Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c12.96

c12.96

It is inevitable that one should mention slave-labour when describing this piece of planned economy: the standardized little houses in dreary rows, the great State Granary, the municipal flour-mills. Probably the nearest parallel to the coolie-lines is the Workmen's Village at Tell-el-Amarna, with its similar blocks of identically planned cottages, but the Harappā lay-out must antedate the Egyptian by at least a millennium. The concentration of various trades and industries into specific quarters or streets is, of course, common in oriental towns up to the present day, as it was in medieval Europe; and there was considerable centralized control of trade and industry in ancient Sumer. But this relegation of a particular group of occupations to a restricted area of the city, with the provision of a housing scheme evidently drawn out in the city architect's office, represents something more consciously organized. To the Harappā civilization we must presumably attribute the first really organized industry in Western Asia, as distinct from that of a craftsmen's guild.