It is not known whether contact with Mesopotamia inspires the first civilization of India or whether it is a spontaneous local development, but by about 2500 BC the neolithic villages along the banks of the Indus are on the verge of combining into a unified and sophisticated culture. The Indus civilization, with its two large cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, expands over a larger region than Egypt and Mesopotamia combined. It will survive, in a remarkably consistent form, for about 1000 years.

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