Some experts believe this reflected reli-
gious concern for ritual purity, rather
than hygiene.
Many of the artifacts from these
cities are remarkably well preserved,
and give us a fairly comprehensive pic-
ture of their material culture: what they
ate (wheat and barley were the primary
food grains), what they wore (cotton),
which animalsthey had domesticated
(cattle, fowl, goats, sheep, pigs, donkeys,
and dogs), and the implements of every-
day life.
Archeological excavations have also
found more than 2,000 small seals,
which are assumed to have served as the
insignia for mercantile families. Many of
the seals bear writing, although it has
never been deciphered, as well as realis-
tic pictures of animals and human
beings. Three of the seals display a
horned figure sitting with his upper legs
splayed and his heels touching one
another. Some viewers have cited the
figure on these seals as proof that the
Indus Valley culture is the ultimate
source for the god Shiva, a figure who
does not appear in the Vedas, the earli-
est Hindu religious texts, but who later
becomes one of the primary Hindu
deities. In the same way, recovery of sev-
eral statues of womenwith grossly exag-
gerated female characteristics—breasts,
buttocks, and genitalia—have prompted
others to claim that this culture was the
source for the later Hindu cult of the
Mother Goddess.
One of the controversies connected
with the Indus Valley culture is what
people were living there and whether
their descendants still live in India. The
generally accepted theory among Western
scholars describes a period of contact
between the people in these cities and aIndus Valley CivilizationRuins in Mohenjo-Daro. These structures are some of the earliest discovered evidence of the
Indus Valley civilization, a society believed to have emerged around 3000 B.C.E.