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.
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Empires active in c. 2300 BCE
- Indus Valley (Harappan) Civilization2600 BCE to 1900 BCE
- Akkadian Empire2334 BCE to 2154 BCE
- Egyptian Old Kingdom2686 BCE to 2181 BCE
- Elamite Kingdom2700 BCE to 539 BCE
Related science, technology & invention events
- Great Pyramid of Giza built for Khufuc. 2560 BCE
- Planned Cities of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa Builtc. 2600 BCE
- Sintashta culture and the first spoke-wheeled war chariotsc. 2100 to 2000 BCE
- Mohenjo-daro's Great Bath and Urban Sanitationc. 2600 BCE
- Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions: the first alphabetic writingc. 1850 BCE
- Step Pyramid of Djoser built at Saqqarac. 2670 BCE
Essential reading
- Rise of Kerma as an Urban Centre in Nubiac. 2500 BCE
- Standardised Binary Weights System of the Indusc. 2600 BCE
- Decline and De-urbanisation of the Indus Civilisationc. 1900 BCE
- Senusret III's Nubian campaigns and administrative centralisationc. 1850 BCE
Further reading
The wider story
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