Ancient India

The people of ancient India were called the Indus Valley Civilization. The Indus Valley was home to one of the world's first large civilizations that began nearly 5000 years ago in an area of modern-day Pakistan and Northern India.The main reason why the Indus Valley civilization is one of the least known of the important early civilizations of antiquity is because nobody seems to be able to decipher their language or writing. No bilingual inscriptions have yet been found to allow the Indus script to be compared to known writing systems. The Indus people lived on the banks of the Indus River, the longest river in Pakistan, and grew crops in the fertile riverbank soil. The Indus cities were neatly planned. They had long straight roads laid out in a grid pattern to form city blocks. They even had drains that ran along the edge of the streets to carry water and rubbish away and wells for clean water. Some cities were surrounded by very high walls with a gateway so people could come and go. Daily life in the Indus Valley was generally peaceful with trading and farming handled by every member of the family.