John Marshall Announces a Forgotten Civilization in the Indus Valley

In the early 1920s, investigations in the Larkana District of Sindh revealed the remains of an extensive Bronze Age urban settlement on a Pleistocene ridge along the lower Indus floodplain. The site, known in Sindhi as Mohenjo-daro, was first visited in 1919 by R. D. Banerji of the Archaeological Survey of India, who reported on the Buddhist stupa that crowned the mound in 1920 and began excavating there in December 1922. This prompted large-scale archaeological operations that broadened understanding of early urbanism in South Asia, establishing the presence of an expansive urban tradition contemporaneous with early civilizations in Egypt and Mesopotamia.

Built around 2500 BC, Mohenjo-daro grew into one of the principal urban centers of the ancient Indus Valley Civilisation. Covering an estimated 240 to 300 hectares, the city possessed an organized rectilinear street system constructed primarily with mortared and fired bricks, supplemented by mud-brick and timber framing. Demographic estimates for its height remain tentative, though scholars frequently cite a peak population of roughly 35,000 to 40,000 residents. The urban layout was divided into two distinct sectors: an elevated mound known as the Citadel rising roughly 12 meters above the surrounding plain, and a lower residential city.