Daily life in the Indus Valley

• It was very hot in the Indus Valley so people spent a lot of time outside.

• Most people had small homes which were also used as workshops.

• Richer families had courtyards. These were nice open spaces.

• People who did not have a courtyard would still have a flat roof.

• Families used them as an extra room. It was a cool place to sleep on a hot night and somewhere you could sit with friends.

• We don't know how many children went to school.

• A scribe would teach some children how to read and write and a priest would teach religious lessons.

• Even if they didn't go to school, most children worked hard.

• Children were taught how to make things, how to farm and how to hunt.

• Children could play in the courtyards of houses, and probably on the flat roofs too.

• Children might have played board games with counters and dice. Archaeologists have found cube dice with six sides and spots, just like the ones we use today.

Indus Valley traders did not use money, so they probably exchanged goods. They might swap two sacks of wheat for one basket of minerals.

• Archaeologists found flat pieces of stone with writing carved into them.

• These stones are seals. Over 3,500 have now been found!

• If you pressed the seal into soft clay, it left a copy of itself on the clay. When the clay dried hard, it could be used as a tag, which could then be tied to a pot or basket.

• Indus traders might have used seals like labels, to show who owned a sack of grain, or that the correct tax had been paid.

• Lots of seals have pictures of animals on them, including elephants, rhinoceros, tigers and fish-eating crocodiles.

Click around below to find out more about daily life in the Indus Valley.

Click below on these Indus people to find out about their jobs.