State three urban features of the Indus cities.2.

The Indus/Harappan civilization (c. 2600–1900 BC): one of the world's first urban civilizations — Harappa and Mohenjo-daro (now Pakistan), plus a thousand settlements across the Indus system (and outposts toward the Ghaggar; trade links to Mesopotamia):• The cities' signature: grid planning, baked-brick standardisation, covered drainage (unique in the ancient world), the Great Bath (ritual), granaries, weights standardised in binary series;• The state's puzzle: no palace, no monumental royal tombs, writing still undeciphered — a civilization of merchants and civic order rather than god-kings (or one whose rulers are invisible to us);• Decline: climate change, river shifts, trade collapse — the cities emptied by c. 1900 BC; the Aryan (Indo-Aryan) migrations into the northwest follow — a population and language transition, not (in the current view) a single invasion.The Early Vedic period (c. 1500–1000 BC): pastoral tribes in the Punjab — the Rigveda's world: cattle as wealth (gomat, war for cows), tribal chief (raja — first among equals, no tax apparatus), the assemblies sabha and samiti (council and gathering — the clan's voice, including women's presence in ritual); gods of sky and fire (Indra, Agni); a comparatively open society — varna present as functional classes (priest/warrior/commoner) but not yet rigid birth-castes.The Later Vedic period (c. 1000–600 BC): eastward into the Ganga plain; iron, rice, and settled kingdoms (the mahajanapadas era approaching):…