Forgotten Ages Research

Mohenjo-Daro and the Lost Civilization of the Harappans

Report Topics:

• A remarkable culture once existed along the Indus river that was very advanced in all its many aspects
• The true history of the Harappans has its origins dating back to the Ages of Lemuria and Mw
• Mohenjo-Daro had sophisticated city planning, streets with sewers and electric lighting, and a social structure without authority figures, all dating back over four thousand years ago
• The Harappan culture gave birth to the major spiritual elements that later became Hinduism

Full Report:

What are today identified as the ruins of Mohenjo-Daro are situated at approximately 28 degrees North and 69 degrees East near the centermost point along the Indus river valley which dominates the modern nation of Pakistan in southern Asia.

During its last and greatest phase of existence, the ancient city was the highest and noblest expression of what has become known to modern archaeology as the Harappan civilization, which flourished from about 3100 to 1500 B.C.E.

At its height, this civilization was composed of over five million people and covered over 800,000 square miles, with traces of its influence found from Afghanistan and Baluchistan to the Punjab, Rajathan and Kathiwar, all the way to the foothills of the Himalayas and the River Jumna. It also stretched as far east as Delhi, as far south as Mumbai, and westard to the modern border with Iran. So far, the remains of just over a thousand Harappan urban centers and settlements have been identified throughout this entire region.

The overall uniformity of the Harappan art and architecture indicates there had been a successful guiding central administration for the whole of the culture from its very beginnings—something not achieved over so large an area by any other contemporary civilization, and not surpassed until the Roman Empire almost two millennia after the Harappan civilization disappeared.

The three major centers for the ancient Harappans formed a right triangle, and together expressed the three main areas of Harappan life. To the southeast of the mouth of the Indus river was the coastal port of Lothal, representing the economic aspect. About 550 miles due north was Harappa City, after which the civilization was named, serving as the main political center. And Mohenjo-Daro—located 350 miles southwest of Harappa City and 450 miles northeast of Lothal—formed the right-angled apex of the triangle as the religious center.

The first re-discovery of the Harappan civilization occurred in 1856, when two workers from the British East India Railway, John and William Brunton, were looking for solid footings onto which to lay track for an extension of the railroad line from Lahore. They were told of the location of an ancient city site filled with kiln-fired bricks, at that time identified as Brahminadad.

Over the next several months, the brothers pilfered an estimated 500,000 feet of brickwork from the site and spread them underneath 93 miles of track line. Yet their report was that all this barely put a dent into the full total of the brickwork structures still untouched in the buried city.

In 1872 the curious brick site came to the attention of General Sir Alexander Cunningham who did the first preliminary dig. Unfortunately, his findings went largely ignored until 1920, when they were re-examined by Sir John Marshall, who in turn sent Indian archaeologist Rai Banadar Daya Ram Sahni to dig further. Sahni was the first to identify the site as ancient Harappa, and recognized that it pre-dated anything else previously known in India. Along with N. R. Banerjee, they also discovered the site of Mohenjo-Daro.

It was not until beginning in 1944, however, under Sir Mortimer Wheeler, Director-General of Archaeology for India, that both Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro received their most extensive digging work. Even today, though many archaeological investigations have followed, there are still portions of Mohenjo-Daro which remain yet unexplored.

The name Mohenjo-Daro means, “mound of the dead.” This is a modern Indian appellation, and reflects nothing of the site’s original name, which according to the Ramayana was Patala, the Sacred One. Harappa City was named Hiranyapura, and Lothal was called Prag-Jyotissa. These had been the nomenclatures of the later Indo-Europeans—what their still older names had been are now lost to us.

The majority population of the Harappan culture as seen among the skeletal remains discovered so far were of ancient Dravidian stock. With the coming of the Indo-European supplanters circa 1500 B.C.E., the Dravidians were pushed southward and today they inhabit southern India and Sri Lanka, numbering more than 70 million and speaking 14 dialects.

Most significantly, the ancient cemetery remains of Mohenjo-Daro show not just Dravidians, but also a mixture of many racial types. The various cranial finds have been variously classified as Indo-European, proto-Australoid, Scytho-Aryan, proto-Mediterranean, Caspian, Caucasoid, proto-Nordic, Turko-Iranian, Armenoid and Mongoloid. The wide spectrum of pottery human portraits found at Mohenjo-Daro and other Harappan sites depict practically every recognized form of humanity. Here was indeed probably the earliest known “melting pot” of the peoples of the Asia, Europe, Africa and the Pacific.

The residential area of Mohenjo-Daro, which composed a good 90 percent of the city, was of closely packed houses, shops and work areas, built exclusively of kiln-fired brick laid out in English bond masonry courses. Most residences were one-storey, but a few did reach two to three storeys, at a height of 35 feet. Though they had no decorative architecture such as pillars or arches, the houses were highly functional, probably very comfortable and most of all designed with a sense of hygiene. Each residence had clay plumbing pipes which connected to a drainage chute that emptied out a clay brick gutter leading directly into the sewer system beneath the main avenues. In several cases so far discovered, houses also had lavatories complete with seats and running water underneath.

The typical Mohenjo-Daro residence had a small central courtyard surrounded by several rooms facing inward. Few if any of the rooms had windows facing out into the streets, and those that did had alabaster or terracotta lattices which preserved privacy yet allowed a breeze to blow through.

Each home also had its own inside well, usually located in the kitchen, not far from either the stove or the family altar, both providing heat and light. In a few cases, stairs led to a second storey with more rooms, usually for larger families. In all, these urban homes were designed for privacy, introspection, family life, and for insulation from the outside bustle of the city streets.

Interspersed among the residential houses were also found much larger structures with dozens of rooms having several entrances out onto the avenues and lanes. These were hotels and inns for out-of-town travelers. The many rooms were complemented by a central courtyard “cafeteria,” having floor holders for large jars filled with food, wine and water set all in a row for easy buffet serving, headed by a stack of dishware, bowls and eating utensils for customers coming downstairs for meals.

The overall impression is that Mohenjo-Daro was inhabited mainly by artisans and traders who collectively composed a large and successful middle-class society.

