Pod Insights You're Dead to Me The Indus Civilisation (Radio Edit) About this episode Greg Jenner is joined by guests Dr Danika Parikh and comedian Ahir Shah in the Bronze Age to explore the ancient Indus civilisation. They take a close look at the terracotta, toilets and even the unicorns of this vast civilisation which was in existence some 2,000 years before Pompeii.
This is a radio edit of the original podcast episode. For the full-length version, please look further back in the feed.
Research by: Aimee Hinds Scott
Written by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Aimee Hinds Scott and Greg Jenner
Produced by: Emma Nagouse and Greg Jenner
Assistant Producer: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow
Project Management: Isla Matthews
Audio Producer: Steve Hankey
Executive Editor: Philip Sellars
Transcript 6,349 words · 17 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.
0:06 Speaker 01 Cheers to fall savings at Whole Foods Market, home of higher ingredient standards. This Halloween, share chocolates and candies made without that spooky high fructose corn syrup. Throwing a party? Make it easy with a berry chantilly cake. Ready to cook pizza? No antibiotics ever chicken wings. And sushi made fresh daily. Fall gatherings never tasted better. Save through November 3rd at Whole Foods Market.
0:33 Speaker 00 Sometimes we all need an extra helping hand, especially with a tricky business problem you've been putting off. Claude is the AI for just that. It's the collaborator that understands your entire workflow and thinks with you, not for you. And Claude isn't just for quick questions. Hand it a whole task, like turning a folder of scattered notes into a report, and it does the work and hands back something finished that you can open and edit. Claude can now draft a doc or deck right in front of you, and Claude Design now lives right inside Claude. Describe the website or prototype you're picturing, attach your design system, and it comes back in your own design language, ready to edit right on the canvas. It works with your files and the tools you already use, like Gmail and Slack.
1:18 Speaker 00 And whether you're debugging code at midnight, building a financial model, or strategizing your next business move, Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter. For problems worth solving, get started with Claude at claude.ai/solve. That's claude.ai/solve. And check out Claude Pro, which includes access to all of the features mentioned in today's episode. Claude.ai/solve.
1:47 Speaker 02 BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
1:52 Greg Jenner? Hello and welcome to You're Dead To Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And today we are jumping back to the Bronze Age and sailing down the Indus River to learn all about the archaeology of toilets, terracotta, ornaments and even unicorns. Yes, it's the Indus Civilization. And to help us excavate this buried history, we have two very special guests. In history slash archaeology corner, she's a postdoctoral fellow at University of Cambridge Museums and postdoctoral research associate at Pembroke College, Cambridge. Her research includes the archaeology of the Indus Civilization of South Asia, as well as empire and race in museum collections. And she's a founding member of the European Society of Black and Allied Archaeologists. It's Dr Danica Parrick. Welcome, Danica.
2:35 Speaker 04 Hello. Thank you for having me, Greg. I'm excited to dig in.
2:38 Greg Jenner? Oh, an archaeology pun. Well done. Congratulations. Secret handshake for you. And in comedy corner, he's a stand-up comedian, writer and podcast regular. You might have seen his stand-up special Dots on HBO Max, or heard him on Radio 4, or seen him on Mock of the Week, or Have Got News For You, or Live at the Apollo, or Mash Report. He's very busy, and you'll definitely remember him from our Julius Caesar episode. It's Aheer Shah. Welcome, Aheer.
3:00 Speaker 05 Hello, Greg. And as I learnt, it's actually Julius Caesar. So who's the historian now? Eh?
3:06 Greg Jenner? Today, we're going way back into the ancient past, so way beyond Julius Caesar, to explore a topic with much lower name recognition. So what do you know about the Indus Civilization, Aheer?
3:18 Speaker 05 So I think that Indus is like where the word Hindu like comes from etymologically. I think that that's the thing. I imagine that this is what is now like North West India and Pakistan. I'm sure that the current government of India would like us to believe that it was exclusively in India, and these people identified as Hindus and had little statues of Ganesh that they carried around with them all the time, and invented faster-than-light travel and all of this sort of business until they were rudely disturbed, or what have you. But I'm not sure quite how historically accurate some of the BJP's claims on that front are.
3:56 Greg Jenner? So what do you know?
