Reading about Indus Valley Civilization again

 Am reading about Indus Valley Civilization again - a topic i go back to periodically. 

The Grid Pattern of Roads and Lanes

The Indus Valley civilization thrived with well-planned cities and elegant streets laid out in a grid pattern. At its height it had 1500 cities spread over a million kms - the largest civilization, by far, among its contemporaries. 

The longest street in Moen-Jo-Daro was 805 m long and about 10 m wide, which likely indicates that wheeled carts were in existence during this period and streets were used for trade.

The city center was connected by main streets from four directions to reduce congestion and allow free movement of people and goods to the central business district. One outstanding feature is a concentric shaped street in the form of a ring structure which was used to control expansion of the cities. The main streets of Moen-Jo-Daro and Harappa intersected one another at right angles with width varying from 3.50 to 10.00 m and up to 1.5 km long.

The lanes were joined with the streets. Each lane had a public use and was provided with street lamps. The life in the Indus cities implies a democratic urban economy.

The Modern Water Supply Systems in the Indus Valley

The people of Moen-Jo-Daro had expertise in digging water wells. The residents of the city had built about 700 wells, where a single well serviced three houses. The wells were assembled with tightening mud bricks to have a stronger life to last for centuries.

Terracotta pipes used for washing basins and manholes constructed by the Indus Valley people are still in good condition after nearly five thousand years.

Linked to larger mains, which eventually emptied outside the city walls, the sewers at Harappa would have removed wastewater from the habitation areas, depositing fertile sludge on the surrounding agricultural fields. 

Did the Minoan Civilization learn its water & sanitation techniques from the Indus Valley ?

The Minoan civilization in Crete, Greece was the earliest sophisticated society in Europe. About 1250 years after the Indus valley had begun to use modern sanitation and water supply systems, the Minoans developed ones very like them, although no other society around them had anything like it. 

It is even surmised that a wave of migration from the Indus Valley to Crete may have occurred for such developments to have taken place in Crete. 

The landmark technological achievements by both civilizations had no precedent in prior civilizations.

Save for the Indus cities, no other city in the ancient world featured such a sophisticated water and waste management system. Even during the Roman Empire, some 2,000 years later, these kinds of facilities were limited to upper-class neighborhoods.

A Sophisticated Governance System in the Indus Valley

During this period, Indus scribes developed a sophisticated writing system comprising more than 400 symbols.

Excavators have found distinctive pottery with widely used ritual motifs at all settlements throughout the greater Indus Valley.

Similar city organization and trade patterns existed throughout the Indus Valley, showing a sophisticated governance system without the use of warfare.

The Indus script

The Indus script became widespread in all the major urban centers of the Indus Valley. Its most prominent use was on seals that also bore animal motifs and ritual objects. The unicorn image is the most common (found on more than 65 percent of known seals), but other animals appear as well, including elephants, humped zebu bulls, water buffalo, bison, tigers and rhinoceroses.

We also see for the first time small tokens or tablets made of soapstone incised with script and symbols. Because many of these items feature the same set of signs and what appear to be numbers, researchers think that they served as tools for accounting. 

The writing may indicate the owners name, the commodity and its quantity, or the creditor to whom it is being presented. Some of these tablets have been intentionally snapped in two, possibly to indicate a contract between two parties, each of whom retained half until the transaction or work was completed.