25th Century BC - Inventions, Discoveries, Introductions

Inventions, Discoveries, Introductions

• Harappan civilisation, at its peak, covered an area of around 480,000 km² (298 258.172 mi²). Its heartland lay in the Indus river valley in Pakistan, but settlements spread as far as the Makran coast, Baluchistan, Afghanistan, eastern Punjab, Kutch and Saurashtra. They included cities like Harappa, Mohenjo-daro, Kalibangan, Dholavira, ports like Lothal, Sutkagen-dor and Sotka-koh and numerous villages as well. They used irrigation to farm and constructed cities. The two main cities had sewage systems, bronze, trade tokens (early coins), and hieroglyphs. There were even baths at one of the villages, besides the great baths of brick in each city. Geometry of shrines and altars tends to identify these with the cities of the Yajur Veda: they might easily be a thousand years older than this conservative date.
• Cycladic marble figures depict the use of both the musical pipe and the kithara form of lyre. (Archaeology of the Olympics 1988)
• Earliest surviving ski is left in a peat bog at Hoting, Sweden, about this time. (Encyc. Americana)
• Sumerians use domestic asses on war chariots (Standard of Ur), not onagers as early interpreters claimed. (Clutton-Brock)
• Agriculture at Prieta Huaca includes cotton and bottle-gourds. (Bailey 1973)
• Statue of Ebih-Il, at Mari