Revision summary
Mature Harappan cities grew from a long village prelude in the greater Indus world. Mehrgarh supplies an early farming and craft base. Kalibangan, Kot Diji, Rakhigarhi, and Bhirrana show Early Harappan intensification. Seals, weights, and drains intensify local organisation rather than import a Sumerian city. Trade with Mesopotamia is contact, not a founding transplant.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
The Indus Valley Civilization is the urban Mature Harappan order of the third millennium BCE. Endogenous origin means that order grew from older farming villages in the same greater Indus world, not from a sudden Sumerian transplant.
Body
Against a simple foreign transplant
- Early writers compared Indus cities with Mesopotamia and guessed a western import. Chronology now puts a long local prelude before street grids and seals.
- Trade with Dilmun and Mesopotamia is real in the Mature phase. Trade is not the same as a founding migration of city builders.
Pre-Harappan and Early Harappan sequence
- Mehrgarh in Balochistan shows aceramic and ceramic farming, cattle, wheat, and craft from the seventh millennium onward, a deep village base.
- Hakra and Kot Diji levels, Kalibangan Early Harappan, and Ghaggar-Hakra farm sites show fortified villages, pottery, and plough agriculture before full urbanism.
- Rakhigarhi, Bhirrana, and Kunal in the Ghaggar belt extend that prelude into Haryana. They argue a eastern as well as a western village root.
What becomes urban
- Craft specialisation, stamp seals, weights, and planned drains at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro intensify local habits rather than replace them overnight.
- Dholavira shows a regional urban grammar in Gujarat, another argument against one imported blueprint.
- Collapse and transformation after 1900 BCE into Late Harappan village worlds also look like an internal trajectory, not an emptied foreign colony.
Caution
- Endogenous does not mean isolated. Ideas and goods moved. The claim is that the urban package was assembled on an Indian-Balochistan farming stem.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD M[Mehrgarh farming] --> E[Early Harappan villages] E --> K[Kalibangan Rakhigarhi] E --> U[Mature Harappa Mohenjo-daro Dholavira]
Conclusion
IVC cities rest on Mehrgarh-to-Early-Harappan village growth at Kalibangan, Rakhigarhi, and related sites. Mesopotamia was a trading neighbour, not a sufficient origin.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Examine the contributions of S. C. Roy in highlighting the role of customary laws in tribal life
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Does endogenous origin deny any western contact?
No. It denies that contact is the source of the urban form.
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Is there one mother site?
No. Several regional village traditions converge into Mature Harappan urbanism.
Same topic · past papers
UPSC has asked this before
These previous-year questions sit on the same topic. Open one to practise the earlier ask.
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2026 · Q2(c) · Anthropology GS 2 · 15 marks
What are the evidences available regarding crops and domesticated animals of Indus Valley Civilization? What are the views of the scholars regarding Indus script? -
2023 · Q2(b) · Anthropology GS 2 · 15 marks
"Indus Valley was the first settlement of the big civilization." Comment critically.
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