and customs
Civilization: culture plus writing and large settlements
State: an organization that wields a monopoly of legitimate force and ritual in order to extract goods and services from the ruled for the sake of the rulers.

4. Ancient South Asia
India used to be a giant island but crashed into Asia around 40 to 50 million years ago, forming the Himalayas.
The first homo sapiens showed up around 50,000 years ago, earlier than in China.
We find Neolithic settlements as early as 9,000 years ago (around 7,000 BCE), about the same time such settlements emerged in China. (See Trautmann, p. 28)

5. Four regions Mountainous north Indus and Ganga river plains
Deccan (peninsular India)
Sri Lanka.
Monsoon-based agriculture

6. Peoples of South Asia
Speakers of Indo-European languages (North India and Sri Lanka)
Speakers of Dravidian Languages (Primarily in southern India)
Speakers of Munda Languages (in the northeast and some other tribal areas)

7. The Indus Valley The beginnings of the oldest continuous civilization?
Early agriculture and early pottery
Indus Valley civilization an urban civilization: Harappa and Mohenjo Daro
bronze artifacts and brick.
Writing we cannot decipher
Insufficient information on religious beliefs and practices
Not a kingdom (no evidence of centralized administration)

8. Relationship to later South Asian Cultures
Language is more likely Dravidian than Indo-European
Religion is not Hinduism, though it may have contributed some ideas to what became Hinduism
No clear what role the people of the Indus Valley Civilization played in the rise of states several centuries later hundreds of kilometres to the East.
This civilization disappeared in 1,900 BCE.

9. Why did they disappear?
The video says the river that gave them life dried up.
Trautmann ( p ) lists other possible factors. There may have been a great flood, a powerful earthquake, or the people in the cities may have exhausted the soil so that it couldn’t feed them anymore.
We don’t know for sure what happened. All we know is that the Indus Valley civilization disappeared, and was forgotten, until British archaeologists discovered it in the 19th century.