Massive floods caused by torrential rains have wreaked unprecedented havoc across Pakistan, inundating a third of the country and killing nearly 1,300 people since mid-June. Aside from massive human and infrastructure losses, the South Asian nuclear power risks losing its archaeological treasure, which includes relics from the thousands-year-old Mohinjo Daro and Mahargarh civilizations.
Mohinjo Daro, in the southern Sindh province’s Larkana district, has been particularly hard hit by the country’s most destructive monsoon spells and floods in recent history. Floodwaters have damaged several excavated sections of the 5,000-year-old iconic site, with water seeping through and creating furrows. Rain and flood waters seeping into the ground are causing the walls of the prehistoric houses at the heritage site to tilt, the last surviving remains of the Indus Valley Civilization.
The 18th-century Kotdiji fort and Faiz Mahal (palace), built during the reign of the Talpur dynasty over the then independent state which is now Khairpur district, some 450 kilometers from Karachi, also suffered extensive damage from unprecedented rains and floods. Makli, one of the largest necropolises in the world, about 100 kilometers east of Karachi, is also underwater. Located on a spur of Makli and included in UNESCO’s List of Protected Heritage in 1981, the necropolis contains more than 20,000 tombs, pavilions, and open graves of unidentified rulers, army generals, poets, architects, and unidentified warriors dating back to the 14th century.
Many other ancient cemeteries, tombs, structures, and fortresses, most notably Ranikot Fort, known as the Great Wall of Sindh due to its structural similarity to the Great Wall of China, were also flooded. Several Buddhist and Hindu holy sites were also damaged in the province. Moreover, the archaeological treasure located in the southern province of Balochistan, which is the home to several archaeological sites dating back over 5,000 years, has been badly damaged by weeks of torrential rains and floods.
