Ancient World
Lothal: The Indus Valley Port and Its Ancient Dockyard
A small but busy Harappan craft and trading town whose brick basin remains one of the most debated structures of the Indus Valley Civilisation.
Region
Asia
Ancient World
Decline of the Indus Valley Civilisation: Causes and Debate
The large Harappan cities were gradually abandoned and the civilisation broke up into smaller regional village cultures, without writing or long-distance trade.
Ancient World
Erlitou Culture and the Xia Dynasty: China's First State?
Erlitou is recognised as the earliest large urban centre with palaces and bronze casting in the Central Plains of China, but whether it was the Xia capital remains unproven.
Ancient World
Indo-Aryan Migrations into South Asia: Evidence and Debate
Indo-Aryan languages, ancestral to Sanskrit and most languages of northern India today, spread into South Asia through gradual migration and mixing rather than conquest.
Ancient World
Zhengzhou Shang City: An Early Bronze Age Capital in China
The largest known city of the early Shang period, it shows the scale of royal power and bronze production before the move to Anyang.
Ancient World
Rigveda: The Oldest Sanskrit Text and Its Hymns, c. 1500 BC
A collection of 1,028 hymns that became the oldest scripture of Hinduism and the earliest major text in any Indo-Aryan language.
Ancient World
Vedic Period: Ancient India from the Rigveda to the Upanishads
A pastoral tribal society became a world of agricultural kingdoms, producing the Vedas, the varna system and the ritual and philosophical foundations of Hinduism.
Ancient World
Battle of the Ten Kings: The Rigveda's Account of a Tribal War
Victory of Sudas and the Bharata tribe over a confederation of ten kings, strengthening the Bharatas in the Punjab.
Ancient World
Yinxu: The Last Capital of the Shang Dynasty at Anyang
The first archaeologically confirmed capital of a Chinese dynasty, Yinxu became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2006.
Ancient World
Shang Dynasty Oracle Bones: The Earliest Chinese Writing
The inscriptions confirmed the existence of the Shang kings and are the earliest substantial body of Chinese writing, ancestral to the modern script.
Ancient World
Kuru Kingdom: The First State of Vedic India, c. 1200 BC
The Kurus built the first large polity of Vedic India, where the Vedic hymns were collected and the classic system of public ritual and social order took shape.
Ancient World
Tomb of Fu Hao: Shang Queen and General Unearthed in 1976
The only intact Shang royal-family tomb ever found, it revealed the wealth of the Shang court and confirmed a woman's military role recorded in oracle bones.