Ancient Indian History Test 13

• Frequency of floods- Robert L. Raikes proposed this theory about the cause of decline of harappan civilization. Not much evidence is available regarding flooding theory besides slumping brick masonry found in some harappan sites.
• Foreign invasions- Sir Mortimer Wheeler proposed this Foreign invasion theory. Geological and archaeological proof of genocide and unburied  skeletal remains found in harappan sites like Mohenjo-Daro.
• Onset of the drought conditions- Change of course of Indus river would have caused water scarcity and have made many harappans to move out of harappan sites is one of the theory proposed for the decline of harappans. But, not enough evidences are given to accept this theory.
  

• Harappa was first excavated in 1920 and 1921 by the Archaeological Survey of India after its discovery in 1820.

• Rai Bahadur Daya Ram Sahni had led a team of archaeologists for harappan excavations.

• Archaeologists associated with Harappan excavations include Robert.L. Raikes, Mortimer Wheeler, George Dales, Richard Meadow, and J. Mark Kenoyer.

• The most important evidence of the achievements of this civilization have been excavated from Harappa.

The Harappan script which is also known as Indus script is a corpus of symbols produced by the Harappan people during the Kot Diji and Mature Harappan periods between 3500 and 1900 BCE. Though the script has not yet been deciphered, these symbols constituted a script used to record or symbolizes a writing system.

The term Neolithic is derived from the Greek neos – means “new” and lithos – means “stone”, which literally means “New Stone Age”. The term Neolithic was invented by Sir John Lubbock in 1865.

The New stone age was last part of the stone age, commenced with the beginning of farming and ended when the metal tools became widespread.