4K years ago, Mohenjo-daro grew more equal over time

https://archaeologymag.com/2026/05/mohenjo-daro-grew-more-equal-over-time/

by marojejian • 2 months ago

118 49 2 months ago

drucat• 2 months ago

It's bizarre that the Indian subcontinent is now known for poverty, high inequality and the caste system, when its ancient civilizational counterpart seemed to be the opposite.

Genetically and linguistically, it's indisputable that the Indo-Aryan languages were transplants brought in by a small external group. This was followed by Islamic invasions and then British imperialism, followed by partition, and the recent ascendency of Hindu nationalism, yet the core people have been remarkably stable over thousands of years.

Online, at least, the levels of hatred and resentment seem off-the-charts. China, on the other hand seems to be growing by leaps-and-bounds, while India seems to be getting consumed by internal hatreds, and Pakistan seems to focus on the security threat posed by India, enriching a corrupt political and military elite at the expense of its own development.

I have to wonder if we'll ever find out the exact point where it all went wrong.

dyauspitr2• 2 months ago

Put away your tears. Amidst all the chaos India is doing remarkably well. If it can maintain its current growth rate for another 15-20 years it’s going to be a behemoth. They’ve been able to keep it going for 10-12 years so far so no reason to think that might not happen.

The amount of infrastructure being built right now is incredible. Thousands of miles of roads and railways per year, hundreds of new airports, many terawatthours of new energy generation, lots of skyscrapers, large scale urban metros, a dozen new planned cities, hundreds of millions of people worth of poverty alleviation, free healthcare for a large part of the population, rapidly growing GDP, a dying caste system in urban areas, women emancipation, dams, huge megaprojects, the beginnings of semiconductor manufacturing, rare earth mining, military exports etc. There are a lot of wins, it’s going to take time.

satvikpendem• 2 months ago

That's what I've been hearing for the last decade or two but so far I haven't seen a huge change, especially compared to China.

dwa35924• 2 months ago

what a weird comment. did you make this account to sway the conversation from the actual article?

d_silin• 2 months ago

Entire civilization flourished for 2000 years and then disappeared without any clue why.

I have a pet theory about Indus Valley script - inscriptions on the seals are so short and unique because they are just name signatures, to stamp other objects.

Having to be durable, they were the only inscribed objects that survived.

danans• 2 months ago

Entire civilization flourished for 2000 years and then disappeared without any clue why.

I think it's well understood that upliftment/desertification of the lower Indus valley resulted in many of the rivers the civilization was built around drying up.

Ancient DNA studies (Reich et. al) have shown a scattering of Indus peoples in all directions after that - including back to the southern Iranian plateau where they came from originally, and across the Indian subcontinent, forming a substratum of various populations across South and Central Asia.

They also reverted to smaller scale settlements, although with echoes of their previous material culture, eventually merging with later migrants and pre-existing indigenous populations.

After that, they very likely played a significant role in the second great urbanization of the Indian subcontinent [1], which took place in the first millennium BCE in the Gangetic plain, and also possibly in the parallel development of Iranian civilization. It is thought they were the original inventors of the famous Indo-Iranian oven known the tandoor, which seems to have remigrated back into South Asia long after the Indus people took it to Central Asia.

So while their original cities were abandoned, their influence was felt far and wide in the ancient world.

1. The first being the Indus Valley Civilization itself a few millenia earlier.

delta_p_delta_x• 2 months ago

They didn't disappear into thin air. Their culture syncretised with that of the incoming (or invading, depending on who you ask) Indo-Aryans, they moved southeast into the furthest bits of the Indian peninsula. The strongest hypothesis is that the IVC language, culture, and genetics is Dravidian, and the bulk of Dravidian culture today descends from the IVC.

dwa35924• 2 months ago

It's a pleasant finding but not surprising. In all the excavations done over time in indus valley, they never found any weapons or any signs of war. I have this book with pretty cool illustrations if anyone wants a light read on this topic -

https://www.amazon.com/dp/014345532X?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_...

I am not related to the author in anyway. i heard about this book on a podcast and bought it.

pm902• 2 months ago

thank you so much for this recommendation. I've been interested in this topic for a while; while I was looking for something a bit more substantial, I do love it when authors explain history in different ways! My original introduction to history was through the Amar Chitra Katha series; ever since I've always had an interest in learning history.

rayiner2• 2 months ago

I suspect that’s some noble savage mythologizing. Many Harrapan weapons have been found: https://www.allsubjectjournal.com/assets/archives/2015/vol2i...

pegasus2• 2 months ago

Yes, they are exaggerations, similar things have been said about the Minoans. It's still true AFAIK that these societies were much less militaristic than the ones that followed them.

dwa35924• 2 months ago

mythologizing?

What is myth about not finding military grade weapons or shields or large fortifications or artifacts on glorification of war and killing, like they found in other civilizations??

