Mohenjo-daro was abandoned in the 19th century BCE as the Indus Valley Civilization declined, and the site was not rediscovered until the 1920s. The cities of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa were built of fire-baked bricks. Over the centuries the need for wood for brick-making denuded the country side and this may have contributed to the downfall. The written records of this civilization have not yet been deciphered. The layout of the cities in this civilization of 2500 B.C. is surprisingly neat and orderly. The cities had not only brick-lined streets but also a brick-lined sewer system. The images below give some idea of the surprising orderliness of the cities. The name Mohenjo-Daro, meaning “Mound of the Dead Men,” is a modern one, as the original city was anything but. Spreading over an area of 300 hectares (about 750 acres) with a peak population of about 40,000, Mohenjo-Daro was one of the largest and most advanced cities in the world during its time. Laid out in a rectilinear grid and built out of baked bricks, the city featured a complex water management system, complete with a sophisticated drainage and covered sewer system, and baths in nearly every house. The original name of the city is forgotten, although one scholar speculates it may have been Kukkutarma, or “The City of the Cockerel” (a.k.a., Rooster City). The uniform size of the manufactured bricks used to build Mohenjo-Daro, the discovery of standardized weights and measures used to facilitate trade, the considerable degree of civil engineering and urban planning evident in the city’s development, and the fact these characteristics are shared with other Indus-Sarasvati Valley sites (most notably Harappa, the first site to be excavated) suggest a highly organized civilization with bureaucratic coordination of things like construction and commerce. Given that, it is perhaps puzzling to note that Mohenjo-Daro does not seem to feature any palaces, temples, monuments, or anything else indicative of a seat of governing power. The city’s largest structures are..