> The study also raises broader questions about how early cities functioned. Archaeologists often link urban growth with centralized political power and rising social divisions. Mohenjo-daro points toward another model, one where collective governance and public investment shaped the city’s long-term stability.
Fascinating. I hope that discoveries like this increase the interest of the public in investing in historical research... so much of our theory of the world is shaped by a narrow focus on the history of areas that were easier (relatively) to study.
"Trade practices show a similar pattern. Indus seals, used for business and administration, turned up in common homes across the city. Archaeologists did not find evidence showing rulers controlled access to these objects. Standardized weights and measures spread throughout the region as well, helping create consistent trade practices."
I've done a lot of reading on this particular subject and I think the "stateless utopia" conclusion so many researchers seem to be fishing for (Graeber etc) is more nonsensical than they let on. They didn't have monumental temples or palaces, that seems to be it.
Yet there is tons of documentary evidence "Meluhha" was engaged in a pretty sophisticated scale of commodity production (artisanal carnelian beads) and export trade with Dilmun and Sumer. Their standardized weight system was used for this trade, and they're found elsewhere in large numbers as the article says. They even had expats living in Sumer who were noted as translators (of the Indus valley seals??) This trade is where a lot of their obvious wealth probably came from, since they'd have copious silver revenue from Dilmun.
"Archaeologists did not find evidence showing rulers controlled access to these objects."
Like really, think about it. These weights were very precise. And they had to be, because "weight" was basically equivalent to "money." So there had to be a standard, and that standard had to be enforced when the weights were produced. And the weights had to remain trustworthy as they were distributed elsewhere for use in the trade. Someone was obviously "in charge" lol
I don't think use of consistent weights and measures implies someone being in charge of those weights and measures.
I also don't think someone being in charge of weights and measures implies that same person/group being in charge of anything else.
The latter feels fairly obvious, for the former I imagine some generally agreed upon method for creating new weights and measures given some existing ones for calibration plus some base level of suspicion of new craftsmen/merchants until they are proven trustworthy by a subset of the existing trustworthy people who have their own weights/measures would do.
Also, as pointed out elsewhere in this thread anyone buying large amounts of whatever you're selling is going to have their own set of weights and measures, so your avenues for stiffing people without getting caught are pretty narrow.
Most of the people selling LNG for instance, do not have any control over the definition of a "cubic meter". Even so, none of them cheat, because the US for example, very much does have its own definition of a cubic meter and it isn't going to pay you a penny more, nor a penny less, than what that cubic meter is worth.
All that to say, you could probably try to cheat the system, but I'd imagine the people in Sumer and Akkad had what they considered to be a precise unit of weight with which to measure your delivery. It doesn't matter what someone in Mohenjo-daro said, you were only going to get a certain amount in trade for your freight in Sumer. So I could see a centralized authority for weights, (the customer), at the same time as having no one in charge of that unit of weight in Mohenjo-daro.
I could see people agreeing to it essentially because that's all you're getting paid for. Because I saw the same behavior long ago at work with Halliburton.
> Like really, think about it. These weights were very precise. And they had to be, because "weight" was basically equivalent to "money." So there had to be a standard, and that standard had to be enforced when the weights were produced. And the weights had to remain trustworthy as they were distributed elsewhere for use in the trade. Someone was obviously "in charge" lol
I disagree. You seem to imply that the standards existing means there must be a State? Or are you saying, literally, at one point someone said the weight of a thing is this, and people agreed? The latter is a MUCH softer point and completely compatible with the anarchism that Graeber describes.
What's the connection between the IETF and the State? No State mandates that everyone uses TCP/IP, every ISP, device maker etc just follows the standard because that's the consensus. It's self enforcing - you don't get to participate if you don't interop. Doesn't that make IETF in charge? What if the IETF suddenly came out as a Nazi organization and released RFCs with white supremacist words inserted absurdly into standards as requirements? Do you think consensus would just go along with what they said? No? That's the difference between consensus and what you seem to be implying by someone "Being in Charge."
Another good example of this is language itself. Everyone speaks the same language, but nobody's actually in charge of what goes into it or how it's spoken.
It's exactly the opposite. With languages/standards, both parties has incentives to have mutual understanding so they don't need anyone else to enforce symbol equality. But with these weights, or money in general, there's huge incentive to deceive each other, so someone has to enforce the equality. That someone can be the parties themselves, but if one party lack the ability, it necessitated the creation of third-party enforcer, which can grow to be a state.
Even then, with languages, whenever there's incentive to deceive it also immediately unravels. See: exaggeration, and necessity to create whole new language of legalese for contracts.
This could also be a story of technological progress. A thought experiment - imagine you, an archaeologist, recovered the remains of our civilization, from roughly 1925 to 2025, but the only surviving artifact was televisions. You know that televisions are valuable - initially only wealthy families had them - so you used them as a proxy for riches and plotted the Gini coefficient using just the size, quality, resolution, color depth, etc. You could conclude that our society became less unequal over that period, because you miss that technology dramatically compressed the distribution of this resource and that household wealth was freed up to put to other purposes.
