Indus Valley Civilisation

The Indus Valley Civilisation, also called the Harappan Civilisation, was one of the world's earliest urban cultures, flourishing across the northwest of the Indian subcontinent in the third millennium BCE. Lothal, near Dholera, is one of its important sites and a rare Harappan port.

What the Indus Valley Civilisation was

The Indus Valley Civilisation, named after the Indus river system and also called the Harappan Civilisation after the first-excavated site of Harappa, was one of the earliest urban civilisations, alongside Mesopotamia and Egypt. At its height in the third millennium BCE it spread across a vast area of what is now Pakistan and northwest India, including Gujarat. It is known for planned cities with grid streets, sophisticated drainage and water management, standardised baked-brick construction, weights and measures, craft industries such as bead-making, trade seals, and a script that has still not been deciphered.

Its Gujarat sites and Lothal

Gujarat holds several major Harappan sites, of which the two most discussed are Lothal and Dholavira. Lothal, about 36 km from Dholera, was a coastal town with what the Archaeological Survey of India calls the world's earliest known dock, a working port that made and shipped goods. Dholavira, in the Rann of Kutch, is a larger city famous for its water-conservation systems and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Together they show the civilisation's reach to the sea and its engineering skill, and they make the Dholera coast a natural gateway to Indus Valley heritage for visitors.