[Compiled by: Kandiah Thillaivinayagalingam]
The earliest
Indian inventions emerged from the valley of the Indus River during the second
half of the 3rd millennium B.C.The best-known sites are Harappa and
Mohenjo-Daro;these are among the earliest examples of civic
planning.Houses,markets,storage facilities, offices,and public baths were
arranged in a grid like scheme.There was also a highly developed drainage
system.They had many useful inventions and they are very important to us
today.Some of them are the wheel,boat,sail,and writing.They were used for
transportation and communication.
A button is as
important as cloth and thread.You wouldn’t want to use Velcro[nylon fabric used
as a fastening] in your shirts and jeans.You may prefer Button instead.But have
you ever wondered where an invention as simple and essential as this came from?
Who first came up with the ingenious idea of tucking a piece of plastic into a
hole to hold our clothes together so that we wouldn’t have to tie pins all over
our body?Well, you’d be surprised to know how old buttons actually are.They
were invented between 2500-1700 BC, in one of the earliest civilizations of the
Old World–the Indus Valley Civilization.The button,in fact,was originally used
more as an ornament than as a fastening,It is made of a curved shell.
Here,we have
compiled a list of simple objects and inventions of everyday use that are over
four thousands of years old from Indus valley civilization.
(1)They were
among the first to develop a system of uniform weights and measures.Their
building bricks were very uniform making city planning easy.Excavations at
Harappa,Mohenjo-daro and other sites of the Indus Valley Civilization have uncovered
evidence of the use of "practical mathematics".In India a decimal
system was already in place during the Harappan period as indicated by an
analysis of the Harappan weights and measures.Weights corresponding to ratios
of 0.05, 0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, and 500 have been
identified,as have scales with decimal divisions.A particularly notable
characteristic of Harappan weights and measures is their remarkable
accuracy.Rulers made from Ivory were in use by the Indus Valley Civilization
period.Excavations at Lothal (2400 BC) have yielded one such ruler calibrated
to about 1/16 of an inch—less than 2 millimeters
(2)This was the
first civilization to incorporate urban sanitation systems.Personal hygiene
seems to have been a high priority.Many of the buildings of the Indus Valley
were built of sun-baked clay,a technique which is still used in India today,In
2001,archaeologists studying the remains of two men from Mehrgarh,Pakistan made
the startling discovery that dentistry being practiced as far back as 7000 BC
in the Indus Valley Civilization.This earliest form of dentistry involved
curing tooth related disorders with bow drills operated,perhaps,by skilled bead
craftsmen.the reconstruction of this ancient form of dentistry showed that the
methods used were reliable and effective.Standardized earthen plumbing pipes
with broad flanges making use of asphalt for preventing leakages appeared in
the urban settlements of the Indus Valley Civilization by 2700 B.C.Planned
urban townships existed 5000 years before.in Mohenjodaro and Harappa,now in
Pakistan,where The Harappan house is an amazing example of a native
people,without the benefit of technology,adapting to local conditions and
intuitively producing an architecture eminently suited to the climate.The house
was planned as a series of rooms opening on to a central courtyard. This
courtyard served the multiple functions of lighting the rooms,acting as a heat
absorber in summer and radiator in winter, as well as providing an open space
inside for community activities.There were no openings toward the main
street,thus ensuring privacy for the residents.In fact,the only openings in the
houses are rather small - this prevented the hot summer sun heating the insides
of the houses.
(3) Their art was
highly advanced.Terracotta,steatite and bronze human and animal figurines with
anatomically correct proportions have been found.Their jewelry was complex and
considered beautiful by today's standards.Long carnelian beads were a
specialty.Early evidence of dyeing comes from India where a piece of cotton
dyed with a vegetable dye has been recovered from the archaeological site at
Mohenjo-daro (3rd millennium BC]
(4)
Transportation and trade were major goals of these people.Their trade network
ran from Mesopotamia to northern and central India.Their empire was
economic,not military.
(5) Indus Valley
Civilization agriculture was based upon a highly productive method of
raising,storing and transporting domesticated wheat and barley. Also Other
crops were known.such as sesame.Despite the fact that the majority of the wild
species of the sesame are native to sub-saharan Africa,Bedigian demonstrated
that sesame was first domesticated in India at Harappa in the Indus Valley They
also figured out how to raise domestic animals,including the humped cattle that
we call Kangayam Cattle today.These are shown on some of the famous clay
seals,along with that mysterious writing. Also the earliest archeological
evidence of an animal-drawn plough dates back to 2500 BC in the Indus Valley
Civilization
(6) They had a
written script,mostly used on inscribed seals.The language and scripts are
still being investigated and are controversial.
(7) Formal
religion was highly advanced and included burial and cremation of human remains.Some
of the aspects of their religion have continued,almost unchanged,clear down to
the present day in India.Some of the goddess figurines from the Indus Valley
show paint,dark paint on the hair,red paint on the top of the head or the
forehead.Women in India today still paint a red dot on their foreheads.
This
civilizations have had no standing army,only had just a police type force &
also their network of cities are without walls.It clearly demonstrate that they
were not constantly at war with one another.That was something the
civilizations around the Mediterranean never managed! Other Important Few Items
listed below:
PART :76 WILL FOLLOW
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