A large hillock graced the western end of the city whose summit was accentuated by a rectangular brick platform 30 feet high. This area, called today the Citadel, had three major structures built atop it—the Great Bath, the Granary and the Assembly Hall. Recognizing this was the focal earth energy power point for the region, in the second century B.C.E. the Buddhists raised a stupa and a monastery over the ruins of the Citadel, which presently can still be seen there.

The Citadel was connected on the north side with the nearby Indus river by an embanked canal, serving as both a means of transport and as a source of water to the city. The Citadel platform also had situated along its outer edges a series of small towers. These appear to have had the same purpose as the Incan sun towers which once surrounded the ancient Peruvian capital and sacred earth energy center of the Coriconcha in Cuzco. The towers, from certain observation vantages, marked the solstice and equinox sunrise and sunset points on the horizon, indicating seasonal times of earth energy fluctuations and amplitude connected with seasonal planting and harvesting.

The Great Bath section of the Citadel was comprised of a brick-built tank 40 feet by 23 feet and 8 feet deep that had been sunk into the brick platform supporting the Citadel, and was lined with gypsum blocks coated with bitumen to keep it watertight. A double-ringed well off to one side continually fed the Bath, and in the southwest corner of the pool was a corbelled and arched drain that emptied out the western side of the Citadel platform. Between the well and the drain, water was constantly moving through and cleaning the Bath so that its waters were always clear and pure.

Wooden steps coated with bitumen sealant led up from each end of the Bath and opened up into a surrounding brick-paved courtyard and veranda lined with small rooms used for changing clothes, for lavatories and—where hot air was brought in through ducts from an adjacent central furnace—as steambaths and saunas.

The Grear Bath area was used as a form of ritual cleansing, both individually and for the entire Mohenkjo-Daro population. It was a symbolic way of releasing mutually created dependencies and limitations on emotional, mental and spiritual levels, so as to allow each person more of a freedom to be who they truly were.

This one simple act of personal and group cleansing may have been the central secret of how the Harappan civilization remained so stable and prosperous for over such a long period of time—a secret we ourselves may well benefit from today if we would but practice it. Ritual bathing is still important in modern Hinduism, whose basic roots extend back to the days of Mohenj-Daro.

In addition, with the spring and pool located at an earth energy center, the water—being a carrier of the life essence or earth chi—more than likely had subtle healing properties associated with it. The ritual bathing thus not only had psychological and spiritual meaning, but had very real physical positive effects as well.

Another third of the Citadel was taken up by the Granary, measuring 150 feet by 75 feet, made up of 27 massive blocks of brickwork storage areas for holding wheat, rice, barley, cotton and other agricultural goods. These were criss-crossed underneath with a system of air ducts which helped to keep the contents dry.

Being located as it was in an earth energy power point, the stored grain was continually impregnated with the life essence and earth chi energy, invigorating the seeds for either healthier consumption, or for better crop yield if planted. The Granary area was also supplemented with several working platforms for pounding the grain and preparing it for distribution.

This centralization of food indicates that the Harappans had a socialistic or communistic system, at least when it came to staple foods. This insured a more equalized distribution of basic sustenance to each and every citizen so that no one went hungy for as long as they lived.

The third major structure on the Citadel was the Assembly Hall, 88 feet square and having pillars which supported an overlooking balcony and roof. It had five doorways entering in from the east side, one from the south and one from the west. The Hall served several purposes—as a college for both young and adult education, as a general meeting place, and most important as a town meeting center for debate and decision-making by representatives of the city population.

It is estimated that Mohenjo-Daro at its greatest extent had a population of about 30,000, with a perimeter of over three miles, making it the largest community urban center in the world from the fourth to the third millennia B.C.E. Only Uruk, in distant Sumer, came close to rivaling it during all that time.

One of the curious elements about Mohenjo-Daro is that, from its very beginnings about 3100 B.C.E., someone came up with a perfect and sophisticated design for the city which, even though the site was subsequently rebuilt eight more times mainly due to severe floods on the Indus, the overall design was strictly adhered to for over 1,500 years.

The city was designed as a perfect square—the universal symbol of the harmonization of humanity into oneness. The square was laid out in grid lines, with twelve main avenues 30 to 40 feet wide running north and south, crossed by smaller lanes 5 to 10 feet wide running east and west, creating major residential blocks measuring 1,200 by 900 feet on the average.

This configuration of thoroughfares through the city not only helped aid in better traffic flow and communications, but also allowed the cooling breezes from the northern mountains to sweep down the streets and ventilate the homes. In many cases, especially in the smaller lanes, the corners of buildings were deliberately rounded off to both prevent cart loads from being dislodged, and also to cut down on wind eddies forming, providing better air circulation.

Below each of the main avenues the Harappans had designed an elaborate drainage and sewage system, some 1 to 2 feet deep and lined with watertight bricks, and having man-hole covers at measured distances for easy maintenance. This system helped control both sanitation and rain runoff from building up anywhere within the city.

That the system worked and was faithfully maintained during the full duration of Mohenj-Daro’s existence is testified to by the fact that nowhere did archaeologists discover any accumulations of garbage or refuse—the streets were kept clean and trash-free up to its very end. This is in sharp contrast to not only other urban centers of the day as in Sumer or Egypt, but even to most cities of comparable population existing in our day.

The main avenues of Mohenjo-Daro also had at intervals public wells providing water for travelers and animals. At each street intersection excavations also uncovered a small one-room enclosure which probably housed a traffic controler and block watchman for protecting sections of the neighborhood. At intervals too along the thoroughfares were public altars with fireplaces providing on the practical level heat and light during cool evenings, and on the spiritual level the opportunity to make personal connections with the higher intelligences of the earth and heavens.

Three types of altars represented three dimensions of worship—rectangular, ovoid and circular, symbolizing the World Mother, the Earth Mother and the Cosmic Mother, respectively. Offerings generally consisted of rice and barley cakes complemented by bowls of incense and perfume. On special occasions a bull or two were sacrificed and burned—indicative of the Harappans having thrived during the Age of Taurus, and living at the Taurus Node Point for the planet.

One of the more unusual discoveries of Mohenjo-Daro was that some of the major streets have what appear to be lampposts set at intervals and at the corners. The question that remains unanswered is, what was the lighting source?

