Page 312 - The Tigris Expedition

In the Indus Valley in Search of Mcluhha
Egypt, have far from exhausted the surprises in store for those who
still seem to think that history began with Columbus or maybe the
early Greek and Romans. Although attention was naturally first
turned inland, where Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro were first found,
it has gradually become clear that the people of the Indus civilisation
had a predilection for waterfronts. The American geologist L. R.
Raikcs2 reconstructed the sea level and major river courses at the
time of the ancient Indus culture and found that practically all the
sites of this civilisation would have been on the sea or on a river.
Scholars have recently taken an increased interest in the seaboard
sites, since the importance of shipping and maritime trade to the
earliest Indus people has become evident. A pioneer in this respect
has been S. R. Rao,3 a noted Indian archaeologist who has un­
covered a large number of the Indus Valley settlements, and
gradually moved to the ocean coast. He says:

Until recently it was generally believed that the Indus civilisation
was land-locked . . . Recent explorations have, however,
brought to light several Harappan ports giving a coastal aspect to
the Indus civilization and suggesting a brisk sea-borne trade
between the Indus people and the Sumerians in the late third and
early second millenniums bc . . . Thus, the entire coastline of
Kutch, Kathiawar, and South Gujarat, covering a distance of
1,400 kilometers, was studded with Harappan ports in the second
millennium bc. Some were already established as early as the
third millennium. ... no inland station of the Harappa culture is
as early in date as Lothal. . . . The largest structure of baked
bricks ever constructed by the Harappans is the one laid bare at
Lothal on the eastern margin of the township to serve as a dock
for berthing ships and handling cargo.

This prehistoric port with its large brick-built dock is perhaps the
most thought-compelling discovery with bearing on the Indus
civilisation. Built about 2300 bc, it consists of an enormous exca­
vated basin enclosed by thick embankment walls of baked bricks.
The well-preserved remains of these baked brick walls still stand 10
feet high and are reinforced behind by a mud-brick wharf 43 to 66
feet wide. The basin is about 709 feet long and about 122 feet wide,
and was designed to take ships about 59 to 65 feet long and 13 to
nearly 20 feet in width, which is in excess of the size of Tigris. Rao
states that two ships could pass simultaneously through the forty-
foot wide inlet gap in the embankment, and he concludes:

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