Buried beneath the dry plains of the Indus (or Sindhu) River in Pakistan are the remains of cities, roads, forests, fields of grain, even lost rivers.
More than 4000 years ago, the Indus valley civilization thrived in what is today Pakistan and India. Children played, merchants bought and sold, craftspeople created items both useful and beautiful, boatmen plied the rivers, farmers tilled the fields, people behaved and misbehaved, experienced sorrow and happiness, wondered about right and wrong. Indus Valley ships travelled across the Arabian Sea to trade with Mesopotamia, another great civilization of the time, often using the islands of Dilmun (modern Bahrain) in the Persian Gulf as a distribution centre.
Archaeologists have excavated parts of some of these ancient cities such as Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, with their wide, regularly laid-out streets, efficient water and sewage systems, houses with cooking hearths, bathing and toilet facilities and courtyards. Ancient fruit and vegetable seeds, samples of writing not yet deciphered, pottery, decorative ceramic and stone beads, clay figurines and seals depicting animals and people, give clues about the people who lived here. But clues are all we have, for their religion and politics, their fairs and celebrations, their daily lives, clothing, bedding, carts, ships, boats and furniture, have disappeared with hardly a trace.
But imagination thrives on clues.
