Mohenjo-Daro - The Mystery
By: Ishaan Surti and Sanjay Subburaman
Mohenjo-Daro is a group of ruins and mounds located in the Indus Valley region in modern day Pakistan/India. The Indus River flowed through China, Pakistan, and India. The Indus Valley was an ancient civilization that thrived from to 1300 BCE. Mohenjo-Daro was a large city with about 40,000 people. While that might seem like a small number of people, that was large for the time. “Mohenjo-Daro was discovered in 1922 by R. D. Banerji, an officer of the Archaeological Survey of India, two years after major excavations had begun at Harappa, some 590 km (367 mi) to the north. Large-scale excavations were carried out at the site under the direction of John Marshall, K. N.” (This was found at the website Harappa.com).
But something wasn’t right about this place: there were bones all over the place – human bones. In fact, whole skeletons were still lying there. No one knows what happened to them or how they ended up like this. However, there was a written text that was found. The text discussed the story of a son of a god who told his dad to stop the dangerous winds. The dad said he can’t. The text said that the citizens of Mohenjo-Daro's eyes were bleeding, which is a sign of radiation. Was there a chance they died by early forms of radiation?
One theory is that the town flooded and people developed water-borne diseases like cholera. Recent studies have shown that large amounts of silty clay are found in water, backing up the theory that the city flooded. Another theory is that this is a burial ground. However, this is likely false since there are bodies in odd places, such as the stairs and roofs. Few also believe that there was a huge massacre that had happened there.
Here is what Mrs. Hendrickson a social studies thought:
“I think there was a huge natural disaster which caused everyone to die out. Maybe a tsunami or earthquake, I'm not sure, but I think that there was a natural disaster.”
To conclude, to this day no one knows what quite happened to Mohenjo-Daro, a great ancient civilization that vanished off the face of the Earth.