If we had supporting documentation supporting "initially only wealthy families had them" why would we not also have supporting documentation supporting "eventually average families had them?"
Seems like the entire "initially" premise kind of indicates the change, no?
It's a pleasant finding but not surprising. In all the excavations done over time in indus valley, they never found any weapons or any signs of war. I have this book with pretty cool illustrations if anyone wants a light read on this topic -
thank you so much for this recommendation. I've been interested in this topic for a while; while I was looking for something a bit more substantial, I do love it when authors explain history in different ways! My original introduction to history was through the Amar Chitra Katha series; ever since I've always had an interest in learning history.
also:
>the material record offers indirect evidence for distributed authority. Indus seals, small stone stamps that likely facilitated exchange and credit, were found primarily in private residences at Mohenjo-daro rather than in temples or central administrative buildings.
Speculative, of course. But cool data & approach. And it doesn't have to prove anything, except that it's plausible there are other ways to structure societies, that can have different results.
Entire civilization flourished for 2000 years and then disappeared without any clue why.
I have a pet theory about Indus Valley script - inscriptions on the seals are so short and unique because they are just name signatures, to stamp other objects.
Having to be durable, they were the only inscribed objects that survived.
The irony that one of the most equal and seemingly non-violent ancient civilizations turned into one of the most unequal modern ones teetering on the brink of nuclear war, is real even if it makes people uncomfortable.
Modern Indians and Pakistanis are the direct genetic heirs of the IVC. Genetics isn't everything, but it's an indicator that the populations have remained extremely stable (no large scale migrations) while the culture shifted under them.
> Genetics isn't everything, but it's an indicator that the populations have remained extremely stable (no large scale migrations) while the culture shifted under them.
This is why your comment is weird. You seem to be leaning on genetics a lot, when in aggregate, genetics are less than a rounding error for human behavior. Take a random human with random genes and drop them at childhood into another culture, and outside of that culture's reactions to them perhaps looking a bit different than the other kids, that person will grow up identifying with that culture.
But by late Friday night, as both sides escalated the conflict, it was made clear to the Trump administration that leaving the two nuclear armed countries to their own devices posed a danger not just to the region but to the world – and that the only third party mediator acceptable to both sides was the US, as it has historically been over decades. In particular, the US began to fear the escalation towards a nuclear threat was becoming a very real possibility.
That's from The Guardian in 2025, hardly the most pro-Trump source.
Put away your tears. Amidst all the chaos India is doing remarkably well. If it can maintain its current growth rate for another 15-20 years it’s going to be a behemoth. They’ve been able to keep it going for 10-12 years so far so no reason to think that might not happen.
The amount of infrastructure being built right now is incredible. Thousands of miles of roads and railways per year, hundreds of new airports, many terawatthours of new energy generation, lots of skyscrapers, large scale urban metros, a dozen new planned cities, hundreds of millions of people worth of poverty alleviation, free healthcare for a large part of the population, rapidly growing GDP, a dying caste system in urban areas, women emancipation, dams, huge megaprojects, the beginnings of semiconductor manufacturing, rare earth mining, military exports etc. There are a lot of wins, it’s going to take time.
Where do you live? The city I live in was connected to the next city via a two lane road. Now it's a 6 lane expressway way with service roads on either side.
The infrastructure between cities, including roads and airports has been drastically improved in the last ten years.
The cities themselves are not improving at the same pace. Corruption, especially in the money making states like MH and KA, is still rampant.
Fascinating. I hope that discoveries like this increase the interest of the public in investing in historical research... so much of our theory of the world is shaped by a narrow focus on the history of areas that were easier (relatively) to study.
I've done a lot of reading on this particular subject and I think the "stateless utopia" conclusion so many researchers seem to be fishing for (Graeber etc) is more nonsensical than they let on. They didn't have monumental temples or palaces, that seems to be it.
Yet there is tons of documentary evidence "Meluhha" was engaged in a pretty sophisticated scale of commodity production (artisanal carnelian beads) and export trade with Dilmun and Sumer. Their standardized weight system was used for this trade, and they're found elsewhere in large numbers as the article says. They even had expats living in Sumer who were noted as translators (of the Indus valley seals??) This trade is where a lot of their obvious wealth probably came from, since they'd have copious silver revenue from Dilmun.
"Archaeologists did not find evidence showing rulers controlled access to these objects."
Like really, think about it. These weights were very precise. And they had to be, because "weight" was basically equivalent to "money." So there had to be a standard, and that standard had to be enforced when the weights were produced. And the weights had to remain trustworthy as they were distributed elsewhere for use in the trade. Someone was obviously "in charge" lol
I also don't think someone being in charge of weights and measures implies that same person/group being in charge of anything else.
