20　The Other Side of the World：India

India is a country east of Persia. The people who live there are called Indians.The Indians,of course,are entirely different from Native Americans who were called Indians when early explorers believed they had reached India or the East Indies.

You may remember that India was one of the very early civilizations that grew up along a river valley. Do you remember the name of the river—Here's a hint.It sounds like India.Did you remember?It's the Indus River.

India is a very old country. Its modern neighbor,Pakistan,used to be part of India,too.Long,long ago—about 2500 B.C.—the people living along the Indus River,in what is now India and Pakistan,sailed up and down the river to trade with each other.They invented a system of writing to keep their records.They built large cities with wide,straight streets.Their houses even had bathrooms with drains that were connected to a city sewer system.Did you think that modern people were the only ones to have sewer systems?If you did,you were wrong.You can see that ancient Indians thought up this healthy system long before we did.

About a thousand years after the ancient Indians built their first cities along the Indus