“Where’s he going now?” Erik asked.
Cassie shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”
Chapter 15—The Pen Is Mightier Than the Truth
Cassie and Erik followed Griffin until he came to a sudden halt before a large square hole in the ground. The hole was roughly forty feet long, twenty-five feet wide and eight feet deep. It looked like a swimming pool with stairs on either end leading down to the bottom.
Gesturing toward the pool, the scrivener said, “This structure illustrates my point about the level of sophistication the Indus Valley people possessed.”
“Because they liked to take baths?” Erik ventured doubtfully.
“Of course not.” Griffin rolled his eyes. “I’m referring to the way this particular pool is designed. It’s known as the ‘Great Bath’ and was probably used for ritual purposes.” He paused, waiting for Cassie to confirm or deny his theory.
“You’re right about that,” she concurred. “I get the feeling that it was part of their religion.”
The scrivener continued. “The tank is made of waterproof brick. It has its own well to feed the inlet channels which filled the bath and an outlet drain to carry away waste water when the pool needed to be cleaned.”
“You mean like a sewer pipe?” Cassie’s eyebrows shot up in surprise.
“Yes, clay pipes carried waste water outside the city. And this wasn’t the only structure in Mohenjo-Daro with advanced plumbing. Most of the houses had running water and flush toilets. Clay pipes fed into covered sewer drains that ran down each street. All the waste flowed downstream into the river. Considering that the town’s population at its peak was forty thousand people, this sanitation system was a major feat of civic engineering. And it all occurred two thousand years before the Romans built their first aqueduct.”
“It makes you wonder how they developed all that technology,” Cassie said. “It’s almost as if it came from out of nowhere. One day, everybody is a gatherer-hunter in this part of the world and the next, boom, they’re living in houses with flush toilets. What gives?”
Griffin smiled knowingly. He sat down on the side of the Great Bath.
Cassie was about to do the same when Erik grabbed her elbow.
“Are you sure it’s safe to do that?” he asked.
“I’m pretty sure that whatever info I was meant to get has been gotten.” She sat down. “See, I’m still here.”
Erik took a seat beside her
The two of them transferred their attention back to Griffin.
“You were saying?” Cassie prompted.
“Quite right. I was about to reply to your question regarding advances in IVC technology. I believe you’re approaching the problem from the wrong end.”
“I am?”
“You’re viewing Mohenjo-Daro as if it represented the beginning of civilization in the Indus River Valley. I rather think it constituted the end of a very long cycle of innovation.”
Both his listeners treated him to a blank look.
“Allow me to explain. Mohenjo-Daro peaked between 2600 BCE and 1900 BCE after which desiccation gradually affected the region. The IVC as a whole flourished between 3300 BCE and 1300 BCE. However, it’s quite possible that this civilization stretches even farther back than 3300 BCE.”
“That’s not a huge surprise,” Cassie said. “Catal Huyuk in Turkey goes back nine thousand years.”
“As does an IVC town called Mehrgarh which is estimated to be as old as Catal Huyuk ,” Griffin added. “The dwellings follow the same design as the houses we’re looking at here in Mohenjo-Daro. One of the most fascinating finds at Mehrgarh was that its inhabitants practiced proto-dentistry. Several of the skeletons found at the site exhibited drilled molar crowns in their teeth.”
“Get out!” Cassie exclaimed.
The scrivener laughed at her reaction. “Prepare to be further amazed. I have a theory that the residents of Mehrgarh received their knowledge from an even older source. A source that lies at the bottom of the Arabian Sea.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve come across sunken buildings,” Erik interjected. “That temple three miles off the coast of Malta. An entire city submerged in the Gulf of Guinea near Nigeria.”
“Precisely,” Griffin affirmed. “A city was recently discovered about twelve miles away from Gujarat in the Gulf of Khambhat. The metropolis is five miles long and two miles wide and now lies beneath one hundred and twenty feet of water. It predates the IVC by several thousand years. Marine surveys show paleo river channels feeding into the area. This would mean that the city was originally situated in close proximity to one or more rivers. Structures thus far identified include uniformly-spaced houses, a bath, granary, citadel, and drainage system.”
“Just like here at Mohenjo-Daro!” Cassie registered astonishment. “How old did you say this underwater city was?”
“Artifacts recovered from the lowest levels of the submerged area show that the region has been continuously inhabited for the past thirty thousand years, but a city was first built in that spot thirteen thousand years ago. Wood taken from the top layer of the site has been carbon-dated at 7500 BCE.”
“Then that city predates Mesopotamia by thousands of years.” The pythia smiled grimly. “So much for mainstream history. It must have flooded when sea levels rose after the big glacier meltdown.”
“That would be my theory as well,” the scrivener agreed. “Global sea levels today are four hundred feet higher than they were at the time the IVC city was submerged. It’s quite likely that any survivors of that flood may have escaped inland and tried to re-establish their culture along another river valley farther from the coast. Mehrgarh may be one of many yet-undiscovered sites constructed by refugees from the sunken city.”
Cassie scanned the lower town of Mohenjo-Daro. “So that’s why you said this is the tail-end of the IVC.”
“Yes. The inhabitants in this place circa 1900 BCE were faced with a catastrophe just as disastrous as a global flood but more gradual in its damaging effect. The land which had supported them for thousands of years was drying up. Because it was a slow process, there was no mass evacuation. With each succeeding generation, small groups of people
