About 3500 years ago, the city of Mohenjo-Daro (in Hindi - "Hill of the Dead") disappeared from the face of the earth. In the ancient Indian poem "Mahabharata" it is said that the cause of the terrible tragedy was a powerful explosion that followed a blinding heavenly radiance and "fires without smoke." The high temperature boiled the surrounding waters, and "the fish looked like burnt." The ruins of this city on an island in the deep Indus were found in 1922 by the Indian archaeologist R. D. Banerjee. And the data from the excavations confirmed the legend of the disaster.
In the excavations they found melted stones, traces of fires and an extremely powerful explosion. So, all buildings within a kilometer radius were completely destroyed. The position of the skeletons showed that before the death, people calmly walked the streets of the city. The ashes of Mohenjo-Daro were somewhat reminiscent of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after atomic explosions, where the shock wave and radiation came from above.
Let's find out the details of this story and this place …
Among the exhibits of one of the museums in the city of Delhi, there is a small figurine made of dark metal. Having just finished the dance, a naked girl stood proudly holding her hips on her hips. Sure of success, she seemed to be waiting for admiring applause from the audience., not without coquetry showing that she was a little tired - either from the dance, or from the weight of the bracelets
This statuette was found during the excavations of Mohenjo-Daro - one of the oldest cities in the world. In 1856, on the territory of present-day Pakistan, near a small village of Harappa, archaeologist Alexander Kanni-gam found an ivory stone on which a humpbacked bull and unknown signs, which partly resembled hieroglyphs, were carved.
The hill where this find was found was literally "built" of red baked bricks, which were used for many years by the builders of the railway and the peasants of the surrounding villages. Thus, one of the unique cities of antiquity, Harappa, gradually disappeared from the face of the earth.
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And only in the early 1920s, after the opening of the city of Mohenjo-Daro, the world learned about the existence of the most ancient civilization in the Indus Valley. Mohenjo-Daro is almost 3000 kilometers away from Harappa, but both cities have much in common. The only difference was that Mohenjo-Daro was better preserved.
Indian scientists R. Sakhni and R. Banerjee dug up the streets of the twin cities and found identical rectangular blocks with a clear layout, built up with the same brick houses. On a huge area of almost 260 hectares, whole neighborhoods and separate buildings of Mohenjo-Daro - "Hill of the Dead" (this is how this name is translated) are located. The hill was crowned with a Buddhist prayer stupa built during the existence of the Kushan kingdom - 15 centuries after the death of the great city.
Some scientists and archaeologists who have flocked here from many countries of the world have long denied the independence of Indian civilization in this area, considering it an eastern version of the Sumerian culture. Other researchers, on the contrary, believed that Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro were not like their peers from Elam, Sumer and early dynastic Egypt. The cities of Mesopotamia had a different layout, and raw bricks served as the building material. Only with the gradual liberation of new quarters and buildings from the ground did the world appear civilization, which is now called proto-Indian.
The written sources of the Sumerians depict a different way of life in the cities of Mesopotamia and a different worldview of their inhabitants. And then scientists began to look for references to the newly discovered cities in the "Rig Veda" - the oldest literary monument in India. But even there they found only vague references to the "pura" inhabited by "cunning merchants". However, legends and traditions about the rich and beautiful city in the Indus Valley have existed since time immemorial. But the free and beautiful people who inhabited this city angered the gods, and they brought down the city into the abyss. As if confirming these legends, museums as a result of archaeological excavations were replenished with new and new exhibits. Here is the head of a priest carved out of stone, women's jewelry, plaques with images of sacrificial animals and, finally, hieroglyphs that have not been deciphered so far.
Until the mid-1960s, scientists believed that Mohenjo-Daro had no fortifications, although 15 years earlier the English archaeologist M. Wheeler had cleared structures that could be mistaken for defensive ones. The citadel, located in the center of Mohenjo-Daro, was once surrounded by powerful fortress walls 9 meters thick. But the archaeologists did not have complete confidence that these were defensive fortifications. Further excavations showed that in the southern part of the city there was also a massive wall made of raw bricks and faced with burnt bricks. But it was not established what it was intended for: to protect against enemies or to protect the city from floods.
