Indus Valley Religion
INDUS VALLEY RELIGION is the goddess-centered religious system of the urban civilization that emerged in the Indus Valley of western India around 2500 BCE and declined into a series of successor posturban village cultures after 1750 BCE. The antecedents of this religion lie in the village cultures of Baluchistan and Afghanistan, which were part of a larger regional cultural system in western Asia that also included the village cultures of southern Turkmenistan and the Elamite culture of southwestern Iran. Common religious patterns within this larger region continued into the early stages of urbanization in Elam, Turkmenistan, and the Indus Valley, after which the unification of the local regions and subsequent historical changes led to separation: Elam was drawn into the orbit of Sumerian and Akkadian culture; Turkmenistan was settled by new groups from the northern steppes; and Indus settlement shifted eastward into the Ganges-Yamuna Valley in the North and Gujarat and the Deccan Plateau in the South as the original cities in the Indus Valley were abandoned. After the entry of Aryan tribes into northern India around 1500 BCE, the continuity of Indus Valley religion is found mainly in the Dravidian cultures of South India, although various elements were also preserved in the village cultures of North India and in the synthesis of Aryan and non-Aryan cultures that marked late Vedic and post-Vedic developments in the Ganges-Yamuna Valley.
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