Indian History Quiz: Indus Valley Civilisation

The Great Bath stands in the citadel of Mohenjo-daro in Sindh. It is a brick tank about twelve metres long and seven metres wide, with flights of steps at two ends, small rooms around it and a layer of natural tar below the floor to stop water from seeping away.

Lothal lies on the Bhogava, a tributary of the Sabarmati in Gujarat, and its eastern side holds a large brick basin connected to the river by a channel.

He dug at Harappa on the bank of the Ravi in 1921, and the finds from that season identified a wholly unknown urban culture, which was named after the site.

Kalibangan stands on the dry bed of the Ghaggar in the Hanumangarh district of Rajasthan. A field there, belonging to the pre-Harappan level, carries two sets of furrows crossing each other at right angles, showing that two crops were grown in the same plot at the same time.

A Harappan burnt brick was four units long, two units broad and one unit thick, and the same proportion turns up at sites hundreds of kilometres apart.

Mesopotamian texts list Meluha among the lands that sent ships carrying carnelian beads, ivory, timber and copper, and the goods named there match what Harappan sites produced.

The Harappan Civilisation is a Bronze Age culture, and no iron object has been recovered from any of its levels.

Daimabad lies on the Pravara, a tributary of the Godavari, in the Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra, and it marks the southern limit of the Harappan world.

The seal shows a figure seated in a yogic posture with horns on its head and animals around it, usually described as an elephant, a tiger, a rhinoceros and a buffalo, with deer below the seat.

Dholavira stands on Khadir island in the Rann of Kutch. Unlike the usual two-part Harappan town, it is divided into three: a citadel, a middle town and a lower town, all enclosed by stone walls.

The Harappan script uses about four hundred picture-like signs, and it was written in the boustrophedon style, that is from right to left in the first line and then from left to right in the next, turning like an ox ploughing a field.