The surprise may have been light from a simple form of electric battery. In the Princes’ Library in Ujjain in India is a document entitled the Agastya Samhita. It describes how to construct a battery in a large jug using acids and everyday materials that would have been known to the Harappans. It was used to produce an energy, the text further say, which could miraculously split water into two gases—what we recognize today as the electrolysis of water into oxygen and hydrogen.

Furthermore, later Hindu and Buddhist temples depict the use of some form of lighting that was both very brilliant and sustainable for long periods of time—far more than what could have been obtained from an ordinary fire using wood or oil as its source.

Remains of electric clay pot batteries were discovered in Iraq in 1938 dating back over two millennia, while electroplated objects have been found in both Mesopotamia and in Egypt. Greek legends spoke of the Babylonians having ever-burning lamps with no flame in them. From the Temple of Hathor at Dendera, situated along the Nile, are wall engravings depicting priests operating what appear to be electron tubes creating low-level electrical illumination.

Did the Harappans too have knowledge of electricity, and was Mohenjo-Daro the earliest known city to have been lit with electric lighting? Further excavations may prove to be interesting.

That Mohenjo-Daro enjoyed something of a democratic or people-based government is seen in the fact that the city has no palaces or ornate government buildings or royal residences. A few small structures added onto the Assembly Hall probably were used as offices for the local bureaucracy—but besides that, norhing else denoting a building pointing to an overt centralized authority exists.

There is likewise no evidence of any police force or even a prison, or the signs of subservience by slaves or any servile class.

Neither are there any portraits or images of royalty, or deifications of a king or queen. Nine sculptures found in an artists’ quarters show men with shaven upper lips, trimmed beards, hair tied down at the back, headbands with a third eye circle, and wearing a one-shoulder robe with a trefoil design. These images too have half-closed moon-crescent eyes and noble and intelligent expressions, not as glorified rulers but as wise priests or teachers in meditation, having no insignia or standards of political or military power associated with them.

They appear to have acted as assistants to the people in helping them in their cleansing ritual at the Great Bath, and as teachers and town councilmen of the Assembly Hall, and also as overseers and distributors of food to the city populous from the Granary.

Every other portrait from Mohenjo-Daro shows people in common dress—a loin cloth for women and little clothing at all for men. Jewelry and robes were sometimes worn, but as part of rituals or artistic endeavors, not a symbols of authority.

There also exist no royal burial grounds or decorated mausoleums or richly endowed tombs. Significantly absent are pyramids, ziggurats or extravagantly decorated sanctuary precincts. This stands in sharp contrast to the prevalence of such structures in both contemporary Sumer and Egypt. Burials were simple and with people facing north, accompanied by their everyday tools and utensils, indicating a common belief in the afterlife.

Most important of all, there are no signs anywhere of any military quarters or barracks, no defense walls or fortifications, and no offensive weapons. All that has been unearthed so far are a few simple bows and arrows and a sling shot, designed for hunting and not for military use.

Other items uncovered include saws, axes, knives and razors made from bronze, copper and iron—again, used for everyday purposes and not for aggression. There also appears to have been no inter-city warfare among the various Harappan urban centers throughout the millennium and a half of their existence—and this again in contrast wih the bickering city states of Sumer, Egypt, Babylonia, Asia Minor and Greece that followed.

Add to this no evidence of slums or of class separateness (the Hindu caste system of more modern Indian society was a later import), nor are there any indications of bigotry among the many races inhabiting Mohenjo-Daro, nor were there any major shrines or patronized priesthood denoting an organized, overbearing self-indulgent religion. All the signs point to there being very minimal expressions of the exercise of power or authority or class conflict or economic stratification. In many ways the Harappans appear to have developed a system of social, economic, political and religious parity and egalitarianism throughout their population that remains unequal today by most modern societies.

Some historians point out that because most of the everyday aspects of Harappan life seem to have been uniform and standardized—as seen in the city housing, the distribution of food, the lack of ornate possessions—that this is a sign the culture was oppressed and regimented.

But the expressiveness of Harappan art as seen in its pottery and stealite sculptures, in its seal designs and clay vases, reveals a lively sense of freedom—from the natural flowing movements of the animal figures to the flirtive stance of a bangled dancing girl and the living embrace of a mother for her two newborn children, to the tranquil face of a meditating teacher. Emotions are openly expressed, unlike the cold and stiff, stylized figures seen in Mesoptamian and Egyptian art forms.

Also, an oppressed society does not give birth to new ideas or ingenuity in science and technology. Here are a few examples:

*There is good evidence to suggest that the Harappans developed and used the decimal system and the zero, and also knew of the compass, plus had a complex system of weights and measures that was the envy of other contemporary ancient cultures. Meticulous accuracy in all measurements of length, mass and time was matched by systematic uniformity. In all the major Harappan urban centers, every one of millions of bricks utilized in construction all conformed to a perfect ratio of 4:2:1.

*The marvel of the artifical harbor, sluice gates and docks created at Lothal testified to the Harappan large-scale engineering skills, all based on a careful study of tides, currents and wave action.

*They also constructed an elaborate system of irrigation dams and locks that controlled the Indus for more than a millennium, before a major climate change destroyed their efforts.

*The Harappan form of writing, far from being restrictive as one would expect under an authoritarian system, was very elaborate, composed of 20 alphabetic signs, 52 basic determinatives and over 450 pictographs with many variations. Each family even possessed its own property seal with its own motto or identifying title, indicating that writing and reading were universally taught and practiced—a true sign of a free society.

*The family seals also portray forms of bulls, zebus and other bovine types not seen today, which could only have been hybrids genetically bred. The Harappans were likewise responsible for the domesication of new forms of sheep, elephants, dogs, wheat, rice, barley and cotton. They may have also at one point domesticated the rhinoceros—something not achieved again by any peoples at any other time in history and even in our present age.

*What examples of Harappan metallurgy have survived to us indicate a very real sophistication unsurpassed until today. In fact there are links now being made between Harappan iron-casting techniques and the mysteries surrounding the Delhi Pillar, a non-rusting iron shaft which has defied all the monsoon elements for millennia, and still stands today in the courtyard of Khutab Minar in old Delhi.

