Mohenjo-Daro is an archaeological site in the province of Sindh, Pakistan. Built around 2500 BCE, it was the largest settlement of the ancient Indus Valley Civilisation, and one of the world’s earliest major cities, contemporaneous with the civilizations of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Minoan Crete, and Norte Chico.
With an estimated population of at least 40,000 people, Mohenjo-Daro prospered until around 1700 BCE.
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Mohenjo-Daro was abandoned in the 19th century BCE as the Indus Valley Civilization declined, and the site was not rediscovered until the 1920s.
Significant excavation has since been conducted at the city’s location, designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980, the first site in South Asia to be so designated.
Etymology;
The city’s original name is unknown. Based on his analysis of a Mohenjo-Daro seal, Iravatham Mahadevan speculates that the city’s ancient name could have been Kukkutarma (“the city -RMA of the cockerel kukkuta “).
Cock-fighting may have had ritual and religious significance for the city. Mohenjo-Daro may also have been a point of diffusion for the clade of the domesticated chicken found in Africa, Western Asia, Europe, and the Americas.
Mohenjo-Daro, the modern name for the site, has been interpreted as “Mound of the Dead Men” in Sindhi.
Location;
Mohenjo-Daro is located off the right (west) bank of the lower Indus river in Larkana District, Sindh, Pakistan. It lies on a Pleistocene ridge in the flood plain of the Indus, around 28 kilometers (17 mi) from the town of Larkana.
Historical context;
Mohenjo-Daro was built in the 26th century BCE. It was one of the largest cities of the ancient Indus Valley Civilization, also known as the Harappan Civilization, which developed around 3,000 BCE from the prehistoric Indus culture.
At its height, the Indus Civilization spanned much of what is now Pakistan and North India, extending westwards to the Iranian border, south to Gujarat in India, and northwards to an outpost in Bactria, with major urban centers at Harappa, Mohenjo-Daro, Lothal, Kalibangan, Dholavira, and Rakhigarhi.
Mohenjo-Daro was the most advanced city of its time, with remarkably sophisticated civil engineering and urban planning.
When the Indus civilization went into sudden decline around 1900 BCE, Mohenjo-Daro was abandoned
Rediscovery and excavation;
The ruins of the city remained undocumented for around 3,700 years until R. D. Banerji, an officer of the Archaeological Survey of India, visited the site in 1919–20 identifying what he thought to be a Buddhist stupa (150–500 CE) known to be there and finding a flint scraper which convinced him of the site’s antiquity.
This led to large-scale excavations of Mohenjo-Daro led by K. N. Dikshit in 1924–25, and John Marshall in 1925–26.
In the 1930s major excavations were conducted at the site under the leadership of Marshall, D. K. Dikshitar, and Ernest Mackay. Further excavations were carried out in 1945 by Mortimer Wheeler and his trainee, Ahmad Hasan Dani.
The last major series of excavations were conducted in 1964 and 1965 by George F. Dales. After 1965 excavations were banned due to weathering damage to the exposed structures, and the only projects allowed at the site since have been salvage excavations, surface surveys, and conservation projects.
In the 1980s, German and Italian survey groups led by Michael Jansen and Maurizio Tosi used less invasive archeological techniques, such as architectural documentation, surface surveys, and localized probing, to gather further information about Mohenjo-Daro.
A dry core drilling conducted in 2015 by Pakistan’s National Fund for Mohenjo-Daro revealed that the site is larger than the unearthed area.
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Architecture and urban infrastructure;
Mohenjo-Daro has a planned layout with rectilinear buildings arranged on a grid plan.
Most were built of fired and mortared brick; some incorporated sun-dried mud-brick and wooden superstructures.
The covered area of Mohenjo-Daro is estimated at 300 hectares.
The Oxford Handbook of Cities in World History offers a “weak” estimate of a peak population of around 40,000.
The sheer size of the city, and its provision of public buildings and facilities, suggest a high level of social organization.
The city is divided into two parts, the so-called Citadel, and the Lower City. The Citadel – a mud-brick mound around 12 meters (39 ft) high – is known to have supported public baths, a large residential structure designed to house about 5,000 citizens, and two large assembly halls.
The city had a central marketplace, with a large central well.
Individual households or groups of households obtained their water from smaller wells.
Waste water was channeled to covered drains that lined the major streets.
Some houses, presumably those of more prestigious inhabitants, include rooms that appear to have been set aside for bathing, and one building had an underground furnace (known as a hypocaust), possibly for heated bathing. Most houses had inner courtyards, with doors that opened onto side lanes. Some buildings had two stories.
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