Harappan Civilisation Test-1

The terracotta figure representing the large sized mother goddess is one of the best preserved and comes from Mohenjodaro. Since she is the bestower of fertility and prosperity, she was worshipped for this very purpose.

Every house had its own bathroom paved with bricks, with drains connected through the wall to the street drains. Some houses have remains of staircases to reach a second storey or the roof. Many houses had wells, often in a room that could be reached from the outside and perhaps used by passers-by.

Attempts have been made to reconstruct religious beliefs and practices by examining seals, some of which seem to depict ritual scenes. Others, with plant motifs, are thought to indicate nature worship. Some animals – such as the one-horned animal, often called the “unicorn” – depicted on seals seem to be mythical, composite creatures.

Most Harappan sites are located in semi-arid lands, where irrigation was probably required for agriculture. Traces of canals have been found at the Harappan site of Shortughai in Afghanistan, but not in Punjab or Sind.

Several explanations have been put forward to ascertain the end of Harappan civilisation. These range from climatic change, deforestation, excessive floods, the shifting and/or drying up of rivers, to overuse of the landscape.

Town planning is one of the unique feature of Indus Valley Civilization. Their town planning proves that they lived a highly civilized and developed life.
Indus people were the first to build planned cities with the scientific drainage system. One of the most remarkable features of the Indus valley civilization is that the city was provided with an excellent closed drainage system.

The Indus Valley Civilization is also known as the Harappan Civilization, after Harappa, the first of its sites to be excavated in the 1920s, in what was then the Punjab province of British India, and now is Pakistan.

Indus civilization, also called Indus valley civilization or Harappan civilization, the earliest known urban culture of the Indian subcontinent. The cities and people of Indus Valley Civilization were spread over India, Afghanistan, Baluchistan(Present day Pakistan). 

The Indus valley people knew the use of copper, bronze, silver, gold but not iron.

The Fire altars discovered at Kalibangan reveal that the people were ritualistic and believed in the worship of fire. A charging bull which is considered to signify the “realistic and powerful folk art of Harappan Age” has been found at Kalibangan. The most important discovery of Kalibangan is a ploughed field.