Please note : the text following is from a variety of internet sources that i did not at the time bookmark. Nothing original below - just mix and match from various creditable historians.
Terracotta pipes used for washing basins and manholes constructed by the Indus Valley people are still in good condition after nearly five thousand years.
Almost all houses in Mohen Jodaro had a bathroom, always constructed at the side of the building adjacent to the street for the convenient disposal of wastewater into the street drains. Latrines found in the houses were placed close to the street wall for the same reason.
Ablution places were placed adjacent to the latrines, thus conforming to one of the most modern of sanitary maxims. Bathrooms and latrines situated on the second floor were drained using terracotta pipes with a fitting valve placed in the boundary wall of the building.
The street lights system, watch and ward arrangement at night to outwit the law breakers, specific places to throw rubbish and waste materials, public wells in every street, well in every house etc. revealed the high sense of engineering and town planning of the people.
The corners of the street rounded off perhaps to enable the heavy carts to take turn easily. The streets intersected in right angles and so arranged that the prevailing winds could work as a sort of suction pump and thereby clean the atmosphere automatically.
No building was allowed to be constructed arbitrarily and encroaching upon a public highway. The owners of the pottery kilns were not allowed to build the furnaces within the town obviously to save the town from air pollution.
Devices known from Persia as “wind catchers” were attached to the roofs of some buildings which provided air conditioning for the home or administrative office.
All of thes Indus civilization cities had been pre-planned. Unlike those of other cultures which usually developed from smaller, rural communities, the cities of the Indus Valley Civilization had been thought out, a site chosen, and purposefully constructed prior to full habitation.
Scholar John Keay comments: “Our overwhelming impression is of cultural uniformity, both throughout the several centuries during which the Harappan civilization flourished, and over the vast area it occupied.”
The ubiquitous bricks, for instance, are all of standardized dimensions, just as the stone cubes used by the Harappans to measure weights are also standard and based on the modular system. Road widths conform to a similar module; thus, streets are typically twice the width of side lanes, while the main arteries are twice or one and a half times the width of streets. Most of the streets so far excavated are straight and run either north-south or east-west.
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