The Indus Civilization (Cambridge History of India, Supplementary Volume) c21.1

c21.1

Any attempt to appreciate the general position of the Harappans in the history of civilization as a whole must be based on an evaluation of three factors: the contribution of the seemingly earlier civilization of Mesopotamia, the initiative of the constituent Indus population, and the debt of both to a pre-existing or underlying continuum of ideas. The civilizations alike of the Twin Rivers and of the Indus converge retrospectively in the vast massif which extends from the Himalaya and the Hindu Kush westwards across Iran into Anatolia. In this mountainous zone, broken by patches of steppe and stony plateau, a great variety of small related cultures developed in the fifth millennium to the capacity of a restricting environment; and from that zone in the fourth millennium certain of the more enterprising of them began to escape southwards and south-westwards into the riverine plains, there to encounter simultaneously unprecedented problems and opportunities. The rapid consequence was a social co-ordination which by the latter half of the millennium was already, in Mesopotamia, worthy of the name of civilization.