The ancient Indian city of Mohenjo-daro was destroyed by a nuclear weapon.
the verdict
REFUTED
the evidence says no
refutedsupported
the weight of evidence
0 sources for · 2 against
Archaeological and historical literature reports that the ancient city of Mohenjo-daro was abandoned around 1700 BCE rather than destroyed by any catastrophic weapon.
Over the past three years a theory concerning the abandonment of the ancient cities of the Indus Valley has been advanced: that these settlements were engulfed by a sea of mud that accumulated behind a naturally formed dam across the Indus River. This article reviews this theory and finds it lacking in two respects: ( 1 ) the evidence for the dam is extremely thin and could be accounted for in other ways; ( 2 ) even if the dam did form, one can object to the interpretation that it would surely have led to the abandonment of the whole of the Indus Valley. The present author sets forth an alternative theory. This theory proposes that the cities and settlements were abandoned because the Harappans were overutilizing their land and that they sealed their own fate with the patterns of subsistence that they choose to use.
Mohenjo-daro (; Sindhi: موهن جو دڙو, lit. 'Mound of the Dead Men'; Urdu: موئن جو دڑو [muˑənⁱ dʑoˑ d̪əɽoˑ]) is an archaeological site in the Larkana District of Sindh, Pakistan. Built c. 2500 BCE, it was one of the largest settlements of the ancient Indus Valley Civilisation, and one of the world's earliest major cities, contemporaneous with the civilisations of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Minoa, a
Mohenjo-daro (; Sindhi: موهن جو دڙو, lit. 'Mound of the Dead Men'; Urdu: موئن جو دڑو [muˑənⁱ dʑoˑ d̪əɽoˑ]) is an archaeological site in the Larkana District of Sindh, Pakistan. Built c. 2500 BCE, it was one of the largest settlements of the ancient Indus Valley Civilisation, and one of the world's earliest major cities, contemporaneous with the civilisations of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Minoa, and Norte Chico.
With an estimated population of at least 40,000 people, Mohenjo-daro prospered for several centuries, but by c. 1700 BCE had been abandoned, along with other large cities of the Indus Valley Civilisation.
The site was rediscovered in the 1920s. Significant excavation has since been conducted at the site of the city, which was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980, the first site in South Asia to be so designated. The site is currently threatened by erosion and improper restoration.
Numerous objects found in excavation include seated and standing figures, copper and stone tools, carved seals, balance-scales and weights, gold and jasper jewellery, and children's toys. Many bronze and copper pieces, such as figurines and bowls, have been recovered from the site, showing that the inhabitants of Mohenjo-daro understood how to utilize the lost wax technique. The furnaces found at the site are believed to have been used for copperworks and melting the metals as opposed to smelting. There even seems to be an entire section of the city dedicated to shell-working, located in the northeastern part of the site. Some of the most prominent copperworks recovered from the site are the copper tablets which have examples of the untranslated Indus script and iconography. While the script has not been deciphered yet, many of the images on the tablets match another tablet and both hold the same caption in the Indus language, with the example given showing three tablets with the image of a mountain goat and the inscription on the back reading the same letters for the three tablets.
Pottery and terracotta sherds have been recovered from the site, with many of the pots having deposits of ash in them, leading archeologists to believe they were either used to hold the…
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