4:03 Greg Jenner? Great, well that brings us to the first segment of the podcast, the So What Do You Know? This is where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener, might know about today's subject. And I'll bet you've heard of Troy, the subject of Homer's epic poem, The Iliad, as well as the slightly dodgy film with Brad Pitt. And we've previously regaled you about the glories of Ramses the Great in ancient Egypt and the New Kingdom and all that. But these mighty cities came centuries after the Indus people were doing their thing. And yet, the Indus civilization doesn't get anywhere near as much coverage in modern films, or books, or television, or whatever. Maybe you've seen the Hindi language film set in the city of Mahenjodaro, it stars Bollywood heartthrob, horrific Roshan. Or maybe you've read Vinay Bajpai's trilogy of thriller novels. But for most of you, I reckon you're
4:44 Greg Jenner? coming into this episode feeling pretty blank. So who were the ancient people of the Indus? And what were they eating? And where did they go to the toilet? And how do we know anything about them? And what has this got to do with unicorns? Let's find out. Danica, let's start with the basics. When and where was the Indus civilization? And how long ago are we going back?
5:04 Speaker 04 The sites of the Indus civilization, which is also known as the Indus Valley Civilization or the Harappan Civilization, existed in what's now modern Pakistan and India, with a bonus single site in Afghanistan. It's been dated to about 4,500 to 4,000 years ago, so that's between about 2,600 and 1,900 B.C. This makes it roughly contemporary with the building of Stonehenge, and its decline predates the reign of Hammurabi in Babylon and the Mycenean Civilization in ancient Greece by a century. So this is the first phase of urbanism in South Asia. But it's also worth noting that the name Indus Civilization is contested. Civilization is kind of a loaded and problematic term. And while it's often called the Indus Valley in popular culture, because it was much wider than the Indus Valley, archaeologists
5:46 Speaker 04 actually rarely refer to it this way. There's an incredible range of sites. There's other cities, it's not just Harappan and Mahenjodaro, which are kind of the two best known ones. There's also a site called Dhollavira, which is situated in the Ran of Kutch in Gujarat, and another city called Rakigadi in Haryana in India. And there's many other village and town sites as well, in coastal areas, along rivers, located, you know, near sources of raw materials for, you know, mining and quarrying and things like that. There's really a very widespread of these sites. And the important thing to remember is that most Indus people would not actually have lived in cities like Mahenjodaro and Harappa.
6:20 Greg Jenner? Harappa is the modern name. What does Mahenjodaro mean?
6:23 Speaker 04 So Mahenjodaro, which is in Sind in Pakistan, the name's been translated to mean the mound of the dead.
6:28 Speaker 05 Sick.
6:31 Greg Jenner? Ah, what's your favourite heavy metal band?
6:35 Speaker 05 Yeah, it seems like they came out of Oslo and they're about to release their second LP.
6:42 Speaker 05 May I ask, when we say cities nowadays, you think like there are cities in the world that have 10 million people in them or whatever. But I'm assuming that we're not talking of that kind of scale. So what does it mean to be a city at that time?
6:55 Speaker 04 Mojengdaro, which was the biggest city, was about 250 hectares in size, which in normal people measurements is, I think, two and a half kilometres or something.
7:04 Greg Jenner? I mean, I think what we can do, actually, Ahir, is show you an aerial photograph of the biggest of the cities, Mojengdaro.
7:11 Speaker 05 Oh, wow. Okay.
7:12 Greg Jenner? So on the left, we've got our aerial view. And then on the right, we have a reconstruction of what the city might have looked like when people were living in it.
7:18 Speaker 05 What's immediately striking to me is that so last year I went to visit Pompeii. And just like the levels that you see and there's sort of grid elements to it. And you can almost tell that this is this quarter and this is that quarter. It's remarkable to me, like, looking at a picture of something like this in South Asia. And having wandered around something in Europe, obviously there are differences, but there's also certain striking similarities to me of, I guess, this is just how human beings instinctively connoitate in this way, regardless of where we're from, which is pretty cool.
7:56 Greg Jenner? I love the word connoitate. Excellent GCC geography flooding back into my brain there.
8:02 Speaker 05 Yeah, no Oxbow Lakes in this shot, unfortunately.