Did you even read the paper you cited or was it just a cheap attempt to find a critique bc of your own personal beliefs? - most of the weapons are tools (agri, hunting etc) and the time period is 1900-1400 BC when the civilization was in its last stage.

granted IVC hasn't been excavated to the degree the other civilizations has been, but at this point no concrete evidence has been found of wars and bloodshed at the scale compared to other civilizations.

jojobas• 2 months ago

Even Australian Aboriginals had weapons of war. Some of the seals spoken about in the article depict swords and shields. There is no way anything of value didn't have to be defended by force.

marojejian• 2 months ago

paper: https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2026.10359

also: >the material record offers indirect evidence for distributed authority. Indus seals, small stone stamps that likely facilitated exchange and credit, were found primarily in private residences at Mohenjo-daro rather than in temples or central administrative buildings.

Speculative, of course. But cool data & approach. And it doesn't have to prove anything, except that it's plausible there are other ways to structure societies, that can have different results.

jnmandal• 2 months ago

A David Graeber inspired study!?

In case you haven't heard of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything

rramadass3• 2 months ago

This is actually a thought-provoking book and a must read. History as taught today is very much misunderstood/skewed/euro-centric and many times plain wrong. The wikipedia page itself gives the highlights and worth reading.

A very good example comes from India itself i.e. "The Paradox of Indian History" which is the dichotomy between Archeological Evidence (Indus Valley, Ashoka's inscriptions etc.) vs. Literary Evidence (Puranas, Itihasas etc.) Add to this the linguistic diversities, group/ethnic diversities and successive waves of invasions and displacements and it is enough to drive a Historian mad/happy depending upon how you look at it. The literary/linguistic evidence paints a picture of very advanced societies while the archeological evidence paints a distinctly different but again advanced societies.

Hence studies like the OP's submission are very much needed and welcome.

__rito__• 2 months ago

Something should be noted: equality didn't save them. They grew more equal, maybe. But that couldn't save them from barbaric hordes/drought/a combination of these or more.

They became extinct.

To an "educated", emotional mind guarded in a safe place, economic prosperity, the tenets of equality might show promise, but, they might ultimately be sans utility when seen from the lens of survival, thriving, etc.

pram4• 2 months ago

"Trade practices show a similar pattern. Indus seals, used for business and administration, turned up in common homes across the city. Archaeologists did not find evidence showing rulers controlled access to these objects. Standardized weights and measures spread throughout the region as well, helping create consistent trade practices."

I've done a lot of reading on this particular subject and I think the "stateless utopia" conclusion so many researchers seem to be fishing for (Graeber etc) is more nonsensical than they let on. They didn't have monumental temples or palaces, that seems to be it.

Yet there is tons of documentary evidence "Meluhha" was engaged in a pretty sophisticated scale of commodity production (artisanal carnelian beads) and export trade with Dilmun and Sumer. Their standardized weight system was used for this trade, and they're found elsewhere in large numbers as the article says. They even had expats living in Sumer who were noted as translators (of the Indus valley seals??) This trade is where a lot of their obvious wealth probably came from, since they'd have copious silver revenue from Dilmun.

"Archaeologists did not find evidence showing rulers controlled access to these objects."

Like really, think about it. These weights were very precise. And they had to be, because "weight" was basically equivalent to "money." So there had to be a standard, and that standard had to be enforced when the weights were produced. And the weights had to remain trustworthy as they were distributed elsewhere for use in the trade. Someone was obviously "in charge" lol

Ar-Curunir• 2 months ago

A: Weights had to remain trustworthy as they were distributed elsewhere for use in the trade.

B: Someone was obviously "in charge" lol

B can imply A, but A does not imply B.

bilbo0s2• 2 months ago

I did some work for Halliburton in a past life.

Most of the people selling LNG for instance, do not have any control over the definition of a "cubic meter". Even so, none of them cheat, because the US for example, very much does have its own definition of a cubic meter and it isn't going to pay you a penny more, nor a penny less, than what that cubic meter is worth.

All that to say, you could probably try to cheat the system, but I'd imagine the people in Sumer and Akkad had what they considered to be a precise unit of weight with which to measure your delivery. It doesn't matter what someone in Mohenjo-daro said, you were only going to get a certain amount in trade for your freight in Sumer. So I could see a centralized authority for weights, (the customer), at the same time as having no one in charge of that unit of weight in Mohenjo-daro.

I could see people agreeing to it essentially because that's all you're getting paid for. Because I saw the same behavior long ago at work with Halliburton.

komali23• 2 months ago

Like really, think about it. These weights were very precise. And they had to be, because "weight" was basically equivalent to "money." So there had to be a standard, and that standard had to be enforced when the weights were produced. And the weights had to remain trustworthy as they were distributed elsewhere for use in the trade. Someone was obviously "in charge" lol

I disagree. You seem to imply that the standards existing means there must be a State? Or are you saying, literally, at one point someone said the weight of a thing is this, and people agreed? The latter is a MUCH softer point and completely compatible with the anarchism that Graeber describes.

