The mature Harappan cities were laid out on broadly rectilinear street grids with standardised baked-brick construction. They incorporated covered street drains, household latrines and soak-pits, and the Great Bath at Mohenjo-daro, among the earliest known urban water-management systems. Wells, bathing platforms and granaries point to deliberate civic provision rather than organic growth.
This is the earliest South Asian instance of planned sanitary infrastructure and gridded urban form, predating comparable systems elsewhere by centuries.
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