8:06 Speaker 04 Inner cities were well planned with wide streets running from north to south and east to west. Cities like Mojengdaro and Harappa were built on huge platforms made of mud brick. At urban sites, buildings were constructed from baked bricks, while at smaller sites, mud bricks were used for construction. Despite the focus on the inner civilisation as urban, rural ways of life were also really important. Evidence actually shows that these smaller sites were not entirely characterized by agriculture, but also found part of the craft economy. So they were producing and using elite goods, including beads, ornaments, bangles and Sometimes seals. So in some of the excavations that I've worked on at very small sites, we've even found things like occasionally, you know, a gold bead and things like that, which is really exciting.
8:47 Greg Jenner? It's important that you've you've outlaid that, but I just heard the word seals and then immediately just thought of like seals balancing beach balls on their noses. What is a seal in an archaeological sense?
8:57 Speaker 05 It's Kiss from a Rose seal. He's had a really long varied career. He's gone all around the place.
9:02 Speaker 04 Well, a seal in the Indus sense, they're often made from carved stone and then they're used to stamp on the clay, perhaps used to seal fastenings around doors or used to seal perhaps containers. They're often, you know, square seals made of stone and they feature elements of the Indus script, symbols and often animal motifs, actually mythical and real animals. And the animals depicted include unicorns, bulls and elephants and occasionally also things like rhinoceroses, gharials, which is a type of crocodile and even scorpions.
9:35 Speaker 05 You know unicorns, right? Let's go with this as a question about like unicorns and like dragons and everything. Given that in so many parts of the world where they didn't know each other and yet they've still got the idea of like, oh, there's this lizard that breeds fire. Or, oh, there's this horse that's got a stick on his head, right? Who are we to say that they didn't exist? I think it's just that the archaeological evidence of the unicorns hasn't been found yet. I'm team unicorn on this one.
10:07 Greg Jenner? So let's talk about daily life in the city and I want to get down dirty here and I want to talk to you about the toilet situation. In fact, I'm going to ask you, having been to Pompeii, what do you think the toilet situation would have been comparably 2000 years earlier in South Asia?
10:23 Speaker 05 Maybe something like chamber pots and collections to be used for fertilizer in fields on the outskirts, maybe something like that?
10:30 Greg Jenner? It's a very good guess. Danica, I think we can, I'm going to say it here, the the Indus people were pretty impressive when it came to sanitation infrastructure. They're turd nerds.
10:40 Speaker 04 Aren't we all of us here? I assume this was a support group.
10:46 Speaker 04 Well, yeah, Greg's right. You know, one of the most extraordinary things about these ancient cities is their sanitation infrastructure. You know, at Mohenjo Daro, there's actually hundreds of wells for drinking water distributed around the city, and there's drainage channels connecting to most buildings, meaning that lots of people could probably have used toilets in their home, potentially sending the waste down these drainage channels far away from their homes. It's even been argued by some historians that this kind of widespread sanitation plumbing wasn't seen again in major cities until the 1890s in Victorian Britain.
11:17 Speaker 05 Wow, okay. What, like, water would be directed in channels and then that would take everything away?
11:23 Speaker 04 Yeah, that's the speculation, that you could have used the toilet in your house and then, you know, maybe with a pot of water or something, flushed the waste.
11:31 Greg Jenner? Already, I'm impressed by the Indus. I mean, the scale of the city, we're talking 4,000 years ago at least. The same time in history, we have ancient Egypt, we have ancient Mesopotamia. So is there interconnectivity, not just between the Indus cities, but also outside of their empire, to use a modern word?
11:48 Speaker 04 Yeah, absolutely. Evidence really does demonstrate trade between the Indus and neighboring cultures in the Arabian Gulf, in Western Central Asia, and in Peninsular India. Archaeologists have found objects like beads of Carnelian from Gujarat and lapis lazuli from Afghanistan in Mesopotamia, demonstrating contact between the cultures. And additionally, from 2400 to 2000 B.C., records from Mesopotamia testify to trade with a place called Meluha, which archaeologists think may have been the Indus civilization.
12:18 Greg Jenner? Meluha? That's nice. So there's a lot of animal imagery, and yet, the Indus is sometimes dubbed the faceless civilization. Do you want to guess why?
12:28 Speaker 05 I am going to guess that it is because there is no sort of equivalent, like portraiture or anything like that. You know, you've got these things of animals, but you don't have it of people, the faces of people, at least.
12:39 Greg Jenner? That's a sensible guess, but I don't think that's quite right. So, Danical, why is faceless used as an adjective?
