Mohenjo-daro, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Pakistan, was a powerful city of the Indus Valley Civilization and is over 4500 years old. The city was built on a grid with a high-level planning system and standardized construction. Mohenjo-daro is known for its artifacts, including the Dancing Girl statue. The city was at the mercy of the Indus River’s floods and was rebuilt seven times before being abandoned. Mohenjo-daro is an impressive architectural site and a reminder of mankind’s advanced capabilities thousands of years ago.
Mohenjo-daro is the name of the ruins of an ancient city in present-day Pakistan. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and has been since 1980. The site is one of the largest surviving ancient cities and is over 4500 years old.
Mohenjo-daro was a powerful city of the Indus Valley Civilization that spread across the Indus Valley into northwest India and present-day Pakistan. At its peak it was perhaps the most advanced city in the entire world, and certainly the pinnacle city of South Asia. Civilization itself eventually reached nearly five million people and spread to more than a thousand cities and settlements. The name Mohenjo-daro is a Sindhi name, which simply means Mound of the Dead. The actual name of the city is unknown, as the language spoken by the Indus Valley Civilization remains unknown.
The city is notable not only for its size and age but also for the sophistication of its planning. The city is built on a grid, with a clear symmetry that belies a high-level planning system. The standardization is also visible in the construction of the buildings themselves, which are constructed using clay bricks of nearly identical size.
Mohenjo-daro survived for more than seven hundred years, from 2600 BC until about 1900 BC. It was rebuilt seven or more times during that time, after being destroyed by the flood of the Indus River.
After its abandonment, Mohenjo-daro vanished for millennia, until being rediscovered in the 1920s. Since then, major excavations have taken place. The city is generally divided into two sections: the Lower Town and the Citadel. The Citadel has been almost entirely excavated, but many parts of the Lower Town have remained underground.
Mohenjo-daro is known not only for its beautiful architecture but also for the many impressive artifacts that have been discovered during excavations. Toys and sculptures abound, some more than 4,000 years old. One of the most popular artifacts discovered is the so-called Dancing Girl statue. This statue is of a fifteen year old girl, her lips pursed, her hand on her hip as she dances to music long lost to millennia.
Mohenjo-daro is located on a ridge that is immediately in the flood plain of the Indus River. This has afforded the city plenty of surrounding land to grow food and become a prosperous city, but it has also left the city at the mercy of the river’s moods. As the city grew, it eventually outgrew the available space on the ridge, and so the ridge was expanded by growing it with huge mud bricks.
Mohenjo-daro is truly an architectural marvel and an excellent reminder of how advanced mankind was in some corners of the world thousands of years ago. For anyone interested in visiting one of the most impressive architectural sites left on the planet, a trip to Mohenjo-daro is well worth it.
Protect your devices with Threat Protection by NordVPN