From the citadel, a wide, straight street led to a building that scientists called the "Meeting Room". Next to it was a spacious granary, and nearby, on a massive brick foundation with ventilation openings, once stood a two-story structure made of Himalayan cedar.
Mohenjo-Daro was a beautifully planned city: all its streets ran strictly from north to south and from east to west, and thus they were well protected from the winds. According to the building regulations, not a single house was supposed to stand for the general line. The main streets were crossed by alleys at right angles, and therefore there were no back streets and dead ends in the city. The main street in Mohenjo-Daro was 80 meters long and 10 meters wide, and several bullock carts could drive along it at the same time.
Outside the walls of the citadel was the lower city, which consisted of brick houses with flat roofs, which also served as balconies. The buildings were built of bricks, which were fired in open boxes, as Indian peasants still do. Houses in Mohenjo-Daro reached a height of 7.5 meters, instead of windows, ventilation holes were made in them with gratings made of clay and alabaster. To prevent dust from entering the house from the main streets, the entrance to it was made in a side street. The walls and floors were covered with mats, the houses had bathtubs made of bricks, and the dirty water was poured into earthen vessels with small holes for seepage: these vessels were placed on the ground.
In each block there were public wells, an excellent sewerage system for that time, and a water supply through which water heated by the sun was supplied to the second floors of buildings. In Mohenjo-Daro there was also a large public bath with cabins and a children's section. From the bath, water flowed through a drain pipe into the main covered canal, which ran along each street; all the canals flowed into a large pit outside the city.
Most of the household utensils in Mohenjo-Daro were made of copper or bronze; plowshares and sickles were made for agricultural work, axes, saws, shovels were made for artisans, swords, pikes, spears and daggers were made for warriors …
Of the clothes, the women of the city wore only short skirts with a brooch pinned to them, a pearl belt or ribbon and a fan-shaped headdress, in cool weather they threw a cape over their shoulders. The men were even more modest in clothing, content with only a loincloth. No one wore shoes, but great attention was paid to hairstyle, and men were the big dandies. If women most often only braided a braid, then men did a straight parting and tied their hair with a ribbon, sometimes gathered it in a knot.
As far as women were unpretentious in dress, they were so exacting in jewelry. All wore silver jewelry and headbands, gilded bronze belts, curly-headed hairpins, and ivory combs.
Despite numerous studies, scientists still continue to worry about issues that are significant for the history of this civilization. Who built these cities that flourished 40 centuries ago? What race were the people who lived here and what language did they speak? What form of government did they have?
Signs of the decline of the Mohenjo-Daro culture began to be seen around 1500 BC. Houses were built more carelessly, and there was no longer that strict line of streets in the city. Many different versions have been put forward about the reasons for the death of Mohenjo-Daro in the scientific world.
One of them is a nuclear explosion. But it is removed immediately due to the absence of a radioactive background and the obvious impossibility of building an atomic bomb in India during the Harappa culture. According to another hypothesis, a nuclear or other explosion occurred during the launch or maneuver of an alien spacecraft that visited our Earth in the distant past. However, so far no one has yet found a single direct proof of this.
Let's try to explain the death of Mohenjo-Daro by earthly, natural causes. What could have happened?
It is known that the ancient Greeks and Romans repeatedly described "flaming chariots" appearing in the night sky; American Indians - "round baskets" in the sky; the Japanese are "ghost ships" with glowing lights. According to the testimony of the priest Izekiel, to Palestine around 592 BC. e. “A strong wind came from the north, and a great cloud arose. And the fire was blazing from it, and the brilliance was strong, and from the middle of the cloud a strong radiance came out. " And the "Mahabharata" testifies: during the death of Mohenjo-Daro, the air seemed to be on fire, which was noted even on a sunny day against the background of a bright southern sky!
These are the facts. What can modern science say about this? Scientists have found that in the atmosphere under the influence of cosmic rays and electric fields, chemically active particles are formed that can form aerosol clusters that occupy vast spaces in the atmosphere. Moving in the atmosphere, particles under the influence of electromagnetic fields condense, stick together, like a snowball, and form balls of various diameters. Such physicochemical formations were abbreviated as FHO. Judging by the rock carvings, it was they who were observed by people fifty thousand years ago. A mention of them can be found in the ancient Egyptian chronicle of the reign of Pharaoh Thutmose III: “… in the 22nd year, in the third month of winter, at six o'clock in the afternoon, a luminous ball (appeared) in the sky, which slowly moved southward, terrifying all who I saw him."