12:45 Speaker 04 Yeah, I don't know if I love it. I feel like it's a bit dehumanising. I think the answer's somewhere in between. We do have lots of representations of people. I think what's hard to know is whether they are actually representing individuals every time. The other thing is that these figurines, they teach us a lot about the Indus civilization and some of them have really beautiful details, I think, of daily life. Sometimes they do show smiling people, some of them show women nursing infants, things like that. Human figurines can help us read gender. Many of them are easy recognisable as male or female, whereas others suggest that they may have been a cultural practice for more than two genders. We can see them wearing things like headdresses or necklaces, robes, bangles, things like that. And sometimes they are naked as well. That's one of the things that helps us read gender.
13:30 Speaker 04 These things can teach us, you know, a lot about how people may have dressed and lived in daily life.
13:34 Speaker 05 Why are they called faceless then? They don't sound very faceless to me.
13:37 Speaker 04 Yes, thank you. Why are they called faceless?
13:40 Greg Jenner? We don't have the specificity of individual names and identities perhaps. But there are these two very famous figurines. One's called the Priest-King. He sounds fancy. And the other is called Dancing Girl. Feels like there's a bit more presumption there. But Danica, why are they called Dancing Girl and Priest-King? And do we think that's valid? And where are these figurines now?
13:59 Speaker 04 Well, it's definitely not valid, I would say. I mean, the names come from British archaeologists who are really speculating. The Priest-King was labelled because some archaeologists assumed that the Indus might be a theocracy due to a lack of evidence for military-based rule. And the Dancing Girl is based on an initial description that I think relied on colonial ideas of Indian dancers. It's kind of a sexualised, colonialised, orientalist idea, really. They are a bit unusual in the canon of Indus figurines as well. But the story of where they are now is also very interesting, I think. So both statues were found at Mohenjo Daro and ended up in New Delhi at the headquarters of the Archaeological Survey of India, also known as the ASI. When India became independent from British colonial rule in 1947, it was partitioned into India and Pakistan.
14:44 Speaker 04 Following partition, they became part of the collection of the National Museum of India, although the site of Mahendradar was then in Pakistan. And following the Shimla Agreement in 1972, the so-called Priest King was returned to Pakistan, but the dancing girl actually remained in New Delhi. So they were separated. And the two most famous symbols of the Indus civilization were separated by the border, much like the border now bisects the spread of the Indus civilization and separates all of those sites.
15:13 Greg Jenner? This sort of modern division, does that make your job as an archaeologist more difficult when you're trying to ascertain the truth of this civilization that spanned these contemporary boundaries?
15:27 Speaker 04 It definitely complicates things. I think one of the things that I find really sad is that I think it's probably easier for Western archaeologists to work in both India and Pakistan than it is for Indian and Pakistani archaeologists to work in the other countries. It would be nice if we could have like a lot more dialogue kind of in how we were interpreting new finds, how we were sharing that information. So I think there's a lot of very fraught arguments and lots of kind of claims of ownership about who the civilization belongs to and whose heritage it really is and things like that.
15:56 Greg Jenner? Yeah, I mean, history is political. We talked about the faceless civilization, which we then decided, no, that's not fair at all. I mean, Mahendradar means mound of the dead. That means presumably therefore there are dead, right? There must be human remains that archaeologists have excavated. What do we know about people through their remains?
16:13 Speaker 04 The thing is that there was were actually generally relatively scarce. And, you know, in over a century of excavation, we're talking hundreds rather than thousands that have been found.
16:21 Greg Jenner? But we have some bones and obviously archaeological, modern scientific techniques, they're quite exciting. Strontium analysis and isotopic analysis and that sort of thing. And you can figure out what people ate and so on. So. Wait, what? Oh, yes, I hear. Long after you've gone, I will know what you had for lunch.
16:39 Speaker 05 But this is the thing with doing like a show like this with people with very illustrious academic credentials and whatnot, where every so often, someone just like throws out a little thing. And as a layperson, I'm like, what? Hold on. You just you get to peek at my bones and you know what I've been eating. That's it. Like, don't just let that hang there. That's so cool.
17:01 Greg Jenner? In terms of the science available now, we can tell where people grew up from the the sort of soil quality and water quality, I think. There's all sorts of things, aren't there, Danica?
