Most of the houses are two-story, and they are also made of standardized bricks. The houses are believed to have flat roofs that made of timber. The windows locate on the second floor, and the interesting thing is, they never face the main street. Windows only face to the narrow streets and alleyways that branch off of the major streets.
This is an interesting fact to me. Because in London and many other cities, all the buildings have windows that face to the main streets. My assumption is, their main streets are really busy and noisy so that they only have windows that face to narrow streets. Or, they want to have more privacy.
Houses in Mohenjo-Daro
Most of the houses have the same lay-outs, which probably suggests that this society is relatively egalitarian. But some houses are bigger than others and they have own wells, which suggests that the social status still exist. The house in this picture was planned as a series of rooms opening onto a central courtyard providing an open space inside for community activities.
As for agriculture, they excavated some granaries which means they had already developed agriculture and they know how to store them. They found some seed in the granaries, but they don't know which type of crops they are. So they sent them back to a lab in Cambridge to test them.
However, this amazing civilization disappeared in 1500 BCE. There are several reasons that might cause this. First, they might overused the environment. Since they need to burn woods, so they might overkilled the forest. Then the soil just cannot support the crops anymore. Second, Aryans might had invaded them about 3500 years ago. Aryans are people from modern day middle east and Europe. Their skin color is lighter than native Indians, and Aryans speak Indo-Aryan language. Historians had found some evidences from Rig Veda, the sacred text of Hinduism, that suggests that Aryans might invaded Harrapa and Mohenjo-Daro.
Indra destroyed the seed of Varasikha.
At Hariyupiyah he smote the vanguard of the Vrcivans, and the rear fled frighted.
They also found some seals that are carved from soft stone. Indians might wear them as amulets. There are some patterns and writing on those steals, but John says that they haven't deciphered it yet. This is Sanskrit. Sanskrit is the primary language of India, and it also belongs to Indo-Aryan family. Most sacred text of Hinduism and Buddhism are wrote in Sanskrit. So far, nobody can really decipher this language. Our guess is, Aryans brought in this language when they invaded Ancient Indian because Sanskrit is very similar to Latin and Greek.
Nowadays, many Indians also speak a little a little bit of English since British Empire has many colonial centers in India.
We are going to leave Sindh and head to Madras tomorrow. Bye Mohenjo-Daro, it's such a pleasure to visit this ancient city!
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