How Pakistan floods have imperiled Mohenjo-daro’s world heritage tag

How Pakistan floods have imperiled Mohenjo-daro’s world heritage tag

Subject: History

Section: Art and Culture

Context:

The recent spell of heavy rains and floods that ravaged large parts of Pakistan’s Sindh province has also taken a heavy toll on the archaeological site of Mohenjo-Daro.

• In fact, the calamity has pushed the archeological site – situated on the bank of the Indus River– to the “brink of extinction”.

Mohenjo-daro

• Mohenjo-daro, a group of mounds and ruins, is a 5000-year-old archaeological site located about 80-km off the city of Sukkur.
• It comprises the remnants of one of two main centres of the ancient Indus Valley Civilization, the other one being Harappa, located 640 km to the northwest, in Punjab Mohenjo-daro, which means ‘mound of the dead’, was one of the oldest cities of the world.
• Important Findings
  • Great bath
  • Granary
  • Bronze dancing girl
  • Seal of Pasupathi Mahadeva
  • Steatite statue of beard man
  • A piece of woven cotton

Other Important IVC sites

• Five large metropolis of IVC – Mohen-jo-Daro, Ganweriwala and Harappa in Pakistan and Rakhigarhi andDholaviraof India.

Harappa

• Situated on the bank of river Ravi in Montgomery district of Punjab (Pakistan).
• Important Findings
  • Sandstone statues of Human anatomy
  • Granaries
  • Bullock carts

Dholavira

• Gujarat in Rann of Kachchh
• Water harnessing system
• Water reservoir
• UNESCO World Heritage site

Banawali

• Hisar district of Haryana
• Important Findings
  • Beads
  • Barley
  • Evidence of both pre-Harappan and Harappan culture

Lothal

• Gujarat, Gulf of Cambay
• Developed as National Maritime Heritage Complex by The Ministry of Culture (MoC) and Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways (MoPSW)
• Important Findings
  • First manmade port
  • Dockyard
  • Rice husk
  • Fire altars
  • Chess playing

Kalibangan

• Rajasthan,Fire Altar, Wooden plough found her Chanhudaro
• Sindh, Indus river, known for Beadmaking factory

Losing world heritage tag

• There are around 1,100 UNESCO listed sites across its 167 member countries. Last year, the World Heritage Committee, holding its 44th session in China, decided to delete the property ‘Liverpool – Maritime Mercantile City’ (UK) from the World HeritageList, due to “the irreversible loss of attributes conveying the outstanding universal value of the property”.