The Harappan civilization was in the Indus valley region in the area now known as Pakistan and India. The Transitional Harappan period was between 2600 BCE and 2500 BCE. During this period a large number of the settlements seemed to have been burned. It is not known what happened and other than the fires there is no evidence of violence. The settlements after that were built in new areas that had not been occupied before. This period is known as the Modern Harappan period and lasted from around 2500 BCE to around 1900 BCE. The archaeology in this period does not show differences between the elite and the common people as there are no palaces and no special burial sites. This period is also hard to know about because the writing of the time has not been deciphered. The language is hard to decipher because there is not large amount of writing known. Most of the writings are on stamps and consist of no more than around 6 characters at a time. One of the longest known writings is only 10 characters even though there are somewhere around 400-600 known characters in the language.

(The Great Courses – The Origin of Civilization)