Archaeologists have found an ancient city where rich and poor could live almost equally

A new study shows that as the city developed, the differences between large and small houses, on the contrary, narrowed. This means that the inhabitants of Mohenjo-Daro could live closer to each other in terms of wealth than the populations of many other ancient cities.

Important: we are not talking about complete equality or an ancient utopia. Scientists can't directly measure the income of people who lived 4,000 years ago. They studied the size of houses as an indirect indicator of property inequality. But the result is still unusual: the city was becoming more mature and organised, and the gap between dwellings seemed to be shrinking. The study is published in the journal Antiquity.

Details

Mohenjo-Daro was one of the largest cities of the Indus Civilisation, which existed from around 2600 to 1900 B.C. Its ruins are located in the Indus Valley in present-day Pakistan. UNESCO describes Mohenjo-Daro as a huge city of the 3rd millennium BC, built of raw brick, with an orderly layout, streets, a lower city, fortified plots and a water drainage system.

The authors of the new paper used data from early excavations and architectural plans of the city. They compared the areas of dwellings and calculated Gini coefficients, a measure commonly used to assess inequality. The higher the coefficient, the greater the gap between conventionally "rich" and "poor" households.

The result was unexpected. In Mohenjo-Daro, Gini coefficients declined over time. In other words, the difference between the largest and smallest houses was getting smaller. This coincided with a period when the city was developing, its street network was becoming more formalised, and urban life was becoming more productive.

What is particularly interesting is that Mohenjo-Daro has long been known not for what is found in it, but for what is hardly there. Unlike ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia, no obvious royal palaces, tombs stuffed with gold, or monumental statues of rulers have been found here. But other signs of complex urban life are clearly visible: neighbourhood layout, brick houses, wells, drainage canals and urban infrastructure.

According to the researchers, this may speak of a different logic of governance. Resources may not have been concentrated around a small elite as dramatically as in some other early states. Instead of demonstrative luxury, the city invested in practical things that many residents enjoyed: streets, water supply, sewage disposal and a standardised urban environment.

A separate detail is the famous Indus seals associated with exchange, craft and economic activity. At Mohenjo-Daro, such items were found not only in conventionally 'administrative' or monumental buildings, but also in ordinary houses. This too supports the idea that access to important tools of the urban economy may have been more widely distributed than in societies with a rigid palace monopoly.

Why it matters

For a long time, the development of the first cities has often been described in simple terms: villages grow, crafts and trade emerge, wealth accumulates, and then a small group of rulers, priests or military elites gain more and more power and resources.

Mohenjo-Daro shows that this pattern does not always work. At least in this city, the growth and increasing complexity of urban life was not necessarily accompanied by a widening property gap. On the contrary, we can see from the residential architecture that disparities may have been decreasing.

For a modern audience, this is important not because Mohenjo-Daro can be directly compared to today's megacities. One cannot simply transfer the structure of a Bronze Age city to the twenty-first century. But the find does expand the idea of what early cities might have been like in the first place. A complex society need not be built around palaces, tombs and sharp stratification.

The main conclusion here is a cautious one: the archaeology shows not a 'city of absolute equality', but an example that ancient urbanisation may have followed different paths. One of these paths may have been more uniform and less orientated towards luxury for a select few.

Background

The Indus civilisation was one of the largest civilisations of the Bronze Age. Its cities existed around the same time as the civilisations of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. But archaeologically they look different: fewer obvious traces of royalty, and more attention to urban planning, craftsmanship, standardisation and infrastructure.

Mohenjo-Daro is particularly important precisely as an urban organism. Its streets intersected at right angles, houses were built of brick, and drainage and sanitation systems were part of the urban environment. UNESCO emphasises that the layout of the lower town and the drainage system indicate an early form of elaborate urban planning.

Previously, the absence of palaces and royal tombs was sometimes attributed to the fact that archaeologists simply hadn't yet found the right buildings or misinterpreted them. The new study adds a quantitative argument: not only monumental architecture, but also the size of houses indicate relatively low and declining inequality over time.

Source

Adam S. Green, Iqtedar Alam, Cameron Petrie, "Inequality declined in the Bronze Age city of Mohenjo-daro", Antiquity, 2026.

In the study, the authors used data from the early excavations of Mohenjo-daro and calculated Gini coefficients on the area of dwellings. This allowed property differences to be assessed indirectly - through the size of dwellings. The results showed that inequality on this measure declined over time, in tandem with the development of the street network and signs of increasing urban productivity.