Buy this book on Amazon: A Short History of the World
Beyond Egypt and Mesopotamia, two other major independent civilisations arose along other waterways – one in north-west India along the Indus River, crossing into present-day Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the other along the Yellow River in China.
Founded around the turn of the third millennium, the Indus Valley Civilisation – often referred to at its peak as the Harappan Civilisation after its major city of Harappa – covered a huge area of land almost the size of western Europe. Although a number of unanswered questions still remain about this society, partly due to the fact that its writing has still not been deciphered, we do know that Harappa and its sister city, Mohenjo-Daro, were major conurbations, supporting populations of over 30,000 people and trading with each other as well as with Mesopotamia. Their people were clearly advanced as they lived in brick and stone houses, cultivated wheat and barley, and irrigated fields. Moreover, both cities were laid out in grids and similarly constructed, thus suggesting a unified government.
While this civilisation flourished between 2600 and 2000 BC, the major cities were suddenly abandoned between 1700–1600 BC, with the entire civilisation ceasing to exist by around 1300 BC. Although nobody is sure what the exact causes for this were, suggestions range from climate change, erosion of the soil that pushed its people further east, and invasion by Indo-Europeans10 from the north-west.
Further east, the earliest dynasty for which we have written evidence is the Bronze Age Shang Dynasty, which established a kingdom along the banks of the Yellow River around 1700 BC. The Shang Dynasty covered an area of approximately one-tenth of modern-day China and lasted for roughly 700 years until it was overthrown by the Chou (or Zhou) Dynasty, which saw China move into the Iron Age.
Notwithstanding a few barbarian interruptions, the Chous retained power for a similar length of time. Yet for most of this time, the area consisted of over a hundred quasi-independent principalities, of which the Chous were only the most powerful. However, unlike the Harappan Civilisation in India that suddenly disappeared, the beliefs and rule of the early Chinese dynasties formed the foundations on which successive dynasties would rule the region until well into the 20th century.