What's the connection between the IETF and the State? No State mandates that everyone uses TCP/IP, every ISP, device maker etc just follows the standard because that's the consensus. It's self enforcing - you don't get to participate if you don't interop. Doesn't that make IETF in charge? What if the IETF suddenly came out as a Nazi organization and released RFCs with white supremacist words inserted absurdly into standards as requirements? Do you think consensus would just go along with what they said? No? That's the difference between consensus and what you seem to be implying by someone "Being in Charge."

Another good example of this is language itself. Everyone speaks the same language, but nobody's actually in charge of what goes into it or how it's spoken.

mcmoor2• 2 months ago

It's exactly the opposite. With languages/standards, both parties has incentives to have mutual understanding so they don't need anyone else to enforce symbol equality. But with these weights, or money in general, there's huge incentive to deceive each other, so someone has to enforce the equality. That someone can be the parties themselves, but if one party lack the ability, it necessitated the creation of third-party enforcer, which can grow to be a state.

Even then, with languages, whenever there's incentive to deceive it also immediately unravels. See: exaggeration, and necessity to create whole new language of legalese for contracts.

pram4• 2 months ago

I'm saying some kind of institution was in charge of the manufacture and certification. Much like the weights produced by Sumer, which was uncontroversially a "state"

p1necone• 2 months ago

I don't think use of consistent weights and measures implies someone being in charge of those weights and measures.

I also don't think someone being in charge of weights and measures implies that same person/group being in charge of anything else.

The latter feels fairly obvious, for the former I imagine some generally agreed upon method for creating new weights and measures given some existing ones for calibration plus some base level of suspicion of new craftsmen/merchants until they are proven trustworthy by a subset of the existing trustworthy people who have their own weights/measures would do.

Also, as pointed out elsewhere in this thread anyone buying large amounts of whatever you're selling is going to have their own set of weights and measures, so your avenues for stiffing people without getting caught are pretty narrow.

readthenotes1• 2 months ago

Ah, a town with no greed. Everyone voluntarily did the right thing.

pram4• 2 months ago

Not in this case, the "Indus" weights were notably used in the Dilmun trade even by Sumerian buyers.

The Meluhha->Dilmun trade weights were in fact found across Mesopotamia in general. They've been measured to be extremely accurate. The Meluhhan expat communities in Sumer were probably part of this infrastructure, if I were to guess.

vintermann• 2 months ago

From what I remember nothing Graeber wrote suggests there wasn't a government. On the contrary, he wrote a lot of the temple being in charge of distribution.

Maybe there was a high priest in charge of weights and measures and punishing people who cheated with them, who knows - but we do know that for a very long time, that power if so wasn't leveraged into better living quarters, or better access to luxury goods that we know of. That's pretty remarkable.

So you can basically believe one of two things, or maybe some combination: that power was fairly evenly distributed, OR, those with power didn't appreciably privilege themselves. I find the latter harder to believe than the former.

dwb• 2 months ago

Someone was obviously "in charge" lol

I don’t find that obvious from what you’ve described. Agreeing on weights and measures is well within plausibility of a society where power was pretty evenly distributed. I don’t remember Graeber and Wengrow describing it as a stateless utopia, they were a lot more academic than their detractors suggest in the usual caricatures. Is there any more evidence you’ve read about that supports this conclusion?

fakedang• 2 months ago

Like really, think about it. These weights were very precise. And they had to be, because "weight" was basically equivalent to "money." So there had to be a standard, and that standard had to be enforced when the weights were produced. And the weights had to remain trustworthy as they were distributed elsewhere for use in the trade. Someone was obviously "in charge" lol

Not really - a trust based system would still function very well. The same reason why hawala networks and Hofläden still persist today.

Cheaters are punished by societal ostracization. Very common in Asia even today.

bradleybuda• 2 months ago

This could also be a story of technological progress. A thought experiment - imagine you, an archaeologist, recovered the remains of our civilization, from roughly 1925 to 2025, but the only surviving artifact was televisions. You know that televisions are valuable - initially only wealthy families had them - so you used them as a proxy for riches and plotted the Gini coefficient using just the size, quality, resolution, color depth, etc. You could conclude that our society became less unequal over that period, because you miss that technology dramatically compressed the distribution of this resource and that household wealth was freed up to put to other purposes.

goodmythical• 2 months ago

If we had supporting documentation supporting "initially only wealthy families had them" why would we not also have supporting documentation supporting "eventually average families had them?"

Seems like the entire "initially" premise kind of indicates the change, no?

graemep• 2 months ago

Artifacts of any sort, especially technological ones, are subject to such changes over time.

House size/living space is far more constant. It would make a good and proxy for riches in a contemporary society too.

jimbokun• 2 months ago

Mohenjo-Daro, the Norway of the Ancient World!

pm902• 2 months ago

The study also raises broader questions about how early cities functioned. Archaeologists often link urban growth with centralized political power and rising social divisions. Mohenjo-daro points toward another model, one where collective governance and public investment shaped the city’s long-term stability.

Fascinating. I hope that discoveries like this increase the interest of the public in investing in historical research... so much of our theory of the world is shaped by a narrow focus on the history of areas that were easier (relatively) to study.

rramadass3• 2 months ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48378159

4K years ago, Mohenjo-daro grew more equal over time

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