Lothal Dockyard and Dholavira Water Works

Date

c. 2300 BCE

Category

Science, technology & invention

Region

Gujarat (NW India)

Era

Ancient Civilizations

Significance

Harappan engineering reached its peak in Gujarat.

At Lothal, founded around 2300 BCE near an old course of the Sabarmati, the people built a large baked-brick basin connected by channels to the river and sea, widely regarded as the earliest known dock or tidal harbour in the world, designed to berth ships and managed with awareness of tidal flow. Lothal was a major bead-making and trading port. Inland at Dholavira, in the arid Rann of Kutch, the Harappans engineered an extraordinary water-conservation system of stone-cut reservoirs, check dams and channels, the earliest such system known, capturing scarce rainfall and runoff in a region with no perennial river. Dholavira also yielded the famous 'signboard', large gypsum-inlaid Indus characters set over a gateway, perhaps the world's oldest signboard. Together these sites showcase Harappan mastery of hydraulic and maritime engineering adapted to challenging environments.

Empires active in c. 2300 BCE

• Indus Valley (Harappan) Civilization
  2600 BCE – 1900 BCE
• Akkadian Empire
  2334 BCE – 2154 BCE
• Egyptian Old Kingdom
  2686 BCE – 2181 BCE
• Elamite Kingdom
  2700 BCE – 539 BCE

Related science, technology & invention events

• Great Pyramid of Giza built for Khufu
  c. 2560 BCE
• Planned Cities of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa Built
  c. 2600 BCE
• Sintashta culture and the first spoke-wheeled war chariots
  c. 2100–2000 BCE
• Mohenjo-daro's Great Bath and Urban Sanitation
  c. 2600 BCE
• Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions: the first alphabetic writing
  c. 1850 BCE
• Step Pyramid of Djoser built at Saqqara
  c. 2670 BCE

Further reading

A Little History of Science

The wider story

A Little History of Science

William Bynum

Warm, jargon-free tour of discovery from Babylonian stargazers to the genome.

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