*Many of the Harappan toys were highly educational and imaginable, with moveable, detachable and interchangeable parts, or with strings for climbing up and down poles. These reflected mechanical skills and a lost prior knowledge dealing with forms of machinery. Large clay figures are strikingly similar to gear wheels or fly wheels, and may have been models or memories of metal machines which did not survive through time because of the acidity of the Indus soil that destroys most metal in a short time. There are some experts who believe that the Harappan culture may have been the true originating source for the Antikythera mechanism discovered in the Aegean Sea in 1900.

*In 2001, archaeologists studying skeletal remains from Mehrgarh were surprised to find evidence of advanced medical skills and dentistry. Several of the teeth show evidence of having been expertly cleaned and drilled using what only could have been a tiny metal high-speed drill bit.

*Seal impressions depict herbal and medicinal plants that point to the Harappans having been cognizant of a wide variety of healing substances, the full spectrum of which would have rivaled that of the best European Renaissance apothecaries.

*Harappan artisans produced many forms of creative expression, particularly paintings, sculptures, dance and music. A harp-like instrument was depicted in seal impressions and carved shells from Lothal. Their artwork in particular revealed a sophistication in anatomical detail that for their period was most advanced. Sir John Marshall commented on several dancing girl figurines unearthed at Mohenjo-Daro:

“When I first saw them I found it difficult to believe that they were prehistoric. They seemed to completely upset all established ideas about early art. Modeling such as this was unknown in the ancient world up to the Hellenistic age of Greece, and I thought, therefore, that some mistake must surely have been made, that these figures had found their way into levels some 3,000 years older than those to which they properly belonged. In these statuettes, it is just this anatomical truth which is so startling, that makes us wonder whether, in this all-important matter, Greek artistry could possibly have been anticipated by the sculptors of a far-off age on the banks of the Indus.”

One of the important keys to the success of Harappan life was in the individual’s sense of inter-connectedness with all aspects of the self, with all of humanity, with the Earth and life, and with the Cosmos. These many aspects were personified as a number of deities, mostly of a feminine nature.

Several clay figures depict a woman with flowers growing out of her open womb, surrounded by animal spirits. This symbolized the life essence fertility of the Earth Mother. Her image was balanced with a male portrait sporting large horns, phallus erect and likewise encompassed with many different animal forms. Here was a form of Pan, representing the Earth’s soul spirit, who was also a pre-Shiva form of Pusapati, the “Lord of Beasts.”

Other figurines were fashioned in the form of a woman with no exaggerated genitals, but who wore large double bowls flanking each side of her head that held water or incense. The bowls symbolized the two hemispheres of the human brain, and the woman—being the World Mother of humanity—celebrated the perfect balance of logic and reason with intuitiveness and creativity within all peoples everywhere.

Still another female figure often found among the ruins of Harappan altars modeled a large crescent moon on her head, or had a star on her forehead or held a star in her hand. She represented the Great Cosmic Mother, and the influences of the universe within the unfolding events of humanity and Earth.

Other symbols relating to the spiritual realms and the life patterns of the planet are seen in various Harappan pottery designs, usually made with black and red paint on pink clay. Quite a few designs portray the Pipal Tree, also sacred to the later Hindus and Buddhists as the Tree of Life.

One beautiful and thought-provoking example shows the figure of an androgynous deity standing in the midst of the Tree with both horns and long hair—designating the perfect union between the Earth Mother and Pan. Near the Tree is a human worshipper with a sapling growing out of the top of his head—again, a symbol later used by the Hindus to represent an opened crown chakra and the individual’s achievement of Divine Cnsciousness.

Behind the worshipper is the presence of the Taurus bull, the prominent animal figure seen throughout Harappan art, pointing to the Taurean time and place that Mohenjo-Daro existed—in the Precession of the Equinoxes, the Age of Taurus, and in the Earth‘s Crystal energy grid, the Taurus Node Point. And directly below the worshipper are seven robed figures with feather plumes in their hair—symbolizing the seven spiritual dimensions of humanity itself.

Very often too the image of the Tree of Life was accompanied by various intersecting circles, swirls, zigzags and geometric designs that are typical artistic portrayals of earth energies found throughout the world. Three potsherd fragments show two serpents, one curled around the Tree (with parallels to the Hebrew Garden of Eden) and the other twisting around a cone-shaped object, also associated with wavy lines.

The cone object is the later Hindu lingam and the Greek omphalos, ceramic or stone markers set up in sacred places to represent earth energy power points, known as “navels” or regenerative “phalli” stones for the planet and for humankind.

One other highly symbolic pottery piece depicts a woman carrying two children, riding in a two-wheeled chariot or cart, pulled by two oxen on a yoke. Here we have the World Mother giving birth to the future Aeion Twins, who represent the next octave expression of the human All Consciousness.

What Harappan script names have so far been translated relates this to the later Buddhist traditions of Lala, the future children to be born to Maitreya—the next Buddha who is to come—with the Brahmani as the Sacred Woman. The chariot vehicle is the Chariot of the ancient Tarot, symbolizing the cosmic unfolding of events toward their destined outcome. And the oxen, once again, are the Taurean energies bringing the spiritual truths down and earthing them into physical reality.

One of the most revealing series of pottery figurines show an individual in various yogic asana postures. These make it very clear that the whole practice of yoga was not Hindu in origin, but was something the Hindu culture borrowed directly from the earlier Harappan peoples they supplanted.

One of the chief purposes for doing yogic positions is to open the energy flow of the various chakra centers within the body. The fact that many of the chakra locations are accentuated by jewelry or clothing in a number of Harappan portraits of the human body strongly suggests these people were very familiar with the chakra system, and that once again the later Hindus simply borrowed all aspects of the system and its various levels of symbolism from their Harappan predecessors.

An examination of the route of Initiation through the many temples along the Nile river reveals that the ancient Egyptians were heavily influenced by the Harappans at a very early stage in their history. The Nile was looked upon as being the Susumna axis, and the major temple centers with their different gods and hieroglyph symbols represented the chakras and their multi-dimensional aspects.

