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What is dead hill?

Mohenjo-Daro (2600 BC-1800 BC), also known as “Mound of the Dead” or “Mound of the Dead”, was an important city in the Indus Valley Civilization, circa 2600 BC Built in 2000, located in the southern part of Larkana County, Sindh Province, Pakistan today, Mohenjo-Daro is one of the early ancient cities in the world, known as “the metropolis of ancient Indus Valley civilization”. Other ancient civilizations include ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, China and Crete. It is mostly believed that it was an urban civilization created by the Dravidians (that is, short blacks) before the invasion of the white Aryans in ancient India.

City planning

Mohenjo Darrow’s urban master plan was very advanced and scientific, and it was considered a great achievement in civil engineering at the time. It is no wonder that many people call it “Manhattan of the Bronze Age”, but in Sindh dialect , the real meaning of Mohenjo Darrow is “the hill of the dead”. The most representative urban site of the heyday of the ancient Indus civilization was finally revealed in the 20th century after being buried underground for thousands of years.

The whole city is divided into several parts, including a high “castle” and a lower urban area. A broad road runs through the city from north to south, and every few meters there is an east-west street that intersects it at right angles. In addition, there is also an irregular road network consisting of alleys connected to the small streets. The walls of the residential houses are very thick, indicating that they are at least two-story buildings, most of which are multiple buildings, some of which are very large, including several courtyards, and some It’s a humble one-room houses.

The houses were built from fired bricks, and according to the archaeologists, “the fineness of the brickwork could hardly be improved”. Most of the residences have rough ground floors facing the road and no windows—an urban custom designed to protect against bad weather, noise, odors, neighbor harassment, and robbery intrusions that are still practiced in many parts of the Near East. Usually the main entrance of the house is located in the back alley, facing a spacious foyer, with a courtyard in front of it. The house is well-lit and ventilated.

While Europeans were still living in villages and Stonehenge was being built on the British Isles, the Harappans living in the Indus Valley had one of the most advanced water and sewage systems in the world. In Mohenjo Darrow, a network of wells provides each neighborhood with a convenient source of fresh water.

Almost every household has a bathing platform, and many have toilets. There is also an extensive drainage system in the city to carry excess water away. The Great Bath, excavated in 1925, is a large brick pool surrounded by a large building complex, located in the very center of the public sector of the city, containing a deep pool of water, it was a technological marvel at the time, and it was in the architecture of ancient India. Also unique.

Most researchers believe that a large bath is more than just a public bathing area. The large baths and numerous bathing platforms suggest that the ritual of baptism was very prevalent in society at the time, and it is still common today in Pakistan and India.

According to archaeologists, commerce, agriculture, and processing industries were extremely developed during the Mohenjo-Daro period. Although limited to the production and economic level of the time, the average person’s way of life may be quite simple, but there is still no shortage of luxuries in archaeological discoveries. In art, there is a stone statue of a man with a height of 19 centimeters, which is one of the few stone carvings found in Mohenjo Daro, which can be called a masterpiece. Some fine metalwork, jewelry and pottery are also being unearthed. In addition, a large number of seals inscribed with cryptic characters or patterns were found in Mohenjo Darrow.

Almost more inexplicable than the creation of these miracles is that the civilization of the great city of Mohenjo Darrow suddenly disappeared sometime in the first half of 2000 BC, leaving little trace of its continuation. There are various theories about the reasons for the destruction of ancient civilizations, foreign invasions, floods, and desert invasions.

No one has yet been able to decipher the enigmatic writing on the seal. Where did these smart people who mastered hieroglyphics, the art of carving, and a flair for urban planning come from? No one really knows. It seems that they, together with the high-level cultures they had created, were generated by chance in the strange and thin air of ancient times, and then suddenly disappeared.

Today, Pakistan is in a race against time to save Mohenjo Darrow as much as possible. Since the excavation work began in the 1920s, 30% of the city’s exposed ruins have collapsed. If Mohenjo Daro’s deteriorating condition cannot be stopped, this ancient city with a 5,000-year-old civilization will disappear again. This time, will be forever.

Brilliant culture

These two ancient city ruins, together with other ancient city cultural sites discovered in the Indus Valley, are distributed in a vast area of ​​about 1,500 kilometers from east to west and about 1,100 kilometers from north to south. Historians call them the Harappan culture. Among these ancient cities, Mohenjo Daro and Harappa are the largest in scale.

From the excavation of the site, people have been surprised to see the extraordinary power of the ancient Dravidians to create history.

The buildings of the two ancient cities are roughly the same, with a circumference of more than 3 miles. Among them, Mohenjo Daro covers an area of ​​260 hectares and consists of two parts, the Acropolis and the Lower City. The Acropolis is surrounded by towering towers.

There are large baths, large granaries, spacious conference halls, and many other public buildings in the city. In addition, the ancient city has wide avenues, reasonably configured alleys, a complete drainage system and exquisite water wells.

These all show the meticulous design and high technical level of the ancient Dravidian people when they built the city.

There are also various agricultural production tools and handicraft tools left in the city; agricultural products include cotton, wheat, dates, melons and fruits; livestock and poultry have been widely domesticated, such as buffalo, sheep, camels, dogs, horses, chickens, etc. ; Industrial products include plain pottery, painted pottery, yarn, cloth, bronze utensils; the most striking thing is that there are seals inscribed with rhinoceros and a large number of stone weights.

From the comparison, we know that the Dravidians had mastered the calculation rules of the decimal system at that time, and the basic unit of weight was 0.86 kilograms. Fragments of a ruler made of shells were engraved with precise scales; ships were also found in the city, which led to the belief that commerce had developed at that time on the basis of the considerable development of agriculture and handicrafts. Many merchants gathered in the city to do business and trade with overseas.

The circumference of the ancient city is about 5 kilometers, and the estimated population is at least 30,000-35,000. The city is divided into two parts, the Acropolis and the Lower City. The Acropolis is obviously for the rulers to live in. There is a very complex underground drainage system and water supply system here.

The Acropolis is surrounded by tall and solid city walls (the Acropolis wall in the ancient city of Xalapa is as high as 15 meters, which is like a solid fortress), and has tall towers. There are huge barns in the city (this seems to be the earliest “barn” ever discovered). Scholars believe that this shows that at that time, the class division was already very serious. Xiacheng District is a residential area for civilians. “The city is neatly planned, the main street is 10 meters wide, … … there will be light poles for lights at intervals on the road, so that people can walk at night.”

Among the unearthed cultural relics, there are also a large number of exquisite works of art, such as small statues, bone carvings, paintings, etc. Among them, there are more than 2,000 amulets and seals. What is refreshing is the animal images and text symbols on the seal. According to statistics, there are nearly 400, such as human, fish, foot, table, etc., although they have not been accurately identified so far, but people have reasons to judge that at that time. The cultural and artistic level has reached a very high level.

In short, ancient Mohenjo Daro was a prosperous and beautiful city. At the same time, it also shows that around 2500 BC, the Indian subcontinent has entered the early state stage. The city may have been the capital of the rulers of the time.