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The ancient Indus Valley Civilization in the Indian subcontinent (located in present-day eastern-Pakistan and north-India) was prominent in infrastructure, hydraulic engineering, and had many water supply and sanitation devices that are the first known examples of their kind.[ citation needed ]
Most houses of Indus Valley were made from mud, dried mud bricks, or clay bricks of a standardised size. The urban areas of the Indus Valley civilization included public and private baths. Many of the buildings at Mohenjo-Daro had two or more stories. They also had a sophisticated drainage system to dispose waste materials out of town.
The earliest evidence of urban sanitation was seen in Harappa, Mohenjo-daro, and the recently discovered Rakhigarhi. This urban plan included the world's first urban sanitation systems. Within the city, individual homes or groups of homes obtained water from wells.
Devices such as shadoofs and sakias were used to lift water to ground level.
Stepwells have mainly been used in the Indian subcontinent.
Several courtyard houses had both a washing platform and a dedicated toilet/waste disposal hole. The toilet holes would be flushed by emptying a jar of water, drawn from the house's central well, through a clay brick pipe, and into a shared brick drain, that would feed into an adjacent soak pit (cesspit). The soak pits would be periodically emptied of their solid matter, possibly to be used as fertilizer. Most houses also had private wells. City walls functioned as a barrier against floods.
Ruins like Mohenjo-Daro in Sindh and Dholavira in Gujarat had settlements with some of the ancient world's most sophisticated sewage systems. They included drainage channels, rainwater harvesting, and street ducts.
Sewage was disposed of through underground drains built with precisely laid bricks, and a sophisticated water management system with numerous reservoirs was established. In the drainage systems, drains from houses were connected to wider public drain laid along the main streets. The drains had holes at regular intervals which were used for cleaning and inspection. The water from bathrooms on the roofs and upper stories was carried through enclosed terracotta pipes or open chutes that emptied into the street drains. [1] The Indus valley's drainage system was found 4,500 years ago.
Mohenjo-daro, located in Sindh, Pakistan, is one of the best excavated and studied settlements from this civilization.[ citation needed ] The Great Bath might be the first of its kind in the pre-historic period. This ancient town had more than 700 wells, and most houses in Mohenjo-daro had at least one private well. [2] The so-called "Great Granary" is the largest building at Mohenjo-daro and shows the use of granaries in the Indus Valley Civilisation.
Dholavira, located in Gujarat, India (c. 3000-1500 BC), [3] had a series of water storage tanks and step wells, and its water management system has been called "unique". [4] Dholavira had at least five baths and the size of one is comparable with the Great Bath of Mohenjo-daro. [5]
Lothal, Gujarat (c. 2350–1900 BC), excavation of the site has identified two wells in the city, one in the acropolis and the other by the dock. In addition, more than a dozen houses of the acropolis possessed their own internal bathing platform which drained into a covered communal sewer constructed of brickwork held together with a gypsum-based mortar and which emptied into a cesspit outside the town's wall. [6] A relatively large house in the acropolis had a bathing platform with an attached latrine, that fed into a separate open drain, and discharged into the town's dock. The Lower town hosts a number of soak pots, large sunken jars with a hole in the bottom, to permit liquids to drain, which were regularly emptied and cleaned. [7] [8]
Harappa is an archaeological site in Punjab, Pakistan, about 24 km (15 mi) west of Sahiwal.The Bronze Age Harappan civilisation, now more often called the Indus Valley Civilisation, is named after the site, which takes its name from a modern village near the former course of the Ravi River, which now runs 8 km (5.0 mi) to the north. The core of the Harappan civilisation extended over a large area, from Gujarat in the south, across Sindh and Rajasthan and extending into Punjab and Haryana. Numerous sites have been found outside the core area, including some as far east as Uttar Pradesh and as far west as Sutkagen-dor on the Makran coast of Balochistan, not far from Iran.
The Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC), also known as the Indus Civilisation, was a Bronze Age civilisation in the northwestern regions of South Asia, lasting from 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE, and in its mature form 2600 BCE to 1900 BCE. Together with ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, it was one of three early civilisations of the Near East and South Asia, and of the three, the most widespread, its sites spanning an area from much of Pakistan, to northeast Afghanistan, and northwestern India. The civilisation flourished both in the alluvial plain of the Indus River, which flows through the length of Pakistan, and along a system of perennial monsoon-fed rivers that once coursed in the vicinity of the Ghaggar-Hakra, a seasonal river in northwest India and eastern Pakistan.
Mohenjo-daro is an archaeological site in Larkana District, Sindh, Pakistan. Built c. 2500 BCE, it was the largest settlement of the ancient Indus Valley Civilisation, and one of the world's earliest major cities, contemporaneous with the civilizations of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Minoan Crete, and Norte Chico.
