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Mohenjo-daro · Geographic context

Mohenjo-daro · South Asia

A city built to a plan, by people we cannot read

Drains, standard bricks, an undeciphered script, and a river that moved.

What you should be able to do after this: Explain what Indus Valley urban planning demonstrates about its society, and why so much about that society remains genuinely unknown.

0 of 4 · about 9 min

c. 2500 BCE

Planned from the start, not grown into

Most ancient cities accreted: a settlement got bigger, streets followed the paths that were already there, and the plan is the fossil of that growth. Mohenjo-daro is not like that. Its streets run on a grid, its major thoroughfares are aligned, and its drainage was laid out with the buildings rather than added afterwards.

That sequencing is the whole point. Drains under the streets, with brick-lined channels and inspection access, and household waste chutes connecting into them, means somebody decided the layout before the houses went up — and had the authority to hold everyone to it. A grid is a claim about who is in charge.

On the map

Mohenjo-daro
Check your understanding

Why does the drainage system tell us about authority, not just sanitation?

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Sources for this chapter

Every source in this quest

Written by Globe Quest editorial and last reviewed 2026-09-08. Every claim above is traceable to one of these sources; where accounts genuinely differ, the chapter says so rather than choosing for you.