Indus valley civilization | Mohenjo-daro | city of Indus valley
Indus Valley | Mohenjo-Daro | City Of the Indus Valley
Indus Valley:
India has many hidden stories within its land. Scattered across the Indian countryside are other signs of a people whose origins are rooted deep in ancient times. From the beginning, the history of India has been shaped by its geography.
The Indian peninsula is a huge landmass with strong natural defenses, in the north the east and the west there are great mountain ranges and in the center is the wild Deccan plateau.
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| Indus Valley Civilization |
It is to the north of this in the fertile planes of Indus and Ganges that we find the heart of ancient Indian civilization. Here we find the earliest evidence of a nation thousands of years old. Indian civilization is one of the oldest in the world.
Up until the 1920s, archeologists thought that the story of India began around 1500 BC with the arrival of the invaders from central Asia known as Aryans but in 1922 archeologists began to make some amazing discoveries in the valley of river Indus.
Over a hundred sites have now been identified with Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa the most famous. The people of this ancient civilization are known as the Harappan or Indus valley civilization, by whatever name they lived a sophisticated life.
They were farmers who could breed cattle, goats, pigs, and elephants. They grew wheat, barley, and cotton, they were also skilled in metalwork and jewelry making and they knew how to trade. At the heart of the port of Lothal was a magnificent dock.
Here cargo ships were loaded with Indus valley products, merchants would then sail to the Arabian sea to trade with the peoples of Mesopotamia. Prophets must have been substantial to support a hundred cities and it is the urban nature of Indus valley life that is the most intriguing feature of these mysterious people.
Hundreds of miles along the coast excavations have revealed cities all built to a similar pattern with the capital city of Harappa, the most magnificent so far discovered.
To the west of Harappa was the citadel an elevated which contained the granaries and public baths. Below this, the streets were laid out in a grid arrangement running roughly north-south and east-west.
Shops and domestics homes lined these roads and they were all built from brick. But it is the efficient systems of drain and sewers that reveals just how sophisticated Indus life was. Around 2000 BC the Indus valley civilization started to decline.
Shops and domestics homes lined these roads and they were all built from brick. But it is the efficient systems of drain and sewers that reveals just how sophisticated Indus life was. Around 2000 BC the Indus valley civilization started to decline.
The second millennium BC saw the arrival of new people in the Indus valley invaders from the north who would spread across the fertile lands of planes the Aryans. These were tribal herdsmen a race of nomadic warriors.
The Aryans may or may not have been responsible for the demise of the Indus people.
The Aryans may or may not have been responsible for the demise of the Indus people.
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| Indus valley civilization |
Mohenjo-Daro: the city of Indus Valley:
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| Mohenjo-Daro-The Great Bath |
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| Mohenjo-Daro Tomb |
Mohenjo-Daro was built around 2500 BC about the same time the great pyramids were being built in Egypt and expand a surface area of nearly 500 acres. Archeologists believe that Mohenjo-Daro may have served as a seat of power for the Indus civilization because of its scale.
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| Wells in Mohenjo-Daro |
The city was divided into two districts, the citadel, and the lower town. The Citadel is the home of the city’s exceptional monuments including the great bath, a 900 square foot tank fed from the Indus River. Mohenjo-Daro also had a sophisticated water system.
Houses had baths and toilets and the town featured both an elaborate sewage system and freshwater and 700 wells throughout the city. Some of the history’s most famous waterway system was not constructed until many hundreds of years after Mohenjo-Daro scrape baths like Roman baths.
There were no places of worship or governance that have been found at Mohenjo-Daro, such as palaces, temples, or royal tombs. This may indicate that the society was not built around state interest like the Egyptians and Mesopotamian societies at the time.
The city’s second district the lower town may demonstrate the society’s egalitarian structure. The lower town with its intricate water system was home to between 20,000 to 40,000 people.
Unlike many urban areas of its time, it was laid out in a grid system similar to modern-day city blocks. After approximately 600 years the city collapsed, no one is sure why but the cause could potentially have been a change within the culture or in the path of the river.
In 1911 nearly 4000 years after the city fell into ruin, the archeologists paid their first visit.
The ensuing decades of excavation have unearthed countless clues that tell the tale of Mohenjo-Daro but it still holds secrets for us too.
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