A preliminary examination of Harappan outposts situated along the Indus indicates that a similar correspondence of sacred sites and chakras may also have been developed by these highly spiritual people.

The Harappans appear to have possessed a primordial, purer form of Hinduism, devoid of the distortions added by later cultural incursions. The religion of Mohenjo-Daro was thus more benevolent, secular-minded and practical, yet compassionate and transcendant, focusing on the good of the whole balanced with the good of the one.

The existence of the Assembly Hall, the Great Bath and the Granary as the primary center for religion, social, political and economic activity testifies to the Harappan belief in collective higher consciousness linked with collective ritual and decision-making, and collective production held in trust for the common good and equal distribution.

It was indeed a truly spiritual yet down-to earth civilization “for the people and by the people.” And in that sense Mohenjo-Daro is a prophecy and a hope from the distant past of what the whole of humanity may yet attain to in our future, only on a planetary level.

One of the greatest mysteries about Mohenjo-Daro is its true origins. From the very first layer dating to 3100 B.C.E., the city’s sophisticated plan was already fully developed and put into place, and the eight succeeding layers that followed merely copied and preserved the original. It now appears too that even the foundation city itself may have been deliberately made with calculation, to commemorate major astrological events.

In Hindu traditional time measurement preserved in the Tirvalor Tables, the Kali Yuga or Present Age began on February 16, 3102 B.C.E., when the planets Saturn, Mars, Jupiter and Mercury emerged in that order from behind the Sun in a few minutes’ time. This also closely paralleled the start of the Age of Taurus. Several other calendar systems around the world likewise were initiated about this same period—the ancient Mayan Long Count, for example, began on August 12, 3114 B.C.E., also marking the inception of a new World Age. It is far more than just coincidence that the first recognized occupation of Mohenjo-Daro is dated very closely to these same origin points.

New archaeological research is now revealing further that beneath the first occupation level are remains of other civilizations dating much earlier than that of the Harappan settlement of Mohenjo-Daro. Carved wood taken from just below the first city has been radiocarbon dated to 4700 B.C.E. Test trenches and drillings on site show evidence of human culture extending down to depths of 60 feet—three times the depths of the earliest remains of Mohenjo-Daro itself. What is more, oher remains are suspected that are far older still, but which are inaccessible because of the present water table and silting of the Indus river nearby.

In checking with esoteric and channeled sources, the true origins of Mohenjo-Daro actually extend back to about a million years ago, toward the end of the Hyperborean Age and the inauguration of the Lemurian Age. At that conjunction of the Ages, the last of the Hyperborean Masters helped to bring in the Icosa Dodeca Crystal vibration for the Earth by anchoring in Fourteen Etheric Gemstone Temples.

Among these was the Aquamarine Etheric Gemstone Temple, which was tethered to the physical plane by means of a small rock-hewn sanctuary, the first structure ever built on what is now the Mohenj-Daro site. Portions of it, as it was carved out of the base rock far beneath the present Indus riverbed, may someday be seen again.

The very first Keeper of this sanctuary had been Pa-Maha-Labarta, whose name in later Harappan means, “Great Guardian of the Hymns of the Order of the Universe.” He has incarnated many times during the Age of Lemuria, Atlantis, the Megalithic period and in the Harappan Age itself, always as a teacher or assistant. He continues to fulfill this purpose as a sacred site guardian even today and again in future times to come.

Geologists recognize that during the Age of Lemuria which took place before the end of the Pleistocene, beginning about one million B.C.E., land extended much farther out into the Indian and Pacific Oceans. What are now the sunken million square miles of the Maldive Shelf (comprised of southern India, Sri Lanka, the Maldive and Laccadive Islands), the million square miles of the Sunda Shelf (extending from Indochina, Malaysia and Indonesia), an additional million square miles situated farther to the south (known today as the Kerguelen Plateau), the four million square miles of the Sahul Shelf (Australia, Tasmania, Melanesia and New Zealand)—plus other now submerged land bridges linking all the way east to Hawaii and Rapa Nui that formed due to much lowered oceanic levels—they were all above water and collectively made up the prehistoric landmass of Lemuria.

Various ancient sources spoke of the existence of Lemuria and the great civilization it once had before it was destroyed. In 1879 the French historian Jaccoliot published in Paris his life work called Histoire des Vierges which included the translation of a Sanskrit text now lost to us, the Goparams. The text described a former oceanic landmass to the south and east of India which in its earliest intact form was called Rwtas, and its forgotten peoples spoke a language called Sansar.

In the Greek Fragments of Euemerus, preserved by Eusebius quoting Diodorus Siculus, is the story of an enigmatic land once located to the south of Arabia called Panchaea. It is told that in an Age even before the Gods themselves (before Atlantis) there existed in this land a certain high mountain on the summit of which stood a gold temple, and in the temple was a single gold column that had inscribed in an unknown primordial language the complete story of Creation written as an eye-witness account.

There was an ancient Roman festival called the Lemuralia held just before mid-May, said to have been established by Romulus, one of the twin founders of prehistoric Rome. Participants in the ritual first washed their hands three times, then walked barefoot and scattered black beans behind them nine times. This was to invoke the dead spirits from ages past to return, and offer them a pathway into the light. The last ceremony, held on the 15th of the month, was to make thirty human images out of reeds and cast them into the Tiber river, allowing the rushing waters to carry them away and sink out of sight—a memory of distant cataclysms which once overwhelmed the planet.

The Tamils of southern India still remember a sunken homeland that once covered the Indian Ocean, which they call Tamilikan. Here were great cities with universities of ancient wisdom. Three of the most prominent of these succeeded each other extending over many millennia. The earliest of these was Tenmaturai which taught for 4,440 years. Then came Kapa-tapuram lasting 3,700 years. It was succeeded by Maturai for 1,800 years and had 44 rulers before all was destroyed by a major catastrophe.

The Tamils say that after the cataclysms they rebuilt Maturai as the city of Madurai, now near the southernmost tip of India.

According to one of the five Tamil epics of the Silappadhikaram, the chief center of higher learning was the city of Kumari Kudu that once dominated over a landscape with a wide river and was situated on a high mountain filled with gold and jewels. In this sacred city was a temple called Tamil Sangham containing the most esoteric wisdom known to prehistoric humanity dating back to Ages older still—the Hyperborean and Polarian Ages, between 8 and 18 million years ago.

