Urban drainage and sanitation
AI-drafted · awaiting admin review
Did the Harappan cities have the world's first planned city drainage?
Independent discoveriesTechnology & engineering
Indian claim
Harappa, Mohenjo-daro, Dholavira and Lothal had covered street drains of fired brick, household bathrooms and latrines draining into them, soak pits and inspection points, on a city-wide scale.
Evidence for the Indian claim
- J.M. Kenoyer's work at Harappa and the ASI's excavations record covered, corbelled drains big enough for workers to clean, and drains from nearly every house.
- Upper-storey bathrooms drained through terracotta pipes into street drains.
- Many historians describe Mohenjo-daro's system as the most extensive sanitation of any city of its time.
Commonly credited to
Mesopotamian cities and Minoan Crete also had drains and clay pipes in the third and second millennia BCE.
Evidence for the other claim
- Drains and pipes are also found in Mesopotamian and later Minoan cities, so the idea of drainage was not unique to the Indus.
What historians and scientists say
The Harappan cities had the most extensive and systematic urban drainage known from the Bronze Age, developed alongside (not copied from) other early civilisations.