What was the Indus Valley Civilization? Interview with Dr. Adam Green

Tides of History

Wondery / Patrick Wyman

Documentary, Society & Culture, History

4.8 • 6.3K Ratings

🗓️ 7 April 2022

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Indus Valley Civilization doesn’t get much attention compared to Mesopotamia or Egypt, but it covered an area of a million square kilometers, was home to hundreds of thousands or millions of people and a unified culture, and lasted for the better part of a millennium. More than that, the Indus Civilization doesn’t seem to fit the models we have for how early states functioned. Dr. Adam Green of Cambridge University joins me to explain the unusual way in which the Indus Civilization was organized, its lack of powerful elites, and how and why it eventually fell apart.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi everybody, from Wundery, welcome to another episode of Tides of History, I'm Patrick
0:14.2	Weimint, thanks for joining me.
0:16.5	Of all of the many different times and places we've covered on this season of Tides, the
0:20.8	Indus Valley civilization stands out to me the most.
0:23.5	A huge, long-lived, sophisticated urban society in sconce along the river banks of South Asia,
0:28.8	one that left us no legible written materials that might give us an inside view into its
0:33.1	workings.
0:34.4	In this sense, the Indus Valley civilization is something of a black box.
0:38.0	We see incredible archaeological remains, whole cities, built up rural landscapes, but
0:42.8	what it all means is a bit harder to figure out.
0:45.4	That's why I'm so stoked to talk to our guest today.
0:48.0	He's a specialist on the Indus Valley civilization and he has some fascinating insights about everything
0:52.5	from its relationship to a changing climate to its internal social structure.
0:56.9	Dr. Adam Green is an anthropological archaeologist who works as an affiliated lecturer in the
1:01.4	Department of Archaeology at Cambridge.
1:03.6	He's published numerous pieces about various aspects of the Indus Valley civilization
1:07.3	and more broadly works on the comparative study of ancient human economies, landscapes
1:11.7	and urban societies.
1:12.7	Dr. Green, thank you so much for joining me.
1:15.0	Yeah, thank you for having me.
1:16.8	It's exciting to be here.
1:17.8	Okay, so let's start with the basics here.
	...

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