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7/13/2015 Mohenjo Daro: Could this ancient city be lost forever? BBC News
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine18491900 1/10
Magazine
27 June 2012 Magazine
Mohenjo Daro: Could this ancient city be lost forever?By Aleem MaqboolBBC News, Mohenjo Daro, southern Pakistan
Aleem Maqbool looks around the archaeological site at Mohenjo Daro
Pakistani officials say they are doing their best to save one of the most importantarchaeological sites in south Asia, Mohenjo Daro. But some experts fear the BronzeAge site could be lost unless radical steps are taken.
It is aweinspiring to walk through a home built 4,500 years ago.
Especially one still very much recognisable as a house today, with front and back entrances,interconnecting rooms, neat fired brick walls even a basic toilet and sewage outlet.
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7/13/2015 Mohenjo Daro: Could this ancient city be lost forever? BBC News
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The upper town in the once thriving city
Astonishingly, given its age, the home in question was also built on two storeys.
But it is even more impressive to walk outside into a real Bronze Age street, and see all ofthe other homes lining it.
And to walk the length of it, seeing the precise lanes running off it before reaching a grand,ancient marketplace.
This is the marvel of Mohenjo Daro, one ofthe earliest cities in the world.
In its day, about 2600 BC, its complexplanning, incredible architecture, andcomplex water and sewage systems madeit one of the most advanced urban settingsanywhere. It was a city thought to havehoused up to 35,000 inhabitants of thegreat Indus civilisation.
While I was overwhelmed by the scale andwonderment of it all, my eminent guide to the site was almost in tears of despair.
"Every time I come here, I feel worse than the previous time," says Dr Asma Ibrahim, one ofPakistan's most accomplished archaeologists.
"I haven't been back for two or three years," she says. "The losses since then are soimmense and it breaks my heart."
Dr Ibrahim starts to point out signs of major decay.
In the lower town of Mohenjo Daro, where the middle and working classes once lived, thewalls are crumbling from the base upwards. This is new damage.
The salt content of the ground water is eating away at the bricks that, before excavation, hadsurvived thousands of years.
As we move to the upper town where the elite of the Indus civilization would have lived, andwhere some of the signature sites like the large public bath lie, it appears even worse.
Some walls have collapsed completely, others seem to be close to doing so.
"It is definitely a complicated site to protect, given the problems of salinity, humidity andrainfall," says Dr Ibrahim. "But most of the attempts at conservation by the authorities havebeen so bad and so amateur they have only accelerated the damage."
7/13/2015 Mohenjo Daro: Could this ancient city be lost forever? BBC News
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Burying the site may be the only hope
One method used has been to cover all thebrickwork across the vast site with mudslurry, in the hope the mud will absorb thesalt and moisture.
But where the mud has dried andcrumbled, it has taken with it fragments ofancient brick, and the decay goes onunderneath.
There are even parts of the site wheremillenniaold bricks have been replacedwith brand new ones.
"In a way, it is testament to Mohenjo Daro that it is still standing, given everything that hasbeen thrown at it in the last few decades in the name of conservation," says Dr Ibrahim.
Even the Mohenjo Daro museum has been looted, with many of its famous seals (thought tohave been used by traders) among the artefacts that were stolen. They have not beenrecovered.
A guide at the site says he too has seen the dramatic changes in its condition and upkeep.
And while Pakistani visitors do still come on public holidays, he says very few foreign touristsvisit Mohenjo Daro now. He suggests that might be because of Pakistan's security problems.
Given the damage being done to this World Heritage Site, a poor tourism strategy hasbecome the least of its troubles.
It was the government of Pakistan that was in charge of Mohenjo Daro for decades, butrecently responsibility was handed over to the provincial authorities in Sindh. They have nowset up a technical committee to rescue the site.
"We need urgently to listen to experts fromall fields to save Mohenjo Daro," says DrIbrahim.
"Yes, there is salinity, but local farmershave worked out how to overcome thatproblem so why can't we? But we have todo something soon, because if things carryon like this, in my assessment, the site willnot last more than 20 years."
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One saving grace may be that some of thecity remains unexcavated and so remains protected.
Some experts have gone so far as to suggest the entire site should be buried again to halt itsdecline.
It is a sign of the desperation of those who love Mohenjo Daro, and who are pained to see acity that once rivalled sites of its contemporary civilisations in Egypt, Mesopotamia andChina, losing its glory in this undignified way.
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