In the plains of Pakistan’s dusty southern province of Sindh lie some of the most astonishing ruins of an ancient civilization that most of the world has never heard of.
When I was in this ancient city of the world, I examined its environment and the light breeze reduced the intensity of the heat. Walkways and wells were built through millions of red bricks, which seemed to connect the web of different neighborhoods.
An ancient round Buddhist dome was found standing in a decaying state, beneath which lay a bathing pool with wide steps. There were only a few people here.
I was in the ruins of the city of Larkana, an hour’s drive from the main city, an ancient city called Moen Jo Daro. Today only the ruins of the city remain, 4,500 years ago it was not only one of the oldest cities in the world but a thriving region with the most advanced infrastructure for its time.
Moin-jo Daro, which means ‘mound of men’ in Sindhi, was once the largest city of the flourishing Indus Valley Civilization (also known as the Harappan Civilization), which during the Bronze Age dominated the northern Seen its rise from eastern Afghanistan to northwestern India.
Believed to have been inhabited by at least 40,000 people, the city flourished from 2500 BC to 1700 BC.
Irshad Ali Solangi is a local guide who is the third generation of his family working in Moenjo Daro. “It was an urban center with social, cultural, economic and religious links with Mesopotamia and Egypt,” Solangi explained.
But compared to the cities of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, which flourished at the same time, Moen Jo Daro is a name few have heard of outside Pakistan. It was destroyed by 1700 BC, and to this day no one is quite sure why the city’s inhabitants migrated or where they went.
Archaeologists first visited the area in 1911 after hearing reports of brickworks. However, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) initially rejected the idea that the bricks recovered from the site could be of antiquity, and as a result the site remained unprotected for many more years.
Its importance was not realized until RD Banerjee, an ASI officer, was posted here in 1922. They believed they saw a buried dome at the site, a mound-like structure where Buddhists usually sat for meditation.
His opinion led to excavation work in the area and in 1980, UNESCO added Moin Jo Daro to the list of World Heritage Sites. The remains of this ancient city, especially discovered by the British archaeologist Mah Sir John Marshall, give an idea of the quality of urban life, which is unprecedented in history.
UNESCO hailed Moenjo Daro as the ‘best preserved’ ruin of the Indus Valley.
Perhaps the city’s most striking feature was its sanitation system, which was far more advanced than its contemporaries, while drainage and private latrines were seen in Egypt and Mesopotamia, but were merely the luxury of the wealthy.
Moin Jo Daru had hidden latrines and covered drains and drains built in places. Since excavations began, more than 700 wells have been recovered, in addition to a system of private baths, including a huge ‘Great Bath’ measuring 12 meters by 7 meters for communal use.
A surprising number of private residences were found to have latrines and waste was disposed of clandestinely through a sophisticated sewage system.
It is a complex and modern system of a city that we would like to live in today
“This is a complex and sophisticated system of a city that we would like to live in today,” said Uzma Z. Rizvi, an archaeologist and associate professor at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.
Uzma Z Rizvi wrote a paper on this ancient city in 2011 titled ‘Moin Jo Daro, the Body, and the Domestication of Waste’.
Even the inhabitants of Moenjo Daro understood their surroundings. Since the city was located just west of the Indus River, they built impressive flood defenses and drainage systems to protect themselves from the annual floods.
Moreover, Moen Jo Daro was a key hub for maritime trade links that stretched from Central Asia to the Middle East. Over the centuries, they produced intricately carved pieces of pottery, jewelry, sculptures, and other objects that have been discovered everywhere from Mesopotamia to present-day Oman.
Today the ruins of this ancient city have been transformed into a local park with picnic tables and shade trees and lush gardens. However, tourists from other parts of Pakistan rarely visit this remote location and the number of foreign tourists is very low.
As I wandered through the ancient intricate streets of this city, I saw many wells, high walls that provided much-needed shade, and covered drains for drainage that made me wonder that they were all built thousands of years ago. was done
Mastering the art of sanitation and waste water disposal at Moenjo Daro were not the only superior qualities that distinguished the inhabitants from other early civilizations. Archaeologists have particularly appreciated the use of quality building materials despite the lack of machinery.
Rizvi explained that ‘all the bricks have a ratio of 4:2:1, although they are not of the same shape. It is important to know that all these bricks are following a similar design sensibility. There is a sense of how they want their city to look. If you make everything proportional, even the spaces you walk through, naturally follow a certain design that also shows a sense of proportion.’
