A section from the journey
A Million Square Kilometres
When scholars mapped the find, its sheer size stunned them. This civilization covered around a million square kilometres, the largest of its age. More than a thousand settlements have been found across what is now Pakistan, northwest India, and into Afghanistan. Five great cities stood at its heart, and millions of people may have lived within it.
Once the diggers understood that Harappa and Mohenjo-daro belonged to the same lost world, a new question rose. How big was that world, at its height around 2600 to 1900 BCE? They began to search, to map, to count. And what they found took their breath away.
This was not one city. It was not ten. It was a vast spread of settlements covering about a million square kilometres of land. Let that size settle in your mind. It was the largest civilization of its whole age on earth — wider in reach than the famous lands of Egypt and Mesopotamia put together.
How many places in all? More than a thousand settlements from the great city age have now been found and mapped. They lie across the modern lands of Pakistan and northwest India, and a few reach far to the north into Afghanistan. Wherever there was water and good earth, the people of this world seem to have made their home.
Among all these places, five stand out as the great cities, the largest centres of the civilization. We have met two already: Harappa in the Punjab, and Mohenjo-daro in the south. To these we add three more great names.
There is , set in a dry land of salt flats, a marvel of stone and stored water. There is , far to the east, one of the largest of all. And there is Ganweriwala, out in the desert sands. Five great cities, hundreds of miles apart, yet built in the same careful way, as if to one shared plan.
And around the five cities lay many smaller towns, each with its own gift to the story. sat by the sea, with what looks like a dock for ships. Kalibangan held curious fire-pits. Chanhudaro was a town of bead-makers. We will visit several of these as our era unfolds.
How many people lived in all of this? We cannot count them exactly, but scholars make a careful guess. The biggest cities may each have held tens of thousands. The whole civilization, at its height, may have held somewhere between one and five million souls. By the measure of the ancient world, that is a great and crowded country.
So when you imagine this lost world, do not picture a single city standing alone. Picture a whole land, dotted with cities and towns and villages, joined by rivers and roads and trade, humming with the lives of millions. That is the true size of what was found sleeping in the earth.
It is one thing to lose a house, and another to lose a whole country to forgetting. Sit a moment with that scale — a million people and more, their names and stories gone. What does it stir in you to know that so vast a world could pass out of all memory?
Once the diggers knew what they had found, the next surprise was its size. This was not one city, nor even a handful. It was a vast web of settlements spread across roughly a million square kilometres — wider in reach than the lands of Egypt and Mesopotamia put together. By careful counting, more than a thousand settlements of the great city age have been mapped, across the modern lands of Pakistan, northwest India, and reaching even into Afghanistan in the far north. Among them stood five great cities. Harappa and Mohenjo-daro were the first found. Then Dholavira and Rakhigarhi, on the Indian side, and Ganweriwala. Smaller but famous towns dot the map too: Lothal by the sea, Kalibangan with its altars, and others. At its height, the whole civilization may have held somewhere between one and five million people. To picture it rightly, do not picture a city. Picture a country.
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