This city in the Indus Valley in what is now Pakistan attracted the attention of scientists in 1922. The walls of burnt bricks, the ideal layout of quarters and buildings, the availability of water supply and sewerage systems indicated that there was something grandiose here in ancient times. Subsequently, it turned out that the city was built around 2600 BC. e., which means that he is a contemporary of the civilizations of Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. However, according to archaeologists, all of its inhabitants died almost instantly. Why?
There were even plumbing and toilets
The researchers gave the ancient city the name Mohenjo-Daro, which in some Indo-European languages means "Hill of the Dead". But the reason for his death has not yet been solved.
The ancient city is amazing.
According to archaeologists, most likely, the city was the administrative center of the Harappan civilization. Its territory (and this is 5 km in the perimeter!) Is divided into squares of equal size, which are crossed by branched streets. The central quarter is larger than the rest. It sits on a man-made dais and has a granary and two large meeting rooms with rows of seating.
Presumably, this is part of the locking devices from the giant gates. Photo 1950
Scientists were amazed that such an ancient city had a water supply system, a sewage system, and even public toilets (perhaps the oldest in the world).
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The photo shows part of the sewer pipe.
Ancient well and sewer.
Almost every house has a room for ablution, and ditches for rainwater drain from the buildings.
The plan of one of the houses.
Archaeologists have discovered ancient dishes, weights, embossed seals and numerous figures depicting animals and people in a comical form. On some objects, ancient writing is clearly visible.
Hieroglyph-like letters of the ancient townspeople.
Judging by the size and number of buildings, at least 40-50 thousand people should have lived here. However, most of all scientists were struck by the fact that they did not find buried remains of people or animals in Mohenjo-Daro. There are no cemeteries near the city either.
The bones of a camel, found here in 1950, turned out to be a burial made at a much later time - after the ancient civilization died. Found also human skeletons, but also of the wrong era. Apparently, people later settled in the deserted city.
Traces of the slow extinction of civilization, which would indicate that the city was gradually deserted, were also not found. Archaeologists did not find any weapons, or tens of thousands of skeletons in houses and on the streets, which would confirm the version of a big bloody battle (for example, about the invasion of the Aryans, mentioned in some sources).
No traces of the natural extinction of civilization or a deadly epidemic have been found. Photo 1950
On the outskirts of the city, archaeologists have found a number of human remains (negligible for such a settlement). For example, in one house a large family was found, and, moreover, decorations were preserved on the skeletons, which means they were not killed in order to rob. But in the central part of the city there were no skeletons at all. It seems that people were literally wiped off the face of the Earth. And those who did not disappear died instantly.
Ancient sculptures are silent witnesses of the disappearance of people.
The city was inhabited for almost 900 years and suddenly became empty. At the moment, several versions of the sudden disappearance of the townspeople have been put forward, but all of them are just hypotheses.
Severe flood
According to this hypothesis, supported by archaeological research, the Indus River in these parts was very often flooded as a result of earthquakes. The layers of silt found during the excavations of Mohenjo-Daro, as well as the remains of dams built by the ancient inhabitants, indicate that the townspeople fought floods as best they could and more than once rebuilt the city after natural disasters. Perhaps the last flood, resulting from the shift of tectonic plates, changed the course of the Indus or raised the waters of the Arabian Sea and was so severe that the inhabitants hastily left the city. Well, those who did not manage to do it died.
The ancient city (top view) could be covered with powerful water or mud streams.
Mud streams
This version is also associated with the earthquake. It could move the Indus waters, which mixed with soil and sand and fell on the city in giant mud streams. The city dams could not cope with them, and people were buried alive under the sudden surging waves of sand and silt. However, this version is refuted by the fact that so far no traces of such a mass “burial” of the townspeople have been found.
Multiple lightning discharge
In the central part of the city, a lot of melted bricks were found, which were definitely exposed to temperatures of at least 2000 °. Black fragments were also found, which, upon detailed examination, turned out to be clay shards sintered at the highest temperature.
Part of the city burned down, and it was worse than a fire.
In 1987, the Soviet magazine "Vokrug Sveta" published a version of the chemical scientist M. Dmitriev, according to which a discharge of a large number of ball lightning or the so-called "black lightning" thundered in the place where the ancient city stood. This process, again, could be associated with the collision of two tectonic plates, as a result of which a strong electromagnetic stress arose between the upper layers of the atmosphere and the earth's surface. When this cluster of lightning decays, it produces incredibly high temperatures.
Has the city been hit by a multitude of lightning strikes?
The version of such an ionospheric phenomenon is confirmed by the ancient legends and writings of the peoples of China, Egypt, the Middle East and Scotland, in which there are references to thunder, lightning and various kinds of glow in the sky, destroying all living things.
Thermonuclear explosion
According to researchers D. Davenport and E. Vinchetti, about 3700 years ago, a powerful atomic explosion took place in this place. After examining the destroyed buildings, they found that the explosion had an epicenter (about 50 m in diameter), in which the stones were most strongly melted and in fact all living things were destroyed, and as the distance from it the destruction decreased. This is also supported by the fact that it is the outskirts of the city that are best preserved. The picture is complemented by the presence at the site of the alleged explosion of sintered minerals (tektites) and layers of glazed sand, which are also found at modern nuclear test sites.
The version of the atomic explosion seems quite real.
There is information that in the last century, skeletons were found in some houses of the ancient city, the measurements of which showed a very high level of radiation, but there is no documentary evidence of this information.
Impact of a comet or meteorite
This version seems very plausible, given the ancient Indian legends about the "punishment of God", and the fact that tektites are usually found in places where meteorites fall, and the high radiation allegedly found in Mohenjo-Daro. However, no crater, which would indicate the fall of a space object, was not found on the territory of Mohenjo-Daro.
Anna Belova