Suddenly, everything was swallowed up by tidal waves and lost. In the Rajavali, or the Chronicles of Ceylon, it is recorded that the inrushing waters drowned 100,000 cities, 970 ports and 4,000 trading centes. This was the First Lemurian Cataclysm of 500,000 B.C.E., which obliterated the Indian Ocean portion of Lemuria, leaving the Pacific landmass to survive that became known as Mw.

Another sacred Ceylonese text, the Mahawamsa, parallels the Tamil treatises by depicting an ancient submerged country once ruled by the Yakkhas. Now lost beneath the waves is a sanctuary that once housed the golden figures of 4 kings, 32 maidens, 28 teachers, and a multitude of dancing deva spirits holding musical instruments, lotus flowers and other gifts.

Sri Lankan archaeologist A. D. Fernando believes that unexplored ruins on his native island, such as at Ariththa in Ritigala, are above water remnants of the Yakkas civilization. Here one finds huge standing stones 18 feet high, 6 feet wide and 2 feet thick that remind us of Stonehenge, only as Fernando is attempting to prove, they are far older. At another site, Maduru Oya, he points to prehistoric dam remains composed of blocks 15 tons each in size, sluice gate systems 6 miles in length controlling the water of several lakes, and a lost irrigation system covering dozens of miles—all evidence that a great and mighty civilization dwelt here ages ago before the known civilizations of the Far East came into existence.

After Lemuria’s tragic demise, Hindu literature identifies the earliest remembered peoples to dominate the Indian subcontinent as the Ananda Empire. It came into being soon after the Second Lemurian Cataclysm of 120,000 B.C.E., which submerged the island of Deylon once situated off the west coast of India, the last remnant of the Indian Ocean portion of the lost continent.

The Hindus equate the figure of Ananda with Adam, who was the first of a new form of humanity—what paleo-anthropologists call Cro-Magnon, anticipating the coming of the Atlantean race.

The original Lemurian sacred rock-hewn shrine at the Mohenjo-Daro site was expanded into a learning center during the Ananda Empire, especially by Ananda’s successors, Manu Svayambhuva the Enlightened and Uttanapada the Wise. The first of these traveled the world gathering the lost wisdom of the past, while the latter was responsible for establishing schools of wisdom—one of which was located at Mohenjo-Daro.

According to Hindu legend, after Uttanapada transcended into the heavens to join Vishnu, the god of peace, many generations followed during which the Ananda Empire flourished. A distant offspring of Ananda, Pritha, established many cities and trade centers linking the Empire with distant Mw in the Pacfic, the last phase of the Lemurian Age.

The Third Lemurian Cataclysm of 80,000 B.C.E. and the Final Cataclysm of 50,000 B.C.E. greatly weakened the Ananda Empire. At the end of the long Dynasty came Manu Vaivasvata, the Indian “Noah,” who was warned by Vishnu appearing as a fish of the coming global destruction. Manu, heeding the warning, survived with his family and helped repopulate the world into the Atlantean Age which followed.

Between 50,000 B.C.E. and 28,000 B.C.E., Hindu texts speak of a successive series of lost cultures rising and falling across the Indian landscape, each in their way leaving a layer of occupation at the Mohenjo-Daro site. These cultures are recalled by the single name Yayati. These in turn were superceded by the Solar Mandhatri or Naga Empire, ruled by the Serpent Race or Naacals, who originally came from Burma as a last outpost of destroyed Mw.

The Naacal capital was at Nagpur in the Deccan, which the Ramayana identifies as Bhogavati, where the “sepent people” were ruled by their king Vasuki. Another important Naacal center was called Kaveri-Pattanam. At the juncture of the Kaveri and Nerbuda rivers near Mandhata is an area called the Sacred Way that is filled with ruins of a great metropolis that have never been escavated.

As an outgrowth of the Naga Empire came the Parasurama or Rama Empire, reigning over the Deccan, northern India and the Indus valley beginning about 21,000 B.C.E. This was also known as the Empire of the Seven Rishi Cities—Rishi meaning Master Teacher—of which Mohenjo-Daro is remembered as being the remnant of one of these.

The Rama Empire was contemporary with the last phase of the Atlantean Empire—identified in Hindu literature as the Asvans—spoken of by Plato in his Timaeus and Critias, which predominated over the Atlantic Ocean and all its shores. Contemporary too was the Osirian Empire of Predynastic Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean, the prehistoric Hellenic Sphere of city states headed by the First Athens, the great Uighur Empire of Central Asia with its Gobi City of Gold, Tu-oi, and the Caucasus Empire which later absorbed Egypt under the guidance of the teacher Ra-Ta.

The famed epic stories of India, the Ramayana, the Drona Parva and the Mahabharata, offer us glimpses of life in the late Atlantean period. They describe great god-kings who rode through the air on Vimanas or flying craft, fighting battles and destroying rivals with their power. That the descriptions of Vimanas were not meant as mere fantasy can be seen in other Hindu works of a more scientific nature, which describe the flying craft in very technical terms, so advanced in fact as to be partly incomprehensible to us today.

The main heroes of this era of time were Prince Rama of Ayodhya and his wife Sita. Rama was the last of the Dynasty of Rama stretching back to the founder of the Rama Empire itself. They are described as “the Ramas who ruled the earth for 11,000 years. From the center of the world (India) they reached the four Oceans’ shores”—Indian, Pacific, Atlantic and Arctic.

As the epic story unfolds in the Ramayana, Sita is abducted by the cruel leader of Ceylon, Ravana. Rama searches and locates her, then with a host of allies destroys Ravana and wins his wife back. She subsequently gives birth to twins—a reflection of the World Mother giving birth to the Aeionic Twins in a later Age. Even today, Sita is beloved of all women of India and Pakistan, who they emulate in their daily lives. Some of the images of a feminine figure found in Harappan art are thought to represent Sita and her children.

