WH Blog #4: The Indus Valley Civilization

WH Blog #4: The Indus Valley Civilization
*Assignment: Pick a question from the documents section and answer it.*
Using art as evidence: What can we learn about Indus Valley civilization from these visual sources? How does our level of understanding of this civilization differ from that of Egypt and Mesopotamia, where plentiful written records are available?
There’s not a lot we can say about the Indus Valley Civilization through these pieces of work. Reading archeologists’ hypotheses about what the works could mean was fun. But a lot of these speculations aren’t backed up with evidence. Art is difficult to interpret. Each person will pay attention to different parts of the dancing girl or the statues from Mohenjo Daro. They will project their own meaning onto them. We don’t know if the “dancing girl” is even dancing. Furthermore, we only see a part of this old civilization. It’s difficult to piece together a picture of what life back then looked like without all the puzzle pieces.
From the visual sources, there are very few things that we can reliably infer about the Indus Valley Civilizations. One, they could use bronze to make figurines. Another is that they used seals. But we are not 100% sure about what each animal symbol represents. They also had more figurines of women than men. These are some facts without any opinion attached to them. I'm sure there are some more I missed, but those are just some examples.
Compared to our understanding of Mesopotamia and Egypt, our understanding of the Indus Valley Civilization is very limited. Written records are not always reliable, but they are accurate in expressing the thoughts of the writer. There are other factors to take into account like the writer’s biases and limited knowledge, but it is a more precise hint than art. Overall, it is more reliable to interpret writing, and this is probably why Mesopotamia and Egypt are more well-known as the first civilizations: because it is easier to trust that what we know about them is true.

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