Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c12.199

c12.199

While the antecedents of the Harappā civilization still elude us, we can only say that in its mature form it is not likely to be earlier than about 2500 B.C., and that the only reasonably close point of contact with the West, where written records are available, is between the years 2300 and 2000 B.C. It is not improbable that trade relations with Sumer ceased soon after this time, when the struggles between Hammurabi and Elam may have closed the frontiers for a time. And just as Sumer was suffering from the inroads of the barbarians from the hills, so too, in the archaeological record of the Harappā cities and towns and in the villages of Baluchistan, we find evidence that kingship and the established order of things come to an end and the barbarians appear at a date rather later than that of the less successful attacks on the Mesopotamian kingdoms. Her position farther to the east saved India for a time, and the unchanging civilization of the Indus and Punjab was left for a century or two to revolve slowly round the fixed points of authority in the sacred citadels, as it had done for so long. But the end was delayed, not averted. In the next chapter we shall see what archaeology tells us of the end of the Harappā civilization and the coming of the barbarians.