The Indus Valley Civilization Secrets of the Ancient World Harappa Mohenjo Daro

About 5,000 years ago, there was a civilization on this very earth that could rival even today's modern cities. A civilization that was far ahead of its time, building cities whose planning and engineering still make even the greatest architects of today stop and think. These magnificent cities were established along the banks of the Indus and Saraswati rivers. Straight roads, two- and three-story houses, and such an impressive drainage system that even today we struggle to build something like it. Here, there was a network of covered drains laid out to carry away dirty water. Even today, this remains a dream for many modern cities. Who were these people? How did they live? How did they manage to accomplish all this? Their cities were like metropolitan cities. Their trade extended as far as Mesopotamia, and their society seemed extremely organized and peace-loving. Then, everything became quiet. A vast civilization, which even when combined with the civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia covered a larger area than them, simply vanished at its peak. There are no major signs of war, no grand palaces or tombs of kings and emperors, and no book to tell their story. Only a mysterious silence remains, one that has been troubling historians and archaeologists for thousands of years. What happened to those millions of people? Where did they go? Was it the result of some terrible flood or drought? Was it the devastation of an epidemic? Or is there some deep secret that remains hidden from the world to this day? Today, we will turn those dust-laden pages of history and take you on a journey back in time, where we will uncover the complete story of the Harappan civilization, from their magnificent rise to their mysterious and sudden decline. If you are a lover of mysteries and want to solve the greatest mystery of India's glorious past, then stay with us, because the truth will leave you astonished. Before we move forward, we have a small request. Please watch the video till the end, because today we are about to embark on a unique journey through our history. For more such videos, we have to spend hours researching. If you like it, please give it a like and subscribe to the channel. This story begins about 200 years ago, in 19th century British India, when British officers and explorers were investigating every corner of India. Around the year 1826, a British explorer named Charles Masson was passing near the Sahiwal district of Punjab. He noticed a high mound in a deserted place, around which strange baked bricks were scattered. The villagers considered these bricks a gift from God and were using them to build their houses. Masson mentioned this in his book, but no one paid much attention to his words. Several decades passed. In 1856, British engineers John and William Brunton were laying a railway line from Karachi to Lahore. They needed stones for the track. That's when someone told them about the ruins of a nearby village called Harappa, where thousands of excellent baked bricks were available. For the Brunton brothers, it was like finding a treasure. Without giving it a second thought, they began uprooting those ancient bricks and laying them beneath the railway track. That they were erasing the evidence of one of the world's oldest and most advanced civilizations forever. After this incident, Alexander Cunningham, the first Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India, visited this site several times during the 1850s and 1870s. There, he found some unique seals with inscriptions in an unknown script. And there was a picture of a bull. Cunningham understood the significance of these items, but even he could not fully grasp their vastness and antiquity. The real storm came in the 20th century. In 1921, Indian archaeologist Daya Ram Sahni, under the leadership of the Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India, Sir John Marshall, began a systematic excavation at Harappa. As the layers of earth were removed, the layout of an entire city began to emerge. Planned roads, rows of houses, drains, this was no ordinary village. But the story didn't end there. The very next year, in 1922, about 590 kilometers from Harappa, in the Larkana district of Sindh province, another archaeologist, Rakhal Das Banerjee, was searching for a Buddhist stupa. During the excavation, he found seals and bricks beneath the stupa that were just like those found in Harappa. He immediately informed John Marshall about this. When Marshall compared the items found at both sites, he was astonished. He declared that this was not an isolated city. It was part of one great and ancient civilization. The name of that second city was Mohenjodaro, which in the Sindhi language means the Mound of the Dead. It was given this name because a large number of human skeletons were found on a mound there. This discovery pushed Indian history back by thousands of years. The world learned that at the same time as the great civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia were flourishing, a Bronze Age urban civilization was also at its peak in India. It was as if a flood of discoveries began. One city after another was found. Lothal and Dholavira in Gujarat, Kalibangan in Rajasthan, Rakhigarhi in Haryana, and Chanhudaro in Pakistan. To date, more than 1,500 sites of this civilization have been discovered, over 900 of which are in India. But the question remained, who were these people? Where did this civilization come from? Did it suddenly emerge out of nowhere? The answer to this question takes us even further back to a place where the seeds of this great civilization were sown. The Harappan civilization did not emerge from a vacuum. Its roots are thousands of years old, taking us back to the Neolithic Age. The story begins at a place called Mehrgarh, located in present-day Balochistan, Pakistan. This ancient site, situated on a fertile plain near the Bolan River, is considered the forerunner or seed of the Harappan civilization. Around 9,000 years ago, that is, around 7,000 BCE, some of South Asia's earliest farmers and herders began to settle in Mehrgarh. These people were moving away from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle towards a more settled way of life. For the first time in the world, they cultivated crops like wheat and barley and began to domesticate sheep, goats, and cattle. In the beginning, they built structures out of mud bricks. They lived in simple houses. Over thousands of years, Mehrgarh gradually developed. They learned to make pottery, mastered the art of toolmaking, and according to some reports, tools, jewelry, and even sacrificial goats were buried along with the dead. This suggests that they probably believed in life after death. Mehrgarh was not the only shining star. Gradually, the knowledge and technology of these cultures began to spread towards the vast and fertile plains of the Indus and its tributary rivers. By