Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c12.18

c12.18

Although the duration of time implied by this long succession of rebuildings must be at least seven hundred years or more, yet there are no material changes perceptible save in archaeological minutiae. Curiously primitive features, such as the type of flat bronze axe or the spear without midrib, persist unchanged and unimproved. Although there is good evidence of trade between the Harappā kingdom and those of Sumer and Akkad, yet the decisive technological advance marked by the making of axes and other tools with sockets for the handle, known in Mesopotamia from the beginning of the third millennium, never reached the metalsmiths of the Indus and the Punjab. Indeed, so far as we can tell, it is likely that the first shaft-hole axe seen at Mohenjo-daro was brandished by an invader from the west who took part in the sacking of the city, perhaps about the middle of the second millennium B.C.