17:08 Speaker 04 Yeah, absolutely. For example, if, you know, we find your body in a location.
17:13 Speaker 05 This is very sinister. If we were to find your body in like an abandoned warehouse.
17:19 Speaker 04 Let me revise that. When I excavate your body, I can take one of your teeth and find out, for example, if you died at a different location from where you grew up.
17:30 Speaker 05 Wow.
17:30 Speaker 04 We can find a lot of information from your teeth, basically. So if you ever want to donate your teeth to science.
17:35 Speaker 05 Oh, my God. So like, you'd be able to tell my parents' skeletons would show that they were likely born in India.
17:41 Speaker 04 Yes, absolutely. We would be able to know that from your parents' skeletons. I'm sorry, I feel I feel rude for saying that. But yes, we would know that from their teeth.
17:49 Speaker 05 Wow.
17:50 Greg Jenner? What do we know about what people ate, then?
17:52 Speaker 04 Domestic animals are predominant in the zoo. Archaeology, buffalo or cattle account for over half of all animal bones. Sheep and goats account for around 10% and pigs around 2 or 3%.
18:03 Speaker 05 Right.
18:03 Speaker 04 So, you know, the numbers suggest very high beef consumption.
18:05 Speaker 05 And the other 38% are unicorns, or that's a...
18:10 Greg Jenner? It's just so tasty.
18:13 Greg Jenner? That's why they're extinct.
18:16 Speaker 04 We also know that, you know, from the maturity of domestic animals, they were probably exploiting other products like milk and cheese. And, you know, other variations of the diet as well, you know, wild animals like deer or hares, fish, mollusks, reptiles, birds, all kinds of things.
18:30 Greg Jenner? So it's a protein-rich diet. You can see why they need those toilets plumbed in. So what other non meaty foods were going into the lunchtime meals?
18:40 Speaker 04 Rice, millet, pulses, seeds and fruits. We know that people made use of winter and summer rainfall for agriculture. We do also have evidence for ingredients like ginger, turmeric, mango and aubergine.
18:51 Greg Jenner? Nice. We've also got a building called The Granary. Ahir, do you know what The Granary was for?
18:58 Speaker 05 This is going to be one of your annoying ones, where I say that it was, well, it was for storing grain. And you're like, no, it was a pub. The King's Head isn't where you store the King's Head. It's just a pub, isn't it? It's like, this is good. So I'm going to say that it's where they stored grain. And you're going to be like, no, it was really, it was like a coffee shop come art gallery. Like it's a.
19:19 Greg Jenner? You're on to us. The Granary was not a granary? Danica, what? How come?
19:24 Speaker 04 I had figured it out. It was a gentrified pub. Now, well, sadly, you know, there's a building at Harappa that we call The Granary, but we don't actually know that. It may have been a public building where officials met, or it may have had a ritual function. And, you know, some people also call it the Great Hall now. But names like The Granary at Harappa and the College of Priests at Mohenjadaro have been given by 20th century archaeologists. And they aren't necessarily based on the evidence. A lot of these buildings, we can't identify definitively what they would have been used for. None of the monumental buildings at Harappa and Mohenjadaro have been definitively identified as temples or palaces.
20:02 Speaker 01 Cheers to fall savings at Whole Foods Market, home of higher ingredient standards. This Halloween, share chocolates and candies made without that spooky high fructose corn syrup. Throwing a party? Make it easy with a berry chantilly cake. Ready to cook pizza? No antibiotics ever chicken wings and sushi made fresh daily. Fall gatherings never tasted better. Save through November 3rd at Whole Foods Market.
20:29 Speaker 06 Sometimes we all need an extra helping hand, especially with a tricky business problem you've been putting off. Claude is an AI for just that. It's a collaborator that understands your entire workflow and thinks with you, not for you. And Claude isn't just for quick questions. Hand it a whole task like turning a folder of scattered notes into a report, and it does the work and hands back something finished that you can open and edit. Claude can now draft a doc or deck right in front of you, and Claude Design now lives right inside Claude. Describe the website or prototype you're picturing, attach your design system, and it comes back in your own design language, ready to edit right on the canvas. It works with your files and the tools you already use, like Gmail and Slack.
