CBSE Questions for Class 8 General Knowledge Ancient Indian History Quiz 3 - MCQExams.com

• Lothal is a small Harappan settlement. it was excavated by SR Rao in 1957.
• In the excavation at lothal, he found a dockyard, a graveyard & rice husk
• In Dholavira - A signage was found on the ground with large letters of over 37 centimeters, the letters were made of gypsum, gypsum is used in making tiles
• In Bhagwanpura - The people used to live in huts and later they began to build walled houses, a house of thirteen rooms was found in bhagwanpura which possibly belonged to a chief.
• In Mohenjodaro - A bearded man was unearthed and the archaeologists called it priest-king. 
• The bearded man was wearing a ribbon with a circular ornament on his forehead and a similar ornament but of smaller size was found on his arm. 

• Farmers in indus valley civilization were the first to weave cotton textiles.
• Some of cotton textiles were unearthed in 1929 in mohemjodaro site which is now in pakistan.
• the indus civilization was highly developed & it was not bound by religious rule, it was a secular civilization.
• Sir John Marshall an archaeologist says that it was not a new civilization on indian soil, it was quite old & developed  

There have been pieces of evidence of the fact that Indus Valley people used to gamble and play the board game. Archaeologists have found dice made from cubes of sandstone and terracotta at Harappa. These dice are supposedly oldest dice in the world. 

The Indo Iranian group of Aryans settled in Iran and parts of northwestern India. Aryans came in hordes and first settled in northwestern India, from where they migrated gradually towards the Gangetic valley, northeastern India, and southern India.

The terracotta seals and figurines recovered from Harappan sites were of various range: Toys, cult objects such as Mother Goddess, birds, animals such as monkeys, dogs, sheep, humped and humpless bulls. Buffalos were conspicuous by its absence in the terracottas of Indus valley civilization.

The Harappan script which is also known as Indus script is a corpus of symbols produced by the Harappan people during the Kot Diji and Mature Harappan periods between 3500 and 1900 BCE. Though the script has not yet been deciphered, these symbols constituted a script used to record or symbolizes a writing system.

The term Neolithic is derived from the Greek neos – means “new” and lithos – means “stone”, which literally means “New Stone Age”. The term Neolithic was invented by Sir John Lubbock in 1865.

The New stone age was last part of the stone age, commenced with the beginning of farming and ended when the metal tools became widespread.

• Frequency of floods- Robert L. Raikes proposed this theory about the cause of decline of harappan civilization. Not much evidence is available regarding flooding theory besides slumping brick masonry found in some harappan sites.
• Foreign invasions- Sir Mortimer Wheeler proposed this Foreign invasion theory. Geological and archaeological proof of genocide and unburied  skeletal remains found in harappan sites like Mohenjo-Daro.
• Onset of the drought conditions- Change of course of Indus river would have caused water scarcity and have made many harappans to move out of harappan sites is one of the theory proposed for the decline of harappans. But, not enough evidences are given to accept this theory.
  

• Harappa was first excavated in 1920 and 1921 by the Archaeological Survey of India after its discovery in 1820.

• Rai Bahadur Daya Ram Sahni had led a team of archaeologists for harappan excavations.

• Archaeologists associated with Harappan excavations include Robert.L. Raikes, Mortimer Wheeler, George Dales, Richard Meadow, and J. Mark Kenoyer.

• The most important evidence of the achievements of this civilization have been excavated from Harappa.

Rakhaldas Banerji (1885 – 1930) was the Indian Historian who was a pioneer in the fields of Indian Archaeology. The principal site of Harappan Culture, Mohenjodaro was discovered by him. He was the one who noted the similarities between the sites at Mohenjodaro and Harappa.