Mohenjo Daro crumbling away as investment and visitor numbers dwindle
Posted On: Mar 4th, 2017 at 23:42
Pakistan / India
Mohenjo Daro is not only the most important archaeology site in modern-day Pakistan, but also one of the most important in the world. It is part of what I believe to be the oldest civilisation in the world – the Indus Valley culture – which covered an area over one million square miles at its height.
Walls recently found in Harappa are thought to be around 8,000 years old, placing the city as the oldest ever discovered anywhere on earth, and I am certain similar finds will show Mohenjo Daro to be of a similar age. Also, before what is termed the “Mature Harappan” (2600 – 1900 BC), finds have been attributed to stages termed the “Early Harappan” and the “Pre-Harappan”, taking dates back to the aceramic Neolithic period, 9,000 years ago (7000 BC).
Potential new finds, however, are looking extremely unlikely with the current state of affairs at the site. A huge reduction in visitor numbers, a lack of funds to protect the site and carry out further digs, and crumbling walls are some of the reasons to be immensely concerned. One of the most frustrating aspects is the fact the Indus script has never been deciphered, and yet buried within the walls of this huge city may be the clues that finally break the code of the Indus culture, and this would be the archaeological find of the millennium.
What you see in the images and the video of the article is only ten per cent of the entire site – the other ninety per cent of the city is still unexcavated.
Current dating places the city in the 3rd Millennium BC – around 4,600 years ago (2600 BC) – and the city contained a population of up to 40,000 people. To make a comparison, during this time Greece was still a land of warring tribes, two thousand years before they banded together to fight the Persian invasions; Rome never existed at all, and Britain was a country of farming communities who were about to embark on the building of the classic Stonehenge site. But it was during this time at Mojenjo Daro that sanitation channels, running water, water storage tanks, baths, engineered irrigation, and even toilets were already in existence. The reality of these dates is startling, for to have a large city of 40,000 inhabitants, with all of the technology it employed, it goes without saying this level of sophistication had evolved from a much earlier time period, clearly taking the culture rightfully back further in time.
Places like Mohenjo Daro and Harappa are as important as the pyramids of Egypt, and I think it is disgraceful that organisations like UNESCO are doing little to help with funding, or even basic protection of the site.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/12/pakistan-moenjodaro-crumbling-161219084641324.html