21:12 Speaker 06 And whether you're debugging code at midnight, building a financial model, or strategizing your next business move, Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter. For problems worth solving, get started with Claude at claude.ai/solve. That's claude.ai/solve. And check out Claude Pro, which includes access to all of the features mentioned in today's episode. Claude.ai/solve.
21:39 Speaker 07 Hello?
21:40 Speaker 08 Hey, it's me, your wallet.
21:42 Speaker 07 Oh, hey.
21:43 Speaker 08 I was just wondering if we could maybe take it easy this week?
21:47 Speaker 07 Absolutely.
21:47 Speaker 08 Really?
21:48 Speaker 07 Yep. I'm shopping at Food Lion.
21:50 Speaker 08 Wait, you mean low prices?
21:52 Speaker 07 And MVP savings.
21:54 Speaker 08 Oh, you do care.
21:55 Speaker 07 Obviously.
21:56 Speaker 08 Okay, I feel better.
21:57 Speaker 07 Good. Now, let's go get some snacks.
22:01 Speaker 09 At Food Lion, low prices and MVP savings make it easier to shop for what you need without spending more than you have to. When your wallet needs a little TLC, head to your local Food Lion or shop at foodlion.com.
22:18 Greg Jenner? Do we have any evidence of powerful people, an aristocracy at least? Is this a socialist utopia? What's happening here?
22:24 Speaker 04 A lot of people have speculated that it was a peaceful society, that it was a socialist utopia, that it wasn't very differentiated. The answer is a bit more complicated.
22:32 Greg Jenner? Oh, damn it.
22:33 Speaker 04 I know, I know. This is why you shouldn't have brought me on the show. But the problem is that we don't have evidence for things like warfare and a ruling class on the same scale as we see in other contemporaneous societies. We don't have a huge amount of weaponry, we don't have obvious palaces or lavish burials or huge statues. But we do have other evidence. So studies on burials, for example, including an ossuary outside the city wall at Harappa, have argued for social stratification.
23:01 Speaker 05 What does that word mean? Sorry, an ossuary?
23:03 Greg Jenner? A bonehouse.
23:04 Speaker 04 Yes, thank you. That's the best way of putting it.
23:06 Speaker 05 Bonehouse sounds very different.
23:10 Speaker 04 What's a tasteful way of describing this?
23:14 Speaker 05 A granary but for bones.
23:15 Speaker 04 Thank you, yes, exactly.
23:17 Greg Jenner? A bonery, yeah. It's where you store bones after people have died, but they sort of all get put together.
23:25 Speaker 05 Right.
23:25 Greg Jenner? Okay, but in terms of evidence of stratification, there might be evidence of rich and poor, right?
23:30 Speaker 04 Yes, I mean, skeletal analyses and studies on the ossuary and other cemeteries have shown that certain groups were more at risk of both structural violence and disease. Skeletons also show evidence for interpersonal violence through things like head injuries and broken noses. And additionally, buildings and daily material culture were made of a variety of materials that probably showed things like status and economic differences. We don't know for certain if it's a theocracy, if people are in charge, if it's kind of competing groups. But it doesn't look like a centralized, single ruler or something. We do know that there is status, there's differences, groups in society that are treated maybe a bit worse.
24:13 Greg Jenner? The Indus civilization, one of the big questions is, why does it end? And it ends about 4,000 years ago. And I'll hear, we've got a mini quiz for you here, so I've got four options. Which of these four has not been suggested as a reason for the end of the Indus civilization?
24:28 Speaker 05 Not been suggested, got it.
24:29 Greg Jenner? Not suggested. So first one, so invasion and military destruction. The second would be environmental damage and climate change.
24:37 Greg Jenner? The third will be a meteor impact and the fourth would be increased population leading to resource exhaustion. Which of those do you not think has been suggested as a reason by archaeologists?
24:46 Speaker 05 So I think that meteor is one of these tricky ones that you will put, and there is evidence of there being a meteor somewhere near at the time, but because, as we said, like, there are no evidence of, like, grand battles or something like that, I'm going to say that inexplicably no one suggested war.
25:07 Greg Jenner? I like your answer. I prefer it to the actual answer. The actual answer is meteor because I made that up.
25:11 Speaker 05 It's a double trick.
25:12 Greg Jenner? A double, double, double, yeah. But Danica, these are all reasons that have been given. Do we have any sense of which of them might be more true? Or are they all equally true? How are we making these assumptions?
