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The Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC), also known as the Indus Civilisation, was a Bronze Age civilisation in the northwestern regions of South Asia, lasting from 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE, and in its mature form from 2600 BCE to 1900 BCE.

The civilisation flourished in the alluvial plain of the Indus River and along a system of perennial monsoon-fed rivers that once coursed in the vicinity of the Ghaggar-Hakra, a seasonal river in northwest India and eastern Pakistan. The term Harappan is also applied to the Indus Civilisation, after its type site Harappa, the first to be excavated early in the 20th century in what was then the Punjab province of British India and is now Punjab, Pakistan. There were earlier and later cultures called Early Harappan and Late Harappan in the same area. Harappan civilisation is sometimes called Mature Harappan to distinguish it from the earlier cultures.

named after the Indus River system in whose alluvial plains the early sites of the civilisation were identified and excavated. The term "Ghaggar-Hakra" figures prominently in modern labels applied to the Indus civilisation on account of a good number of sites having been found along the Ghaggar-Hakra River in northwest India and eastern Pakistan. The terms "Indus-Sarasvati Civilisation" and "Sindhu-Saraswati Civilisation" have also been employed in the literature by supporters of Indigenous Aryanism, after a posited identification of the Ghaggar-Hakra with the river Sarasvati described in the early chapters of the Rigveda, a collection of hymns in archaic Sanskrit composed in the second-millennium BCE, which are unrelated to the mature phase of the Indus Valley Civilization.

The Indus Valley Civilisation was roughly contemporary with the other riverine civilisations of the ancient world: Ancient Egypt along the Nile, Mesopotamia in the lands watered by the Euphrates and the Tigris, and China in the drainage basin of the Yellow River and the Yangtze. An Indus Valley site has been found on the Oxus River at Shortugai in Afghanistan which is the northernmost site of the Indus Valley Civilisation, in the Gomal River valley in northwestern Pakistan, at Manda, Jammu on the Chenab River near Jammu, and at Alamgirpur on the Hindon River, only 28 km (17 mi) from Delhi.

Masson's major archaeological discovery in the Punjab was Harappa, a metropolis of the Indus civilisation in the valley of Indus's tributary, the Ravi River. After the partition of India in 1947, when most excavated sites of the Indus Valley Civilisation lay in territory awarded to Pakistan, the Archaeological Survey of India, its area of authority reduced, carried out large numbers of surveys and excavations along the Ghaggar-Hakra system in India. As of 1977, about 90% of the Indus script seals and inscribed objects discovered were found at sites in Pakistan along the Indus river, while other sites accounts only for the remaining 10%.

The cities of the ancient Indus had "social hierarchies, their writing system, their large planned cities and their long-distance trade mark them to archaeologists as a full-fledged 'civilisation.' The mature phase of the Harappan civilisation lasted from c. With the inclusion of the predecessor and successor cultures – Early Harappan and Late Harappan, respectively – the entire Indus Valley Civilisation may be taken to have lasted from the 33rd to the 14th centuries BCE. It is part of the Indus Valley Tradition, which also includes the pre-Harappan occupation of Mehrgarh, the earliest farming site of the Indus Valley. The most commonly used classifies the Indus Valley Civilisation into Early, Mature and Late Harappan Phase.

The Harappan language is the unknown language (or languages) of the Indus Valley Civilisation.

However, the Indus Valley Civilisation did not disappear suddenly, and many elements of the Indus civilisation appear in later cultures. The inhabitants of the Indus Valley Civilisation migrated from the river valleys of Indus and Ghaggar-Hakra, towards the Himalayan foothills of the Ganga-Yamuna basin.

Quick Facts

• The term Harappan is also applied to the Indus Civilisation, after its type site Harappa, the first to be excavated early in the 20th century in what was then the Punjab province of British India and is now Punjab, Pakistan.
• However, the Indus Valley Civilisation did not disappear suddenly, and many elements of the Indus civilisation appear in later cultures.
• The civilisation flourished in the alluvial plain of the Indus River and along a system of perennial monsoon-fed rivers that once coursed in the vicinity of the Ghaggar-Hakra, a seasonal river in northwest India and eastern Pakistan.
• The Harappan language is the unknown language (or languages) of the Indus Valley Civilisation.
• It is part of the Indus Valley Tradition, which also includes the pre-Harappan occupation of Mehrgarh, the earliest farming site of the Indus Valley.

Source material: Wikipedia - "Indus Valley Civilisation". Adapted and summarized for DiscoverScroll. Original contributors are credited through the linked Wikipedia article. Read original on Wikipedia. CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes were made from the original.