These bricks, which were dried in the sun and fired in a kiln, have remained strong for thousands of years. And while grandiose architecture such as havelis, shrines and other social status-determining buildings and other indicia moin that do not appear in Daru designs.
Uzma Rizvi explains that their absence does not mean that monumental architecture did not exist. He said that ‘here the memorable thing of this city is the infrastructure of this city.’
Walking along the brick sidewalk that led to the upper part of the city, I found myself in the lower part of the city, which covers more than 300 hectares of Moin Jo Daru and once housed Prosperous neighborhoods of the city will be populated.
The real secret of the city’s success was its high-quality organization. Dozens of narrow streets intersect at 90-degree angles in a grid of planned streets. Doorways in local homes, including bathrooms, used thresholds not unlike what you would find in any home or building today.
“When you see a threshold, you know someone has thought about what it means to be inside and outside,” Rizvi said.
Moin Jo is a small building in the grassy area of Daru which houses a museum which gives you more insight into this ruined city. Hundreds of decorative seals, often depicting a single animal, as well as sculptures, ornaments, tools, toys and fragments of pottery have been carefully excavated from the site.
Arranged on rows of glass shelves, the antiques were well preserved.
Among the artifacts were two figurines: one of a young woman wearing jewels and the other of a well-dressed man who appeared to be of high status.
Rizvi explained that it would be a big man from the elite class, we don’t know if he was a priest or a king. When it comes to body grooming and body care, attention to detail is what drives us.
It gives us an awareness of how (residents) were treating themselves, their bodies. He clearly had an understanding of mathematics. Clearly, there was an understanding of geometry. Clearly, there was fashion sense.
However, such a great detail that can tell a lot about the lives and times of the twenty-two people of this ancient city is still a mystery.
Although ancient writings often reveal the secrets of civilizations, this was not the case with the Moenjo Daru, whose inhabitants used a script known as the Indus Valley style of writing. “It was a pictorial language with more than 400 characters,” said my guide Solangi. No one has been able to read it yet.
What happened to Moen Jo Daro is another mystery that is yet to be solved.
Overall, researchers are not sure why the city was destroyed or abandoned around 1700 BC, although it is widely believed that climatic factors played a role in its destruction. what will happen Nevertheless, Rizvi explained that Moin Jo Daro’s disappearance was not a sudden event.
He said that the city itself was not suddenly emptied. Around 1900 BC you see a change occur, the traces of people living in the city begin to diminish in material form. Not that all are gone, but there are certain neighborhoods that you start with. In the later periods the population is not the same as in the earlier periods. You see that the pace of people leaving the city is slow.
After thousands of years, now in August 2022, the city is under threat again after the devastating super flood in Pakistan. Dr. Asma Ibrahim, an archaeologist and museologist who is involved in conservation work across the country, confirmed that the flood at the site of the damaged Moin Jo Daru was less than what archaeologists had originally feared. was
When asked how Moin Jo Daro could be preserved in the future, Ibrahim recommended the use of channels to divert excess water from the site but also stressed that a ‘long-term strategy’ was needed.
A long-term plan for the area will not only benefit archaeology, but will also benefit many local people like Solangi who live in the vicinity. The Buddhist round dome is clearly visible from Solangi’s house in Dand village. He emphasized that ‘for me, Moin Jo Daro is a treasure of ancient civilization. We must protect it for future generations.
Walking along the brick paths, I agreed with Solangi. I thought about the well-organized streets and also carefully examined the brick below-ground tank known as the ‘Azeem Hammam’. A widespread sanitation system far superior to some of the infrastructure seen in Pakistan today.
As Solangi famously put it, ‘the tax collected from the public was spent on public welfare.’
And their investment paid off, at least for a while. Moenjo Daro was thriving and the inhabitants were able to enjoy a standard of living far beyond the standards of their time.
A few hours later, on the way back to Larkana, sitting in a dilapidated auto-rickshaw, he couldn’t help but thank him. Moin, which had been buried in sand and mud for thousands of years, was apparently buried forever in the plains of Indus.
Yet thanks to the tireless efforts of dedicated guides like Solangi and archaeologists over the last century, one of the most modern cities of the ancient world can be seen once again. And more often than not you’ll find clean, rutted roads.