25:23 Speaker 04 Yes, no meteor. But what we do know is it's a slow process of decline or kind of a transition. All of the urban centres had reduced or been abandoned by the 1900s PC. Previous scholars kind of did wonder if Indiarian invaders were responsible, but we don't have any evidence for this theory. There is some evidence that violence did increase immediately following the urban phase. And the decline of cities was also paralleled by a rise in diseases like leprosy and tuberculosis. Now, the reasons why it happened, I mean, it could have been rivers shifting, but it's been difficult and, you know, kind of tricky for archaeologists to date when this happened. But it could also have been, you know, drying of lakes, aridification, climate events. Short answer, we are still figuring it out.
26:03 Speaker 05 It's gonna turn out it was a meteor.
26:07 Speaker 05 And then you're gonna feel really silly, Greg.
26:10 Greg Jenner? It was the revenge of the dinosaurs. The meteor took them out. They came back and went, right, we're having a vengeance on the Indus.
26:15 Speaker 04 You said vengeance. Did you imagine there was a dinosaur in this, like, long epic feud?
26:21 Speaker 05 Clearly you've not read my fanfic.
26:25 Greg Jenner? Danica, what does happen to the sites in the 1920s? Are they excavated? Who's excavating them? What is that process then?
26:31 Speaker 04 Yes, so you know, they're excavating these sites in the 1920s. We make all of these kind of incredible discoveries. And in some ways, actually connecting the Indus to what's happening in the broader Bronze Age is how we actually find out how old it is because the material culture is published in the UK. And archaeologists who are working in in West Asia see that and connect it to what's happening in Mesopotamia. And that's when suddenly people realise how old it is. But it doesn't have the same allure on popular imagination. In some ways, actually, I think the archaeologists who excavated it even sometimes did it a disservice. So John Marshall, who was the Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India, I don't want to misquote him, but as far as I remember, he said something like, "It was as dull and orderly as a Lancashire mining town."
27:17 Speaker 04 Bonus for some reason, burn on Lancashire, I don't know why, but you know, kind of element of classism there, but also not maybe himself seeing it as exciting as it could have been.
27:28 Speaker 05 That's baffling to me because you could say, "It's as dull and orderly as a Lancashire mining town." Or you'd say, "This is as dull and orderly as a Lancashire mining town, and it's four and a half thousand years old." That's an exciting thing. All of the things that thrill me the most when we see these pictures or like hear about these histories is not the differences. It's the fact that you'd essentially flush your loo and then go to the local swimming baths. And the fact that we can all fit our lives in a world that feels so removed in so many ways into the experience of these people, the mundanity of it is what's breathtaking.
28:08 Greg Jenner? The Nuance Window!
28:15 Greg Jenner? This is where Aheer and I put down our trowels and we listen to Danica for two uninterrupted minutes while she tells us something we need to know. So my stopwatch is ready and if you are ready, Dr. Danica, please take it away.
28:28 Speaker 04 So the Indus civilization has been discussed as having been discovered by British explorers and archaeologists, but this sort of narrative discounts whatever local knowledge there was of these sites before. So Eurocentric idea that bestows legitimacy from a moment of discovery that has to be validated by Western scholarship. Now, to be very clear, it did take archaeologists to kind of figure out the extent and age of the Indus civilization and to link Mohenjo Daro and Harappa and then, of course, all of these other sites. But Indian archaeologists were also a really important part of this story. Now, the first excavations at Mohenjo Daro were actually begun by the Bengali archaeologist Rakhaldas Banerjee. So one of the difficulties, I think, with studying the archaeology of the Indus civilization is that many colonial or Orientalist ideas have persisted and proved
29:13 Speaker 04 extremely frustratingly difficult to shift in both in academia and in popular culture. The Indus has been characterized for a long time as homogeneous, mundane, unchanging over time. It was kind of a reflection of this Orientalist idea of the unchanging East. And even the names given to the priest king and the dancing girl reflect European ideas of Indian society. And I find it hugely frustrating that a sexist term like dancing girl has persisted for so long. Now, it's really important for us to think about where our ideas come from, if we engage with archaeology, whether we're professional archaeologists, whether we're volunteers, whether we're podcast listeners. What we need to do is think about where these ideas have come from. And sometimes we need to recognize a lot of these early
29:55 Speaker 04 theories were speculation born from people's personal worldviews and maybe just let go of them. Because a lot of misinterpretation has come from comparisons to Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt, where it's kind of seen as falling short somehow. Or also, you know, comparisons with later periods in India where people project social and religious ideas onto the Indus civilization that just aren't supported by the data. What we need to do is kind of let go of the theories that aren't working, understand that archaeological knowledge keeps growing and changing, and absorb all of this incredible new information that's coming out. The best part for all of us is that 4,000 years later, we keep finding new things to say about this very, very fascinating society.
