In Pakistan's Sindh province in the Indus Valley, there are the ruins of an ancient city. They were discovered in 1911. And immediately the find became a sensation. Firstly, the city is almost five thousand years old, which means that it is a contemporary of the civilizations of Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. And secondly, melted bricks were found on the ruins. This became the reason for the emergence of a large number of various theories about the possible causes of the death of the city.
Archaeologists have found that the population at the peak of the heyday of Mohenjo-Daro could reach forty thousand people. The total area of the city was 300 hectares. It was divided into quarters, each quarter had streets. Also in the city were squares, gardens, a granary, a pool for ritual ablutions and a "citadel", which was probably built to protect against floods. At the same time, there is not a single palace or temple structure in Mohenjo-Daro. In this regard, scientists have put forward the assumption that the city was ruled not by monarchs or priests, but by a chosen people or a clan group of people.
There is also an opinion that the cult of bodily purity was practiced in the city. This idea was prompted by the fact that it was here that almost the world's first public toilets were discovered. Tableware and household items have traces of standardization. In addition, weights for scales and embossed seals were found - this indicates a standardized approach in trade.
Mohenjo-Daro consisted of the lower part of the city and the upper one. The lower one was most likely inhabited by better-off residents - their houses had courtyards and, as a rule, an entrance to the second floor or a comfortable flat roof adapted for housing. Traces of primitive plaster were found on the walls from the inside, which prevented the destruction of brickwork due to moisture and temperature changes.
But the most amazing and mysterious find of Mohenjo-Daro was the fused pieces of clay and stones, which for many centuries hardened and turned into glass. According to research, including chemical analysis, it became clear that this could not have been the result of an ordinary fire. Even a long one. Scientists began to put forward versions of the catastrophe that could have occurred in the ancient city.
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According to one of them, the death of the city was due to a nuclear bombing or a nuclear explosion. On the territory of Mohenjo-Daro, the bodies of 44 people were found, who, as scientists assume, died right on the street. After examining their remains, it turned out that they all died from a lethal dose of radiation, which was several times greater than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
It turned out that in the surviving ancient Indian manuscripts there is information about a certain weapon, because of which there was a flash of bright light, then a fire without smoke appeared. According to the same ancient Indian documents, this deadly weapon was brought by the gods from the sky. What creatures could be these gods is a mystery.
There are also other versions of what happened. Some researchers believe that the inhabitants of Mohenjo-Daro were victims of the Aryan invasion. However, there is a weak point in this version - if it were, then there would be much more human victims than 44 bodies. Other researchers suggest that the city was destroyed by flooding. Still others put forward a hypothesis about a one-time formation of thousands of ball lightning in the air over the city. The final point on this issue has not yet been put.