around 3300 BCE, we enter a new era known as the early Harappan phase. During this period, small villages began to transform into larger towns. These people learned many essential things that later became hallmarks of the Harappan civilization. They began using baked bricks, which were stronger and more resistant to weather and wear. Beautiful designs started appearing on their pottery, and they had started using metals like copper and bronze. A kind of trade network was also beginning to form, through which precious stones such as lodgeward, that is, lapis lazuli, began arriving here from Afghanistan, along with other raw materials from distant regions. Another characteristic of this period was the increasing emphasis on security. Walls started being built around many settlements, probably for protection against external attacks or wild animals. This early phase lasted for about 700 years. This was, in a way, a period of preparation. People learned new techniques, formed a society, and learned how to trade. They laid the foundation upon which a magnificent urban civilization was about to be built. But then something happened that suddenly accelerated the pace of this development. There was a revolution that transformed these small towns into some of the most well-planned metropolises in the world. What exactly was that? This takes us to the most glorious era of the Harappan civilization, which we call the mature Harappan phase. Around 2600 BCE, there was an extraordinary explosion of urbanization in the Indus Valley. This was the time when this civilization reached its peak and spread over a vast area. Its expanse was about 1,300,000 square kilometers. From Jammu and Kashmir in the north to Maharashtra in the south, and from Uttar Pradesh in the east to the Iranian border in the west, it was much larger than the combined area of the Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations of that era. In this vast empire, there were thousands of settlements, including villages, towns and large cities. But what was life like inside these great cities? How did they manage to build such precise urban centers without any modern technology? And did they really possess some power that remains a mystery even for today's scientists? The grandeur of the Harappan civilization was not just in its bricks, but in the minds of those people who walked the streets of Mohenjo-daro 4,500 years ago. In the previous part, we saw their rise. But now we will talk about the era when this civilization was in its golden age. Imagine you are standing on a straight street in the lower town of Mohenjo-daro. On both sides of you are structures made of baked bricks. There are two- and three-story houses. Every brick is in a fixed proportion, whether you are in this corner of the city or in another city thousands of miles away. As soon as you peek inside a house, you see that the house is built around a central courtyard. Every house has its own kitchen, its own bathroom, and most astonishingly, every house has its own private well and an advanced toilet system. This was 4,500 years ago, when the world, and in the rest of the world, people probably didn't even know what cleanliness meant. Here, the drains are covered, and there are manholes at regular intervals so that cleaning can be done. This is an engineering marvel that even modern cities today struggle to adopt. But what was the secret behind the wealth of these people? Their real treasure was hidden in their trade and their craftsmanship. The people of Harappa were the first in the world to cultivate cotton and learn how to turn it into cloth. They were not just farmers. They were also remarkable jewelers and engineers. In Lothal, Gujarat, we have found the world's oldest dockyard. That is, a port has been discovered here. From here, their ships would travel down the Sabarmati River into the Arabian Sea, and after months of journeying, reach as far as Mesopotamia. In books, there is mention of a place called Meluha, which was actually the name of our own Indus Valley civilization. The kings there used to import ivory, gold, copper, and precious stones like lapis lazuli from here. To maintain honesty in trade, these people had made stone weights, which were in multiples of 16. This system was so precise that even thousands of kilometers away, the measurement of weight remained the same. Not just trade, but their craftsmanship also amazes us even today. In cities like Chanhudaro and Lothal, there were large bead-making factories where they would carve precious stones to make jewelry that could outshine any luxury brand of today. The bronze statue of the dancing girl found in Mohenjo-Daro demonstrates this. That they were so skilled in the art of melting metal and casting it into molds. And their greatest mystery, their seals. On these thousands of seals made from clay and stone, there are images of one-horned bulls, elephants, and tigers, and above them is an enigmatic script that to this day, no great scholar in the world has been able to decipher. This script will be deciphered. On that day, we will find out what those people used to talk about among themselves, who their kings were, and how they viewed their world. Even in terms of religion, they were very advanced. Although we have not found any large temples, the seal of Pashupati Shiva and the statues of the mother goddess show this. That they believed in nature and yoga. The worship of the people tree and the symbol of health are legacies we have inherited from them. They were a peace-loving people because hardly any weapons of war have been found in the excavations. But then, what happened that this thriving and prosperous civilization suddenly disappeared from the pages of history? Around 1900 BCE, signs of decline began to appear in these magnificent cities. The roads started to break down, drains became clogged, and people began to leave the cities. It was initially believed that the Aryans attacked and destroyed them. But modern science has disproved this theory. The real cause was climate change. The rivers, which were their lifelines, changed their course. The great river Saraswati began to dry up and devastating floods started to occur in the Indus river. With less rainfall, the fields turned barren and trade came to a halt. This was a slow and painful death. Driven by hunger and thirst, people moved east and south. They did not disappear, but rather, lost their urban identity and settled in small villages. The story of Harappa is not just an ending, but a warning. It reminds us that no matter how modern we become, in front of nature, we are always fragile. They faced climate change and lost. Today, as we once again struggle with the same crises of global warming and drying rivers, the ruins of Harappa silently warn us. Will we be able to heed their warning? Friends, if you enjoyed this journey into India's glorious and mysterious past, be sure to like and share this video. The history of your land is your true identity. Thank you for staying with us.