Mohenjo Daro is a 2016 Indian Hindi-language period action-adventure film written and directed by Ashutosh Gowariker. Produced by Siddharth Roy Kapur for UTV Motion Pictures and The Walt Disney Company India and Sunita Gowariker for Ashutosh Gowariker Productions (AGPPL), and starring Hrithik Roshan and Pooja Hegde. It is based on the ancient Indus Valley civilization, and is set in its of city Mohenjo-daro, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This film marked Pooja Hegde debut in Hindi cinema.
Lothal was one of the southernmost sites of the ancient Indus Valley civilisation, located in the Bhal region of the Indian state of Gujarat. Construction of the city is believed to have begun around 2200 BCE.
Sir John Hubert Marshall was an English archaeologist who was Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India from 1902 to 1928. He oversaw the excavations of Harappa and Mohenjo Daro, two of the main cities that comprise the Indus Valley Civilisation.
Rakhigarhi or Rakhi Garhi is a village and an archaeological site belonging to the Indus Valley civilisation in the Hisar District of the northern Indian state of Haryana, situated about 150 km northwest of Delhi. It was part of the mature phase of the Indus Valley Civilisation, dating to 2600-1900 BCE. It was among the largest settlements of the ancient civilisation, though most of it remains unexcavated. The site is located in the Ghaggar River plain, some 27 km from the seasonal Ghaggar river. Initial excavations at the site happened in the 1960s, followed by further excavations in the late 1990s, however more sustained excavations have taken place in the past decade.
Dholavira is an archaeological site at Khadirbet in Bhachau Taluka of Kutch District, in the state of Gujarat in western India, which has taken its name from a modern-day village 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) south of it. This village is 165 km (103 mi) from Radhanpur. Also known locally as Kotada timba, the site contains ruins of a city of the ancient Indus Valley civilization. Earthquakes have repeatedly affected Dholavira, including a particularly severe one around 2600 BC.
Ganweriwal, more commonly known as Ganweriwala, is an archaeological site in the Cholistan Desert of southern Punjab, Pakistan. It was one of the largest cities within the Indus Valley civilisation, one of the most extensive Bronze Age Civilisations, and is believed to have been a city centre within the Civilisation. The site was rediscovered in the 1970s by Mohammad Rafique Mughal but has not been properly excavated. Collection of surface finds and surveying of the site has shown mudbrick walls similar to those found in other Indus Valley sites, as well as unicorn figurines, a copper seal and an impressed clay tablet. The future of the site as well as any excavation work is threatened by the continuing development of the surrounding area for agricultural use as well as the construction of a road through the middle of the site.
Amri is an ancient settlement in modern-day Sindh, Pakistan, that goes back to 3600 BCE. The site is located south of Mohenjo Daro on Hyderabad-Dadu Road more than 100 kilometres north of Hyderabad, Pakistan.
Lakhan-jo-daro is an archeological site and one of the largest cities of the Indus Valley civilization. It is located within an industrial zone on the outskirts of the modern city of Sukkur and situated at the distance of mere 75 kilometers from another major city of its contemporary era, Mohenjo Daro. It covers an expanse of more than 300 hectares.
Temple tanks are wells or reservoirs built as part of the temple complex near Indian temples. They are called pushkarini, kalyani, kunda, sarovara, tirtha, talab, pukhuri, ambalakkuḷam, etc. in different languages and regions of India. Some tanks are said to cure various diseases and maladies when bathed in. It is possible that these are cultural remnants of structures such as the Great Bath of Mohenjo-daro or Dholavira, which was part of the Indus Valley civilization. Some are stepwells with many steps at the sides.
Harappan architecture is the architecture of the Bronze Age Indus Valley civilization, an ancient society of people who lived during c. 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE in the Indus Valley of modern-day Pakistan and India.
Mandi is a village in the Muzaffarnagar district of Uttar Pradesh, India. It is located about 200 km northeast of Delhi. It is notable for the discovery and looting of an ancient treasure trove by villagers in June 2000. The treasure is believed to have been from the Indus Valley civilisation period. It is known as "Mandi treasure" or "Mandy hoard".
Kanmer, locally known as Bakar Kot, is an archaeological site belonging to Indus Valley civilization, located in Rapar Taluk, Kutch District, Gujarat, India.
Harappa Museum is an archaeology museum based in Harappa, Punjab, Pakistan. It is located about 7 kilometers from Harappa railway station, and is 17 km (11 mi) west of Sahiwal.
Stepwells are wells in which the water is reached by steps. They are most commonly found in western India especially Gujarat where over 120 such wells are reported. The origin of the stepwell may be traced to reservoirs of the cities of the Indus Valley civilization such as Dholavira and Mohenjo-daro. The stepwells were constructed in the south western region of Gujarat around 600 AD. From there they spread north to Rajasthan and subsequently to north and west India. Construction activities accelerated during the tenth to 13th century during the Chaulukya and Vaghela periods. The construction of these stepwells hit its peak during the 11th to 16th century. The Muslim rulers of the 13th to 16th century did not disrupt the culture that was practiced in these stepwells and encouraged the building of stepwells. The wells lost their significance in the 19th century due to introduction of water pumps and pipe-systems.