Town Planning & Drainage System
Quite possibly the most unique feature of Indus Valley Civilization was their town planning which proved how civilized and developed was their way of life.
Harappa, Mohenjo-Daro and several other Indus Valley Cities had quite easily the most unparalleled architectural planning in their ancient world. All their settlements were built on elevated grounds and giant platforms which made them protected from floods and polluted waters. All the streets were laid out in straight lines intersecting at right angles, thereby forming a network of orderly grids.
All buildings were made of bricks of uniform size juxtaposed on one another and are made of a combination of stretcher and header bricks (also known as English Bond). Generally, two adjacent houses had one wall shared amongst them. Narrow passages through the outer walls led to a common courtyard which can be thought of as a neighborhood compound.
Few cities had Citadels to the west built on higher platforms, east of which is the hub of the residential area, while cities without citadel are found on high mounds.
One of the most profound features of Mohenjo-daro appears to be the Great Bath. Consisting of a large quadrangle, it was a huge swimming pool surrounded by remains of galleries and rooms on all four sides. This solid construction had approximately 8 ft thick outer walls and has withstood natural ravages for 5000 years. Arrangements for hot water bath could also have been made in some room. Often hailed(without a doubt) as the earliest public water tank in the ancient world, it had a water-tight floor made up of finely fitted bricks laid on edge with gypsum plaster with a similar construction of the side walls.
Its widely speculated and agreed upon by most scholars that the tank might’ve been used for special religious purposes wherein bathers must’ve purified/renewed themselves with water.
One of the most noteworthy feature of this civilization is the excellent closed drainage system that they had. All the brick laid channels were covered and comprised of manholes at certain intervals for maintenance purposes.
The Harappan Civilization had the world’s first known urban sanitation systems. Almost all the houses were well equipped with latrines, bathing houses and sewage drains which emptied into wider town drains and finally found their way dumped into the fertile sludge on surrounding agricultural fields. In fact, some of the houses were likely equipped with the world’s first known flush toilets.
With most houses equipped with private wells and a sophisticated water management system with a number of reservoirs in place, the Indus Valley Civilization can easily be thought of extremely skilled and intelligent in hydraulic engineering.
This kind of sewerage and drainage infrastructure was well ahead of its time, better than most western cities before the twentieth century and even that of many contemporary urban cities of developing countries.
All the evidence, remains, etc of this kind of infrastructure from these excavated sites goes on to speak volumes about how important “Hygiene” was for the people of Indus Valley Civilization. No other civilization of that time gave so much emphasis to cleanliness.
