ABSTRACT
M ore recent excavations have thrown Wheeler’s bold interpretation intodoubt, but many details of the Harappan civilization of South Asia, one of the world’s least known, came from his classic investigations
of a half century ago. The world’s earliest civilizations developed in the Nile valley and western Asia. Within fifteen centuries, Egypt, the eastern Mediterranean, Mesopotamia, and the Iranian highlands were linked in a loosely structured and ever-changing economic system. States rose and fell, rulers achieved supreme power only to see their domains collapse like a house of cards, and armies battled over strategic ports and control of vital materials, but the web of interconnectedness adjusted and remained intact. Soon the tentacles of these economic contacts extended far to the east, into southern Asia and far beyond.
