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

  • September 6, 2022
  • Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
  • Category: DPN Topics
No Comments

 

 

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”.

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