The mystery of Mohenjo-Daro - the ideal ancient city, all of whose inhabitants died in an instant

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

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 presence of water supply and sewerage systems indicated that in ancient times there was something grandiose here. 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.

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 is located on an artificial dais and has a granary and two large meeting rooms with rows of seating.

Scientists were amazed that such an ancient city had a water supply system, sewerage system and even public toilets (possibly the oldest in the world).

Almost every house has a bathing room, and from the buildings there are ditches for the drainage of rainwater.

Archaeologists have discovered ancient dishes, measured weights, embossed seals and numerous figures depicting animals and people in a comical form. On some objects, ancient writing is clearly visible.

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.

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).

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.

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 latest 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 have time to do it died.

Mud streams

This version is also associated with an earthquake. It could move the waters of the Indus, 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 no traces of such a mass “burial” of the townspeople have yet 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.

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 such a cluster of lightning decays, it produces an incredibly high temperature.

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. Having studied 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 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.

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.

Disappearance is no less mysterious ancient Chinese civilization, which was much older than Ancient Rome.