Bust found at Mohanjero-Daro - front view How does this compare with busts found in Mesopotamia?

Bust found at Mohanjero-Daro - rear view The quality of the carving is very high. See what a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City says about it

Read:

• Duiker/Spielvogel: pp. 26-45.
• Diamond: pp. 93-113.
• Christian: pp. 283-332.

Written Assignment 4: Due on email by Sunday, 6 pm, January 29.  In a few paragraphs, answer one of the following questions:  

1.   What were the chief features of the Harappan civilization, and in what ways was it similar to the civilizations that arose in Egypt and Mesopotamia?      
2. What roles did the caste system and the family play in ancient Indian society?

Primary Source Questions for Week 4.

Among the major problems that we have in understanding ancient Indian society and culture are: a) while Harappan civilization had developed a writing system, as had the Mesopotamians and the Egyptians, no one has yet figured out how to read it;  and b) the archeological and physical record of Harappan society is far sparser than those of Egypt and Mesopotamia.  We'll talk about these two problems in class this week - along with the larger question that they raise - just how do we learn about the distant past?  And how much of the past can we discover, recover, reconstruct, understand?

A couple of interesting new items on the controversy in California over the teaching of ancient Indian history in their public schools:

"India History Spat Hits U.S."
"Defending the Faith: New Battleground in Textbook Wars"
"Indus River Script"
An interesting and full site on Harappan Civilization
An article which denies the Aryan Invasions - and one which supports a modern "Indian nationalist view" of this past.
A web site on Ancient Indian History with a "nationalist" viewpoint.
Laws of Manu - full site
Rig Veda - an example - "Afford Him Easy Access, Earth" - a funerary hymn

Maps
Comparative Chronologies