History of Mohenjo-Daro

We always hear and listen many famous historical stories and many of them which we know and don’t know. History always keep their foot prints and Mohenjo-daro is one of them.   

 

The discovery of Mohenjo-daro led to tremendous excitement in the archaeological and historical worlds. Although the beginning of the Indus Valley Civilization  predated the founding of Mohenjo-daro, and thousands of villages and towns had been discovered throughout the region occupied by the Indus Valley people, Mohenjo-daro represented the largest, most sophisticated city discovered. As work with the archaeological dig progressed, archaeologists  believed that they had discovered the key city in the civilization, existing during the flowering of the Indus Valley Civilization from 2600 B.C.E. to 1700 B.C.E. Keys to the foundation of the world's religions that appeared in the region, including Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism, as well as the nations and empires that appeared later, lay within the unearthed city.

Mohenjo Daro, built around 2600, had been abandoned around 1700 B.C.E.. Sir John Marshall’s archaeologists rediscovered it in the 1920s. His car, still in the Mohenjo-daro museum, shows his presence, struggle, and dedication for Mohenjo-daro. Ahmad Hasan Dani and Mortimer Wheeler  carried out further excavations in 1945. Mohenjo-daro in ancient times had been most likely the administrative center of the ancient Indus Valley Civilization . The most developed and advanced city in South Asia during its peak, Mohenjo-daro's planning and engineering showed the importance of the city to the people of the Indus valley.

The Indus Valley Civilization  (c. 3300–1700 B.C.E., flowered 2600–1900 B.C.E.), abbreviated IVC, had been an ancient riverine civilization that flourished in the Indus river valley in Pakistan and north-west India. "Harappan Civilization" had been another name for this civilization.

The Indus Valley civilization had been one of the most ancient civilizations, on the banks of Indus River. The Indus culture blossomed over the centuries and gave rise to the Indus Valley Civilization around 3000 B.C.E. The civilization spanned much of Pakistan, but suddenly went into decline around 1800 B.C.E.Indus Civilization settlements spread as far south as the Arabian Sea coast of India, as far west as the Iranian border, and as far north as the Himalayas. Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, as well as Lothal  numbered among the settlements the major urban centers.

The Mohenjo-daro ruins had been once the center of this ancient society. At its peak, some archaeologists opine that the Indus Civilization may have had a population of well over five million. To date, over 1,000 cities and settlements have been found, mainly in the Indus River valley in Pakistan and north western India. Anthropologists  have yet to make out the language of the Indus Civilization, and the real name of the city as of other excavated cities in Sindh, Punjab and Gujarat, remains unknown. "Mohenjo-daro" means "Mound of the Dead" in the Sindhi language. (The name has been seen with slight variants such as Moenjodaro.)

Mohenjo-Daro, 25 km southwest of Larkana, had been the center of the Indus Valley Civilization 2600 B.C.E.-1700B.C.E.

Mohenjo-daro had been a remarkable construction, considering its antiquity. It has a planned layout based on a grid of streets, laid out in perfect patterns. At its height the city probably had around 35,000 residents. The buildings of the city, of particularly advanced designed, had structures constructed of same-sized sun dried bricks of baked mud and burned wood. The public buildings of those cities also suggest a high degree of social organization.

The great granary at Mohenjo-daro, designed with bays, received carts delivering crops from the countryside. Ducts exist for air to circulate beneath the stored grain to dry it. Close to the granary, a building similarly civic in nature stands: a great public bath, with steps down to a brick-lined pool in a colonnaded courtyard. The elaborate bath area had been extremely well built, with a layer of natural  to keep it from leaking, and in the center stood the pool. Measuring 12m x 7m, with a depth of 2.4m, the pool had been likely used for religious or spiritual ceremonies.

The houses had been designed and constructed to protect inhabitants from noise, odors, and thieves. That urban plan included the world's first urban sanitation systems. Within the city, individual homes or groups of homes obtained water from wells. Some of the houses included rooms that appear to have been set aside for bathing, waste water diverted to covered drains, which lined the major streets. Houses opened only to inner courtyards and smaller lanes. A variety of buildings stood up to two stories high. Being an agricultural city, it featured a large well, and central marketplace. It had a building with an underground furnace (hypocaust), possibly for heated bathing.

Defensively, Mohenjo-daro constituted a well fortified city. Lacking city walls, it did have towers to the west of the main settlement, and defensive fortifications to the south. Considering those fortifications and the structure of other major Indus valley cities like Harappa, lead to the question of whether Mohenjo-daro served as an administrative center. Both Harappa and Mohenjo-daro share relatively the same architectural layout, generally lightly fortified like other Indus Valley sites. Obviously, considering the identical city layouts of all Indus sites, they served in some kind of political or administrative capacity, although the extent and functioning of an administrative center remains unclear. .

Mohenjo-daro had been successively destroyed and rebuilt at least seven times. Each time, the new cities built directly on top of the old ones. Flooding by the Indus may have been the cause of destruction. The city divided into two parts, the Citadel and the Lower City. Most of the Lower City remains uncovered, but that the Citadel had the public bath, a large residential structure designed to house 5,000 citizens and two large assembly halls, has been determined. Mohenjo-daro, Harappa and their civilization, vanished without trace from history until discovered in the 1920s. Although extensively excavated in the 1920s, in-depth excavations suspended in the 1960s.

History always inspire us of many stories. Mohenjo-daro is one such story  which had many historical golden land mark to remember.