The Mystery of Mohenjo-Daro

The people who lived in the Indus Valley built cities, just like the people in Mesopotamia. But there weren’t any empires in the Indus Valley. No great warrior—like Sargon or Hammurabi or Shamshi-Adad—tried to unite all the Indus Valley cities (the Harappan cities) into one kingdom.

A farmer living in the Indus Valley had a different life from a farmer in Egypt or in Mesopotamia. He grew grain, but he also grew fruit, like melons, and cotton. And he used water buffalo and elephants to work his fields! A farmer in Babylonia would have been amazed to see an Indus Valley farmer, walking along beside his elephant as he harvested his cotton and melons.

The cities in the Indus Valley were built around huge circular mounds called citadels. Each citadel had a stronghold on it—a place to go in case enemies attacked. All around the citadel, people built their houses out of mud bricks that had been baked hard in ovens. The houses were very comfortable. They had courtyards, wells, and even toilets and drains. People living in the houses could haul water up out of their wells, rather than going all the way to the river for water. Large public baths, like big swimming pools, meant that everyone could stay clean and cool.

And the drains took waste out of the houses, down into deep gutters that ran along the streets. The citadel cities were some of the biggest in the world. Mohenjo-Daro had over forty thousand people living in it.

But something happened to the cities of the Indus Valley. Around 1750 BC/BCE, people began to leave their homes. Eventually, the cities were almost entirely deserted. The buildings, drains, wells, and citadels crumbled. Slowly, sand and dirt covered over the cities. For hundreds of years, no one knew that the citadel cities were even there.

Finally, archaeologists started to dig in the ground around the Indus River.

But they couldn’t find any clues about why people stopped living there. They found some writing that the Indus Valley people left—but we can’t read the writing, so we don’t know what it says. In Mohenjo-Daro, archaeologists found skeletons lying in the street, as though people died right there in the road and weren’t even buried.

What happened to the citadel cities? We’ll probably never know for sure. But the people of India still tell ancient stories, passed down over thousands of years. These stories come from long ago, from the time when the citadel cities were still flourishing. Maybe these stories are clues. One is called “The Hunter and the Quail.”

nce, a flock of quail lived on the banks of a river. They had plenty to eat and drink, but they were afraid of the hunter who came every evening to catch them. He would creep up to the edge of the flock with his net and then leap out of the bushes. When the quail scattered, he would catch the nearest bird in his net, carry it back to his house—and eat it for dinner!

One day the oldest of the quail said, “It is easy for the hunter to catch just one of us. But what if he threw his net over all of us? We would be strong enough to escape!”

So the next evening, when the hunter leaped out the bushes, the quail all stayed in one flock. The hunter flung his net over the quail, but they rose up from the ground together, pulled the net out of his hands, and flew away, still side by side. All together, the quail were too strong for the hunter.

The quail were very pleased! Now they didn’t have to be afraid. Night after night, they stayed together, pulled the hunter’s net out of his hands, and flew away.

But soon the quail began to push and jostle at each other, as they crowded together in their safe, strong group. “You’re stepping on my claw!” cried one. “You’re rumpling my feathers!” cried another. “You’re squeezing me until I can’t breathe!” complained a third. Finally they scattered—and the hunter, who had been waiting in the bushes, leaped out and netted them, one by one. As he headed back to his house, he said, “Together, they are free. But apart, they are supper!”

What does this story mean? Perhaps it means that the citadel cities, staying independent and separate from each other, were defeated by invaders. Maybe that’s what happened to Mohenjo-Daro. Maybe, if they had united together into one kingdom, the citadel cities would have survived. But we will never know for sure.