The Indus Valley civilisation
The largest Bronze Age civilisation by area, and the one we can least read.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 700 years
- Known to
- ± 50 years
- Era
- Bronze Age, Holocene
From around 2600 BCE the Indus civilisation covers roughly a million square kilometres across modern Pakistan and northwest India — larger than Egypt and Mesopotamia combined — with several major cities and hundreds of towns. It is remarkable for what it lacks: no palaces, no royal tombs, no temples identifiable as such, and almost no depictions of warfare or rulers. Whatever organised it was not obviously a monarchy, and without a readable script we do not know what it was.