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Journalism of Courage
In the 1960s, hydrologist Robert L Raikes and archaeologist George F Dales put forward the theory that a series of catastrophic floods in the Indus around c. 1800 BC had wiped out the great urban centres of the Harappan civilization. Last week, Pakistan’s Department of Archaeology warned that heavy rainfall in the Sindh province threatened the World Heritage status of Mohenjo Daro, one of the largest of Indus Valley Civilization sites.
The prehistoric antiquity of Mohenjo Daro, which flourished on the right (west) bank of the Indus river in the 3rd millennium BC was established by Rakhal Das Banerji of the Archaeological Survey of India in 1922. The ruins of the sprawling city of unbaked (burnt) brick 510 km north-east of Karachi and 28 km from Larkana in Sindh were recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1980.
Damage at the site
Authorities in Sindh have called for urgent attention towards conservation and restoration work at the site. The report said that the curator of the 5,000-year-old site wrote to the director of culture, antiquities, and archaeology at the end of last month saying “we have put in efforts to protect the site with our resources”, but departments like irrigation, roads, highways, and forest needed to step in because “landlords and farmers had…inserted pipes and given cuts to canals and roads to release water into Mohenjo Daro’s channel”.
The Dawn report said that between August 16 and 26, the archaeological ruins of Mohenjo Daro had received a record 779.5 mm of rain, which had resulted in “considerable damage to the site and partial falling of several walls, including the protection wall of the stupa dome”.
The Nation reported that it had emerged on Thursday that the ruins “did not remain safe from the devastating effects of downpours”, and that the “DK Area, Muneer Area, Stupa, Great Bath and other important sites of these ruins have been badly affected by the natural disaster”.
The “Paris Stairs, the Stupa and the DK Area are particularly in a worst condition”, The Nation report said. It quoted site curator Ihsan Ali Abbasi as saying that “although these ruins are not inundated with water, still persistent rainfall has eroded them”.
The Friday Times said in a report on August 31 that “much of Mohenjo Daro, including the iconic Mound of the Dead site, has been ravaged by floodwaters, with excavated areas being damaged as the water seeps through and creates furrows as it fills out the site”.
In a separate report, The Nation said on Monday that “keeping in view that…Mohenjo Daro…is facing the danger of obliteration after braving the monstrosity of recent flash floods and torrential rains”, the entry of tourists to the site had been prohibited.
Mound of the Dead
Along with Harappa, Mohenjo Daro is the best known site of the bronze age urban civilization that flourished in the valley of the Indus between roughly 3,300 BC and 1,300 BC, with its ‘mature’ phase spanning the period 2,600 BC to 1,900 BC. The civilization went into decline in the middle of the second millennium BC for reasons that are believed to include catastrophic climate change.
Sites of the Indus Valley Civilisation have been found in a large area extending from Sutkagen Dor in Balochistan near the Pakistan-Iran border to Rakhigarhi in Haryana’s Hisar district, and from Manda in Jammu to Daimabad in Maharashtra. Other important sites of the Harappan civilization in India are at Lothal and Dholavira in Gujarat, and Kalibangan in Rajasthan.
The ruins of Mohenjo Daro remained undocumented until Banerji visited the site in 1920, and began digging the following year. Excavation continued in phases until 1964-65; even now only a small part of the site has been excavated. The site is famous for its elaborate town planning with street grids with brick pavements, developed water supply, drainage, and covered sewerage systems, homes with toilets, and monumental buildings such as the Great Granary and the Great Bath. At its peak, Mohenjo Daro, literally ‘Mound of the Dead’, has been estimated to have between 30,000 and 60,000 residents with a highly evolved social organisation.
Saving the site
Some reports from Pakistan said that even though the site has suffered damage in the heavy rain, it has not been flooded. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has announced plans to visit Pakistan this week, and The Nation reported that it was “expected” that he would visit the archeological site as well. Work on removing soil and silt from drains at the site is ongoing.
There are around 1,100 UNESCO listed sites across its 167 member countries. Last year, the World Heritage Committee decided to delete ‘Liverpool — Maritime Mercantile City’ in the United Kingdom from the World Heritage List due to “the irreversible loss of attributes conveying the outstanding universal value of the property”. In 2007, the UNESCO panel had delisted the Arabian Oryx Sanctuary in Oman after concerns over poaching and habitat degradation, and the Elbe Valley in Dresden, Germany, in 2009 after the construction of the Waldschlosschen road bridge across the Elbe river.
Editor’s note
An earlier version of this article, quoting Pakistan daily Dawn, had stated that fearing damage, the Mohenjo Daro could be dropped from UNESCO’s World Heritage List. There is, however, a dispute over this claim. It has therefore been removed, and is being reviewed.