Following these events, Rama dealt with the intrigues of his half brother, Bharata, which eventually leads to the Great Bharata War. It is this conflict which brings a terrible end to the Rama Empire and soon after is succeeded by the Final Atlantean Cataclysm of 10,000 B.C.E. The Great Bharata War, as described in the Mahabharata and other Hindu works, was nothing short of a nuclear conflict during which the land was laid waste by radioactive holocaust and desolation. Remnants of this catastrophe still exist today in certain parts of India and central Asia.

From 10,000 B.C.E. to 3100 B.C.E. India saw a series of cultures come and go in waves that were localized expressions of the world-wide Megalithic and Neolithic civilizations. Modern archaeologists identify these as the Soan, Madras-Acheul, and Chauntra culures. Immediate pre-Harappan remains have also been identified as Kut-Diji, Sothi, Amri, Damb Sadaat, Kulli and Rana Ghundai.

One of the most influential of the pre-Harappan cultures was located at Mehrgarh, which was established about 6500 B.C.E., and within the next millennium had domesticated wheat and cattle, as well as produced pottery. By 4000 B.C.E., these early peoples formed trade networks and had expanded their domestication techniques to include numerous crops and the water buffalo. By the time the Harappans arrived on the scene, almost a millennium later, much of the blossoming of their cultural development could be traced to what the pre-existing culture had already created.

Despite these influences, there still exist certain out-of-place elements that strongly suggest early Harappan contact with more advanced civilizations from the past. As one entry on Harappa from the New World Encyclopedia puts it:

“The culture’s sudden appearance appears to have been the result of planned deliberate efforts. For example, some settlements appear to have been deliberately re-arranged to conform to a conscious, well-developed plan. For this reason, the Indus civilization is recognized to be the first to develop urban planning.”

From esoteric sources we learn that It was during this era that the last of the Rishi survivors from the long-lost Rama Empire maintained a dynasty of successors at Mohenjo-Daro. The final Rishi Master—one of the incarnations of Pa-Maha-Labarta—was responsible for designing and establishing the very first Harappan city at Mohenjo-Daro. And thus the city came into existence that we know today.

Another intriguing possible source of influence on the development of Harappa civilization came to light in 2001 with the discovery of a sunken city located about 30 miles west of Surat off Gujarat in the Gulf of Cambay in northwestern India. Some scholars identify this site with Dwawka, mentioned in the Mahabharata. Pieces of pottery and sculpture have been retrieved by underwater archaeologists, and pieces of wood brought to the surface were radiocarbon-dated as being at least 9,500 years old. The artistic style of these remnants have strong affinities to that of the early Harappans.

Moving ahead in time, the success of the last phase of the Harappan civilization can be seen in the widespread trade and wide variety of goods the ancient Harappan merchants dealt with. Contemporary Sumerian texts speak of two great urban centers with which they did a thriving business by way of Dilmun or the island of Bahrein in the Persian Gulf. The urban centers were called Magan or Makkan and Meluhha, described as “clean cities” located in the direction of the “rising sun,” “where elephants live” and considered by the Sumerians to be in a “worldly paradise.” Most historians today identify these two centers as Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa City.

The Harappans’ fare of trade included pottery, ivory, teak wood, cotton goods, glass and gold beads, pearls (called “fish eyes” in Sumerian texts), gold ingots, silver, copper, jewelry, lead, carnelian, turquoise, lapis, jasper, amazonite, opals, quartz, jade, onyx, as well as lotus oil and other perfumes and cosmetics. Concerning the Harappan gemstones, Sir John Marshall commented on their sophistication:

“The jewelry of these Indus people is so perfectly and brilliantly cut that it could more easily have originated in London’s present Bond Street than in a prehistoric house 3,500 years ago.”

The extent of the Harappan influence at its greatest height can be seen in various far-flung places of the world. Their cotton textiles have been found in East Africa and as far as Crete. Harappan seals and ivory were unearthed from the northern Syrian port of Ras Shamra and Cyprus. Pottery figures from the Harappan port of Lothal have shown up in early Dynastic Egypt.

Just as revealing are the artifacts brought back by Harappan sailors and merchants from many foreign ports of call—a model of an Egyptian mummy, the figurine of an ape from either central Africa or the East Indies, and, most surprising, the distinctive portrait of a penguin, either from Antarctica or an extreme southern latitude landfall.

There is also a striking parallel between the Harappan pictographic script from the Indus valley and Rongo-rongo writing found on Rapa Nui in the southeast Pacific—directly on opposite sides of the world from each other. The distinctive Harappan symbols also appear in early Chinese bone oracles, and even pre-Inca signs from South America. Did the Harappan navigators reach and trade with the early formative New World civilizations?

It is recognized that the first known variety of wild cotton in the Americas contained 13 small chromosomes, while its Old World counterpart, first cultivated in India by the Harappans, had 13 large chromosomes. Yet remains of cotton excavated from the earliest levels of Huaca Prieta in Peru, dating to 2500 B.C.E., were found to possess 13 small and 13 large chromosomes.

In other words, the Peruvian cotton was a hybrid between the Eastern and Western cotton. The cotton plant is too delicate, either in the blossomed or seed state, to have been simply carried by sea currents, bird migration or wind from one Hemisphere to the other. And explaining the transportation of the Indus valley cotton to Peru by natural means (as some conservative historians have tried to do) is only half the mystery—the other half involves the propagation of the two forms into a common strain, that would have necessitated highly complex genetic manipulations.

There is little question here that the hand of humans must have been influential in both the carrying of cotton from India to the New World, and the successful attempt to hybridize a new cotton plant.

Despite its successes, the Harappan civilization as a whole and Mohenjo-Daro in particular eventually suffered a number of disasters, some natural and others possibly man-made.

In 1979, Indian-born Englishman David W. Davenport noticed in one layer among the ruins of Mohenjo-Daro a number of vitrified remains—materials that had been melted by a very high temperature. The focal point of this melting was the Citadel, and at its center bricks and cetamic pottery received the greatest intensity of heat, being reduced to lumps called blackstones by archaeologists. Thermal experts have determined that it would have taken temperatures exceeding 2,000 degrees Centigrade to produce this effect—something no ordinary fire could do.

