A Completely Unknown Civilization Comes to Light
The early Indus civilization was completely unknown until early in this century when the railroad was being built and workmen found the ruins when they noticed the bricks. When excavated, cities were found that were technologically advanced to the extent that they rivaled some of today.
"These discoveries establish the existence... during the fourth and third millennium B.C., of a highly developed city life; and the presence, in many of the houses, of wells and bathrooms as well as an elaborate drainage system, betoken a social condition of the citizens at least equal to that found in Sumer, and superior to that prevailing in contemporary Babylon and Egypt... Even at Ur the houses are by no means equal in point of construction to those at Mohenjo-Daro." (OH, pp. 394-5).
We'll use the most famous of these cities, Mohenjo Daro, for most of our examples as it has been the most thoroughly excavated and is so well preserved. The discoveries made here have completely baffled the secular scholars, as happened with this discovery in the Indus Valley:
"One of the disturbing things about archaeology is the way it is always upsetting the established order of things. Whenever a scholar sits down to write a work of history, a nagging fear must plague him: perhaps, before he can see his book through the press, some new archaeological find will explode his whole view of history. His work will be out of date before it even appears! The history of ancient India is a good case in point...
. Overnight, the whole pattern of early Indian history was overthrown." (ED, pp. 91-3).
These cities are not only built of brick, they are built of BAKED brick. These burnt-bricks, or kiln-baked bricks, as they are variously called, are costly materials. But, unlike the simple sun-dried mud-brick, these baked bricks required entire forests of wood to fuel their kilns. But the advantage of baked over sun-dried is that the baked remains intact throughout rain, mud or whatever, and this decision on their part is the singular reason that their cities remained until today. However, it may also be the reason that their civilization disappeared:
"For a thousand years, the furnaces burned, and the tree grew fewer. A forest breathes, though; it gives off water-vapor, which collects in the atmosphere and returns in the form of rain. Remove the trees and the cycle is interrupted. In their lust for baking bricks, the Harappans [the name given this civilization by archaeologists] may well have turned their own valley into a desert.... Once there was a mighty civilization in that valley. Today, there is a desert." (ED, p. 99). A similar fate has befallen most of the early civilizations.
