KOJI KAMIYA, Nikkei staff writer

TOKYO — A five-year study by a Japanese research team could change the accepted view of the ancient Indus Valley civilization.

The study found that thousands of years ago, several cities in the Indus Valley, in what is today Pakistan and India, created a trade network that became a multicultural, multilingual civilization, and not a society founded on centralized authoritarian rule as previously believed. Many characteristics of this ancient civilization can be seen today in societies of southern Asia, and these links between the ancient and the modern are arousing researchers’ interest.

The fresh image of the Indus civilization is being painted by a team of researchers led by Professor Emeritus Toshiki Osada of the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, which is based in Kyoto. The results of five years of research, known as the Indus Project, were published in October by the Kyoto University Press as “Indus: Exploring the Fundamental World of South Asia” and “The Riddle of the Indus Civilization,” both compiled by Osada.

Read more » NIKKEI ASIAN REVIEW 
See more » http://asia.nikkei.com/magazine/20131219-Power-play/Culture/Japanese-researchers-help-unravel-mystery-of-the-Indus-civilization.