Ancient World: South Asia

"Over 3000 essential facts" about the entire ancient world in just 140 pages. Quick and dirty history baby. Instead of reading without true processing, I'm going to read in sections and comment on what I find interesting.  I love the ancient world, and I even teach Ancient and Medieval World Literature, but still I feel ignorant.
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Chapter 3: South Asia



I know very little about ancient South Asia so most of this chapter was new to me.  This also means that I will remember less since I had no background knowledge with which to situate the new information.  Books like this, short with basic facts and no narrative, are useful if a person already knows a bit about the subject.  Hopefully writing this out will help a bit with remembering.

Interesting facts:

In the middle of the 3rd millenium BCE, the Harappan civilization began in South Asia, uniting what had been three distinct areas/traditions.  The civilization lasted for approximately 700 years before it was replaced by the Mauryan empire.  What is interesting, however, is that warfare did not create, maintain, or destroy the civilization.

Houses in this area at this time were pretty advanced.  They were two or three stories, built around courtyards, and had efficient bathrooms.  On the other hand, no temples or palaces were found anywhere in the area, and the political structure of the Harappan civilization remains a mystery.

Buddha.

I have no list of literature from the time period, in part because the language used by the Harappan civilization has not been translated.  Scholars believe the civilization used perishables to write upon, and hence no luck with passing on the literature.