There are several types of physical and chemical formations. Some, "cold", can exist for a long time without emitting energy or emitting light. Such formations, dark, opaque, are clearly visible against the background of the daytime sky, and may be shaped like rugby balls. There is a hypothesis that this is nothing else but not yet "flared up" ball lightning. Therefore, FHOs, by analogy with ball, were called black lightning. Glowing PCOs, bright white or lemon-yellow in color, arising independently of any thunderstorm activity, are called che-miluminescent formations - CHLO. They can float freely in the air, stay on the surface of the earth for a long time, quickly move along bizarre trajectories, "darken" and "flare up" again.
On September 21, 1910, New Yorkers watched hundreds of atmospheric "fireflies" flying over the city for three hours. On another September evening, already in 1984, over the lands of the "Udmurtsky" state farm of the Sarapul district of the Udmurt ASSR, the starry sky suddenly lit up, and dazzling white balls fell from the height. Dodging and spinning, they gently sank to the ground. It became as light as day. But the effect was not only light: transformers and power lines were out of order within a radius of twenty kilometers.
Scientists have established that the atmospheric conditions under which PCOs are formed activate the appearance of toxic substances that poison the air. And apparently, in Mohenjo-Daro, residents suffered from poisonous gases, and then a powerful explosion occurred over the city, which destroyed it to the ground.
It is known that such an explosion is possible only with the simultaneous presence of a large number of black lightning in the atmosphere. And if one explodes, then others explode behind it, like a chain reaction. When the blast wave reaches the surface of the earth, it will crush everything in its path. The temperature at the time of the black lightning explosion reaches 15 thousand degrees, which is consistent with the finds in the area of the catastrophe of melted stones. In ordinary fires, the temperature does not exceed a thousand degrees. Calculations show that during the disaster in Mohenjo-Daro, about three thousand black lightning with a diameter of up to 30 centimeters and over a thousand CHLO appeared in the atmosphere. New data for the development of this hypothesis can be provided by studies of the material traces of black lightning - smalt and slag, left after the colossal fire in Mohenjo-Daro.
The tragedy at Mohenjo-Daro, however, is not unique. The total number of references to FHO in the literature exceeds 15 thousand. And on August 12, 1983, Professor Bonil from the Zacatecas Observatory in Mexico City took the first photo of the FHO. Now there are hundreds of them.
It is hard to imagine what could happen if something like this happened to Mohenjo-Daro over a modern city … A person must learn to deal with this formidable natural phenomenon. However, today he is not as helpless as in ancient times. Modern science has a sufficiently reliable means to prevent black lightning explosions and to disperse PCOs. For this, chemical reagent compounds are used. Scientists have already developed devices that use the effect of reagents to protect industrial facilities from the penetration of ball and black lightning.
Some researchers believed that the abrupt change in the Indus channel caused by a strong tectonic shift was to blame. Geological studies show that earthquakes more than once disrupted normal life in Mohenjo-Daro and eventually led to the emergence of a giant lake. Water often flooded the city, so a fortified wall was erected to protect against floods. However, these assumptions still require proof. Other scholars believed that the city and its population died from the invasion of the Aryans, who killed all the inhabitants of Mohenjo-Daro and destroyed their homes. The discovered skeletons of people who lived in the city in the last years of its existence do not confirm the version of the invasion of foreign tribes. Again, another group of scientists claims that no traces of the flood have been found. Moreover, there is undeniable evidence of massive fires. The epidemic does not strike people who are quietly walking the streets or doing business, all of a sudden and at the same time. This is exactly what happened - this is confirmed by the location of the skeletons. Paleontological research also rejects the epidemic hypothesis. With good reason, one can reject the version of a sudden attack by the conquerors, none of the discovered skeletons have traces left by melee weapons.
So science has not yet given a final answer about the reasons for the death of Mohenjs-Daro.