Mohen jo Daro, Will the Remains’s Remain By Aziz Sanghur

Mohen Jo Dar, Will the Remains’ Remain? is a long documentary, produced, directed and written by Aziz Sanghur. Mr. Sanghur is a documentary film-maker from Pakistan. The documentary shows that Mohenjo-daro is an archeological site situated in the province of Sindh, Pakistan. Built around 2600 BC, it was one of the largest settlements of the ancient Indus Valley Civilization, and one of the world's earliest major urban settlements, existing at the same time as the civilizations of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Crete. Mohenjo-daro was abandoned in the 19th century BC, and was not rediscovered until 1922. Significant excavation has since been conducted at the site of the city, which was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980. Mohenjo-daro was built in the 26th century BC, and abandoned around 1800 BC. The ruins of the city were discovered in 1922 by Rakhaldas Bandyopadhyay, an officer of the Archaeological Survey of India. He was led to the mound by a Buddhist monk, who reportedly believed it to be a stupa. In the 1930s, major excavations were conducted at the site under the leadership of John Marshall, K. N. Dikshit and Ernest Mackay. Further excavations were carried out in 1945 by Ahmad Hasan Dani and Mortimer Wheeler. The prehistoric Indus culture gave rise to the Indus Valley Civilization around 3000 BC. The civilization spanned much of what is now Pakistan and North India, but suddenly went into decline around 1900 BC. Indus Civilization settlements spread as far west as the Iranian border, with an outpost in Bactria, and as far south as the Arabian Sea coast of western India in Gujarat. Among the settlements were the major urban centers of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, as well as Lothal. At its height, Mohenjo-daro was the most developed and advanced city in ancient South Asia, displaying remarkably sophisticated engineering and urban planning for its time. Mohenjo-daro has a planned layout based on a street grid of rectilinear buildings. Most were built of fired and mortared brick; some incorporated sun-dried mud-brick and wooden superstructures. The sheer size of the city, and its provision of public buildings and facilities, suggests a high level of social organization. At its peak of development, Mohenjo-daro could have housed around 35,000 residents. The city is divided into two parts, the so-called Citadel and the Lower City. The Citadel -- a mud-brick mound around 12 metres (39 ft) high -- is known to have supported public baths, a large residential structure designed to house 5,000 citizens, and two large assembly halls. The city had a central marketplace, with a large central well. Individual households or groups of households obtained their water from smaller wells. Waste water was channeled to covered drains that lined the major streets. Some houses, presumably those of wealthier inhabitants, include rooms that appear to have been set aside for bathing, and one building had an underground furnace (known as a hypocaust), possibly for heated bathing. Most houses had inner courtyards, with doors that opened onto side-lanes. Some buildings had two stories. In 1950, Sir Mortimer Wheeler identified one large building in Mohenjo-daro as a "Great Granary". Certain wall-divisions in its massive wooden superstructure appeared to be grain storage-bays, complete with air-ducts to dry the grain. According to Wheeler, carts would have brought grain from the countryside and unloaded them directly into the bays. However, Jonathan Mark Kenoyer noted the complete lack of evidence for grain at the "granary", which, he argued, might therefore be better termed a "Great Hall" of uncertain function. Mohenjo-daro had no circuit of city walls, but was otherwise well fortified, with guard towers to the west of the main settlement, and defensive fortifications to the south. Considering these fortifications and the structure of other major Indus valley cities like Harappa, it is postulated that Mohenjo-daro was an administrative center. Both Harappa and Mohenjo-daro share relatively the same architectural layout, and were generally not heavily fortified like other Indus Valley sites. It is obvious from the identical city layouts of all Indus sites, that there was some kind of political or administrative centrality, but the extent and functioning of an administrative center remains unclear. Mohenjo-daro was successively destroyed and rebuilt at least seven times. Each time, the new cities were built directly on top of the old ones. Flooding by the Indus is thought to have been the cause of destruction.