MUSCAT, Dec 30 - For more than 30 years, Prof Dr Michael Jansen, the founding Rector of the German University of Technology in Oman (GUtech) and currently the Director of the Indian Ocean Research Center at GUtech and Unesco Senior Expert, has been working along with an international team of researchers from Germany, Italy and the US on excavating the sites of Mohenjo-Daro (‘The Hill of the Dead’).
“Our recent discoveries have proved that the site is at least two times larger than to be seen today.
The major part of it has been covered in the past 4500 years by the siltation process of the Indus.
New research, which will be carried out from February 2018 onwards by myself and my team will open a new chapter of research for this civilisation and will prove further evidence for the real size of the city,” said Prof Jansen.
Located in the Indus Valley, in the province of Sindh, Pakistan, it is one of the largest Bronze Age cities of the third Millennium BC.
“The Indus Civilization was the most widespread of all known early civilisations, and of the more than 2000 identified settlements so far, Mohenjo-Daro is the largest one,” said Prof Jansen during a presentation about his research and work on the archaeological site that was followed by a German Television documentary. According to Prof Jansen, there have been many trade relations between the Indus valley and the Gulf countries including the Sultanate of Oman.
In 1979, Mohenjo-Daro was placed as one of the first archaeological sites internationally on the Unesco World Heritage List. The city was discovered by archaeologists around 100 years ago. Only 10 per cent of the city has been excavated so far.
“It appears that the city was located within a large settlement network.
It was an administrative, managerial centre and without major production zones. After a slow degrading, the city was finally abandoned around 1,500 BC,” said Prof Jansen.
The city of Mohenjo-Daro was solely built of pre-fabricated mud and burnt bricks of today´s standards.
All water needed was supplied by more than 600 wells within the urban context, the sewage system comprised of a systematic drainage system, contrary to the other contemporary ancient civilisations of Mesopotamia and Egypt, where the fresh water needed was taken from the nearby rivers.
The research of Prof Jansen and his team from RWTH Aachen University, has shown that Mohenjo-Daro probably was once the first pre-planned city of the world, built on artificial platforms to protect the inhabitants against the annual summer inundation of the river Indus.
According to Prof Jansen, since the damming of the river Indus in the 19th century and since the beginning of artificial irrigation in 1930 of an area covering almost the whole Lower Sindh, Mohenjo-Daro is under enormous threat of destruction by salts rising through the irrigation process to the surface.
Prof Jansen is planning to establish an international society for the promotion of Mohenjo-Daro, the probably largest city of mankind in the third millennium BC. The Research Center Indian Ocean at GUtech will be an essential partner to reach this goal.
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