The latter feels fairly obvious, for the former I imagine some generally agreed upon method for creating new weights and measures given some existing ones for calibration plus some base level of suspicion of new craftsmen/merchants until they are proven trustworthy by a subset of the existing trustworthy people who have their own weights/measures would do.
Also, as pointed out elsewhere in this thread anyone buying large amounts of whatever you're selling is going to have their own set of weights and measures, so your avenues for stiffing people without getting caught are pretty narrow.
B: Someone was obviously "in charge" lol
B can imply A, but A does not imply B.
Most of the people selling LNG for instance, do not have any control over the definition of a "cubic meter". Even so, none of them cheat, because the US for example, very much does have its own definition of a cubic meter and it isn't going to pay you a penny more, nor a penny less, than what that cubic meter is worth.
All that to say, you could probably try to cheat the system, but I'd imagine the people in Sumer and Akkad had what they considered to be a precise unit of weight with which to measure your delivery. It doesn't matter what someone in Mohenjo-daro said, you were only going to get a certain amount in trade for your freight in Sumer. So I could see a centralized authority for weights, (the customer), at the same time as having no one in charge of that unit of weight in Mohenjo-daro.
I could see people agreeing to it essentially because that's all you're getting paid for. Because I saw the same behavior long ago at work with Halliburton.
I disagree. You seem to imply that the standards existing means there must be a State? Or are you saying, literally, at one point someone said the weight of a thing is this, and people agreed? The latter is a MUCH softer point and completely compatible with the anarchism that Graeber describes.
What's the connection between the IETF and the State? No State mandates that everyone uses TCP/IP, every ISP, device maker etc just follows the standard because that's the consensus. It's self enforcing - you don't get to participate if you don't interop. Doesn't that make IETF in charge? What if the IETF suddenly came out as a Nazi organization and released RFCs with white supremacist words inserted absurdly into standards as requirements? Do you think consensus would just go along with what they said? No? That's the difference between consensus and what you seem to be implying by someone "Being in Charge."
Another good example of this is language itself. Everyone speaks the same language, but nobody's actually in charge of what goes into it or how it's spoken.
Even then, with languages, whenever there's incentive to deceive it also immediately unravels. See: exaggeration, and necessity to create whole new language of legalese for contracts.
Seems like the entire "initially" premise kind of indicates the change, no?
In case you haven't heard of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything
https://www.amazon.com/dp/014345532X?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_...
I am not related to the author in anyway. i heard about this book on a podcast and bought it.
also: >the material record offers indirect evidence for distributed authority. Indus seals, small stone stamps that likely facilitated exchange and credit, were found primarily in private residences at Mohenjo-daro rather than in temples or central administrative buildings.
Speculative, of course. But cool data & approach. And it doesn't have to prove anything, except that it's plausible there are other ways to structure societies, that can have different results.
I have a pet theory about Indus Valley script - inscriptions on the seals are so short and unique because they are just name signatures, to stamp other objects.
Having to be durable, they were the only inscribed objects that survived.
Modern Indians and Pakistanis are the direct genetic heirs of the IVC. Genetics isn't everything, but it's an indicator that the populations have remained extremely stable (no large scale migrations) while the culture shifted under them.
This is why your comment is weird. You seem to be leaning on genetics a lot, when in aggregate, genetics are less than a rounding error for human behavior. Take a random human with random genes and drop them at childhood into another culture, and outside of that culture's reactions to them perhaps looking a bit different than the other kids, that person will grow up identifying with that culture.
Sorry to be rude, but what exactly are you smoking?
But by late Friday night, as both sides escalated the conflict, it was made clear to the Trump administration that leaving the two nuclear armed countries to their own devices posed a danger not just to the region but to the world – and that the only third party mediator acceptable to both sides was the US, as it has historically been over decades. In particular, the US began to fear the escalation towards a nuclear threat was becoming a very real possibility.
That's from The Guardian in 2025, hardly the most pro-Trump source.
The amount of infrastructure being built right now is incredible. Thousands of miles of roads and railways per year, hundreds of new airports, many terawatthours of new energy generation, lots of skyscrapers, large scale urban metros, a dozen new planned cities, hundreds of millions of people worth of poverty alleviation, free healthcare for a large part of the population, rapidly growing GDP, a dying caste system in urban areas, women emancipation, dams, huge megaprojects, the beginnings of semiconductor manufacturing, rare earth mining, military exports etc. There are a lot of wins, it’s going to take time.
A lot of the work going on currently (rail electrification, dedicated freight corridors, highways, deep water ports, etc) will pay off in the future.
The infrastructure between cities, including roads and airports has been drastically improved in the last ten years.
The cities themselves are not improving at the same pace. Corruption, especially in the money making states like MH and KA, is still rampant.