Imagine a city from four and a half thousand years ago — with straight, wide streets, a well and a bathroom in nearly every home, and a proper network of covered drains to carry wastewater away. This is not a fantasy story. This is Mohenjo-daro, in the Larkana district of Sindh — one of the oldest and most advanced civilizations on Earth, and a point of pride for Pakistan.
The Great Indus Valley Civilization
Mohenjo-daro is considered the largest city of the Indus Valley Civilization, which flourished from roughly 2600 BCE to 1900 BCE. This civilization spread along the banks of the Indus River, across a vast region that today covers Pakistan and north-western India. At the very time the pyramids were being built in Egypt, the people here were building cities to a plan.
City Planning — Still an Example Today
The most astonishing thing about Mohenjo-daro is its planning. The city’s main streets were laid out perfectly straight, running north to south and east to west — as if an expert engineer had drawn a map before building. Houses were made of baked bricks, all of a standard size! Experts estimate the population at around forty thousand, and the city was divided into an upper, citadel-like part and a lower residential town.
A Drainage System That Defies Belief
The city’s drainage system is its greatest claim to fame. Almost every house had a bathroom whose water flowed through covered brick drains into a main sewer. The drains even had openings at intervals (like manholes) for cleaning — an idea that arrived in modern cities thousands of years later. There were around seven hundred wells in the city, meaning roughly every third house had its own source of water.
The Great Bath
Among the city’s most important structures is the Great Bath — a large, pool-like bath built of baked bricks and sealed so carefully that water could not leak out. It measures about 12 metres in length and around two and a half metres in depth. Experts believe it was used for religious rituals or communal purification. To waterproof a structure like this, two and a half thousand years before the Common Era, is a genuinely astonishing achievement.
💡 Did you know?
The ruins of Mohenjo-daro were discovered in 1922. By a curious twist of fate, bricks were needed at the time for a railway line being built in the British era — and that is how this great city came to light. In 1980, UNESCO added it to the World Heritage List; it was the first site in South Asia to receive this honour.
The Script No One Has Ever Read
The greatest mystery of Mohenjo-daro is its writing. More than four hundred symbols have been found on the seals and tablets recovered here, yet despite worldwide efforts, this script has never been deciphered. The inscriptions are very short, and no bilingual text has been found that could unlock it. The day it is read, we may learn everything about this civilization’s religion, rulers and daily life.
Why Did the City Fall Silent?
Why did such an advanced city fall quiet? Experts offer several theories: the Indus shifting its course and causing water shortages, great floods, changing climate, or trade routes moving elsewhere. Notably, there is no clear evidence of war or mass destruction here — it seems people gradually left, and the city sank beneath mounds of earth. In Sindhi, “Mohenjo-daro” is said to mean “the Mound of the Dead”.
Mohenjo-daro is not just ruins. It is proof that the people of this land were intelligent, organised and advanced thousands of years ago. It is our identity and our pride. If you ever get the chance, do visit this great heritage site near Larkana — the past will come alive before your eyes.