NCERT Class 6 History Chapter 4: In the Earliest Cities YouTube Lecture Handouts

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City Layout

• West: Higher & Smaller - Citadel

• East: Lower & Large - lower town – walls of baked bricks (interlocking)

• Mohenjo-Daro: Great Bath - lined with bricks, coated with plaster, and made water-tight with a layer of natural tar

• Kalibangan and Lothal - fire altars

• Mohenjo-Daro, Harappa, and Lothal - store houses

Houses, Drains & Streets – Planned & Built at Same Time

• One or two story

• Built around courtyard

• Each house had bathing area- wells to supply water

• Covered drains – gentle slope

• Small drains to bigger drains

• Drains had inspection holes – for cleaning

Life in City

• People planned construction of buildings (rulers)

• Ornaments of gold, silver, bead

• Scribes: people who wrote and prepared seals

• Craftsperson – terracotta toys

• Harappan seal: earliest form of writing – still not deciphered

Crafts

• Stone weights made of chert

• Beads made of carnelian, red stone

• Copper & bronze: Tools, weapons, ornaments & vessels

• Gold & silver: Ornaments and vessels

• Seals of stone – rectangular – animals carved on them

• Pots with black designs

• Cotton in Mehrgarh – cloth

• Spindle whorls – terracotta & faience (artificial with gum & sand or quartz) – to spin thread

• Faience – used for bead, bangle, earrings

• Specialist – cutting stone, polishing bead, carving seal

Raw Material

• Naturally or by farmers – processed to produce finished goods

• Copper: Rajasthan & Oman

• Tin: Mixed with copper to make bronze – Afghanistan & Iran

• Gold: Karnataka

• Stones: Gujarat, Iran & Afghanistan

Food

• Farmers & herders supplied food - wheat, barley, pulses, peas, rice, sesame, linseed and mustard

• Plough: to dig earth & plant seeds (wood)

• Harappans reared cattle, sheep, goat and buffalo

• Water & pasture around settlement

Harappan Towns in Gujarat

• Dholavira: Khadir Beyt in Rann of Kutch - fresh water and fertile soil

• Lothal: Sabarmati River, in Gujarat, close to the Gulf of Khambat - semi-precious stones

Decline of Civilization

• Rivers dried up

• Deforestation – no more grazing

• Flooding

• Rulers lost control

• People moved to new settlements

-Manishika