30:36 Greg Jenner? All right. Well, thank you so much, Aheer. Thank you so much, Dr. Dr Danica, and listener, if you want to explore more ancient archaeological mysteries, then why not listen to our episodes on China's terracotta army or Stone Age Shattel Huyuk in Turkey? Or if South Asian history is your thing, then check out our episode on the Mughal Empire. You'll find them all and more on BBC Sounds. And remember, if you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review, share the show with friends, subscribe to You're Dead to Me on BBC Sounds so you never miss an episode. But it's now time for me to say a huge thank you to our guests. In history corner, we had the amazing Dr Danica Parrick from the University of Cambridge. Thank you, Danica.
31:08 Speaker 04 Oh, thank you for having me, Greg. I've had a lot of fun.
31:11 Greg Jenner? And in comedy corner, we had the awesome Aheer Shah. Thank you, Aheer. Absolutely my pleasure. It's always such a pleasure doing this. So interesting. Thank you. And to you lovely listener, join me next time as we dig up more fascinating historical nuggets. But for now, I'm off to go and record my archaeology-inspired heavy metal album, Mound of the Dead. Bye.
31:35 Speaker 10 From BBC Radio 4, this is What Seriously? I'm Dara O'Briain.
31:39 Speaker 11 And I'm Izzy Sutty. And in our new series, we're bringing you short stories and tall tales.
31:43 Speaker 10 What Seriously? It's packed with real-life, strange-but-true stories that make you go, what, seriously? And provide you with excellent social ammo to impress your friends.
31:51 Speaker 11 The twist is, we don't know how each story unfolds, and we'll have to figure it out one fragment at a time with our special guests, who each have a mysterious connection to the tale.
32:00 Greg Jenner? That's right. I am your spy expert.
32:02 Speaker 12 And I don't really want to bring you back to the real facts of the story, because you're making me laugh so much, but I feel like I should.
32:06 Speaker 05 We're the only country in the world that ate the animal on our crest, like, and I never know whether to feel terrible or brilliant about that.
32:12 Speaker 13 All these engineers trying desperately to reduce the amount of dust in space, and you get Izzy taking up the balloon full of place. Wow.
32:19 Speaker 14 You're welcome. Had that one in the house. All the stuff. I know, right? It's not going to be eaten from a sheep or something, but never.
32:27 Speaker 10 Join us for What Seriously? From BBC Radio 4. Available now on BBC Sounds.
32:39 Speaker 06 Sometimes we all need an extra help in hand, especially with the tricky business problem you've been putting off. Claude is an AI for just that. It's the collaborator that understands your entire workflow and thinks with you, not for you. And Claude isn't just for quick questions. Hand it a whole task like turning a folder of scattered notes into a report, and it does the work and hands back something finished that you can open and edit. Claude can now draft a doc or deck right in front of you, and Claude Design now lives right inside Claude. Describe the website or prototype you're picturing, attach your design system, and it comes back in your own design language, ready to edit right on the canvas. It works with your files and the tools you already use, like Gmail and Slack.
33:23 Speaker 06 And whether you're debugging code at midnight, building a financial model, or strategising your next business move, Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter. For problems worth solving, get started with Claude at claude.ai/solve. That's claude.ai/solve. And check out Claude Pro, which includes access to all of the features mentioned in today's episode. claude.ai/solve.
33:48 Speaker 15 It's the film that convinced Americans the Second World War was worth fighting.
33:53 Speaker 16 A reason to be in Hollywood that is really quite a terrifying situation.
33:58 Speaker 15 And its production is an extraordinary story in itself. Ronald Reagan had been named as the potential lead. Join me, Misha Glenning, and three expert guests for a special live edition of In Our Time, where we discuss Casablanca. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
Previous Georgian Courtship (Radio Edit) Next Aristotle (Radio Edit) Page updated November 3, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated