ABSTRACT
Traditional reconstructions of the Indus Valley civilization have always attempted to explain its enigmatic remains by reference to historically recorded features of ancient Sumer or Egypt. The environmental setting of Sumer, of course, differed from that occupied by the misnamed, spatially extensive "Indus Valley" civilization. The exact function of the Great Bath and associated complex at Mohenjo-daro remains an enigma, and nothing structurally similar or perhaps functionally identical to the temples and palaces of Mesopotamia has been uncovered on Indus sites, save possibly for the partially excavated Assembly or Pillared Hall situated south of the Great Bath. Irrigation-dependent societies in Central Asia and the Indus Valley demand an analogous, though not identical, explanation. The evolution of the Indus Valley civilization must be explained historically, that is, by reference to those larger processes of change and technological development that all interacting societies of West Asia were experiencing in the latter half of the third millennium B.C.