Within a few hundred yards of the Citadel is a surrounding zone of damage, where the melted bricks simply ran together like water, indicating a subjection to a lesser degree of heat. A second surrounding zone, extending out to less than a mile all around the Citadel, reveals signs of heat discoloration but without actual melting. No ordinary thermal conditions are apparent here also—to create such phenomena it had to have been a form of radiated heat.

The only three forms that exist that could produce such dramatic results are either thermonuclear, vulcanism or electromagnetics. Since there is no tell-tale radioactive residue on the site, and no volcano exists within a thousand miles of the ancient city, the only cause left was most likely electromagnetic in nature.

Significantly, these curious remains are dated at approximately 2500 B.C.E., the same era in which we find similar vitrified and melted ruins at specific points all over the world. Legends and stories preserved to us, such as the account of the Tower of Babel in the Hebrew Book of Genesis, suggest that at this period in time someone attempted to revitalize the earth energy system of the planet by creating a leakage in the natural electrical capacitor which exists between the Earth’s surface and the ionosphere.

The unexpected results, however, were catastrophic. The leakage precipitated a world-wide electrical avalanche, producing huge electrical discharged of lightning the likes of which we cannot imagine, that literally burnt out portions of the energy circuitry of the planet. Most affected were major Earth Node Points—and Mohenjo-Daro, located at the Taurus Node, suffered along with the rest.

The Citadel, being both the highest point of land and the focal center of earth energy patterns for the area, became the direct receiver of a continuous series of lightning bolts. The heat build-up was greatest at the Citadel itself, and lessened over a smaller peripheral area as it spread out, as seen in the zone configurations and the varied degree of destruction. Despite this catastrophe, however, the Harappan civilization survived, for the Mohenjo-Daro people built a new Citadel and city on top of the melted ruins.

Beginning about 2000 B.C.E. there appears to have been a major change of climate throughout the Indus valley which eventually led to the Harappans losing their ability to control flooding.

Previous to this, both animal bones and seal impressions show a fauna flourishing in the region that no longer exists today. There were horses, zebus, gazelles, lions and tigers, elephants, rhinos, crocodiles, and only a few camels—all indicating a damper and more subtropical climate, in contrast to the sandy, dry and somewhat cooler conditions that have since succeeded it. The earlier soil was far richer and more fertile, used for making better bricks, growing more crops and supporting large forests for firewood, all of which later no longer were possible.

There are some Indian prehistorians who believe that part of the ecological transformation occurred when a sister river system to the Indus that once ran parallel to it, known as the Hakra-Ghaggar, suddenly dried up due to a series of severe seismic events that took place during the third millennium B.C.E. Scholars today identify this forgotten stream as the Sarasvati river, mentioned prominently in the ancient texts of the Rig Veda. At least 140 Harappan sites have been located along the course of its empty bed. The two, the Indus and the Sarasvati, may have together formed a “fertile crescent” between them, much like the Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia, but when the latter disappeared, the agricultural paradise straddling both also failed.

Large silt deposits found within the city limits of Mohenjo-Daro and other Harappan cities on the Indus point to large-scale flooding taking place in 2000 B.C.E. and again in 1900 B.C.E., and for almost every generation thereafter. These floods appear to have paralleled a general decline in the living standards and the commercial wealth of the Harappans as a whole.

As the people slowly lost their spiritual connection with the land and among themselves, they suffered the physical manifestations of the consequences.

In Sumerian texts, before the Third Dynasty of Ur circa 2200 B.C.E. both Magan (Mohenjo-Daro) and Meluhha (Harappa City) are mentioned most prominently. But by the end of the third millennium B.C.E. Meluhha disappears from the list of trading centers, and by 1800 B.C.E., during the reign of Hammurabi, Magan too follows into oblivion and contacts with the east are broken.

During the period from 1800 to 1500 B.C.E., we see among the housing and artwork at Mohenjo-Daro a steady deterioration in quality and uniformity. A great civilization, having grown old, was now slowly dying. The Rig Veda speaks of the Harappans being gradually consumed “as age consumes a garment.” Their purpose of expressing the best of the Taurean Age was now fulfilled as the Age was now nearing its end, and the peoples as a whole simply resigned themselves to their coming destiny.

The last occupational level for Mohenjo-Daro, designated by archaeologists as IVC, shows signs among the skeletal remains of reduced numbers and malnutrition. All but the main urban centers were being abandoned, and food supplies were dwindling.

The final blow came about 1500 B.C.E. when the Indo-European hill peoples of central Asia descended into the valleys of the Indian subcontinent. The generally peaceful Harappans were no match for the more aggressive foreigners of the incoming Age of Aries, and they fell before them. Some Harappans did try to defend themselves and offered some resistance. The Rig Veda described the hill peoples’ god Indra as overwhelming ninety population centers and hundreds of hastily fortified villages, finally winning a difficult but decisive battle “nearby to Hari-Yupuya”—or Harappa City. Here, the last occupation layer of the city brought to light dozens of skeletons of men, women and children with skulls or other bones split by sword cuts. They were found butchered in the streets and inside their homes.

Some modern Indian experts debate whether or not there was an actual outright invasion, but state their belief that what occurred instead was more of a gradual succession of cultures. They point out that, because so much of the Harappan legacy—particularly its spiritual concepts and disciplines—was successfully transferred to the later cultures that developed the Hindu religon, that only a gradual transition involving inter-communications would have made this possible.

At Mohenjo-Daro its final days came somewhat differently and most curiously. Little or no examples of violent death were apparent, as in Harappa City. Instead, the citizens appear to have met their end with an element of inner peace and nobility. Several of the men and women and even the children were found in groups holding hands together, as if in a meditation circle awaiting and fully accepting their fate.

The real mystery is that they simply fell where they had stood, as if their souls voluntarily vacated their physical bodies, leaving enmasse as a collective spiritual exodus. There are no indications of poison or asphyxiation, drowning or starvation, or any other form of violence. Their bodies lay prone as if in peaceful sleep, waiting for the river silt to cover them and their civilization. They left behind only their accomplishments and their spiritual legacy to those who eventually succeeded them in occupying the region.

[Copyright 2009. Joseph Robert Jochmans. All Rights Reserved.]