Harappa

I’ll never forget the seawall that was supposed to protect a village off the coast of Israel from rising seas as the glaciers of the most recent ice age melted—it’s now been underwater for 7,000 years—or the way the poorest residents of the previously egalitarian city of Harappa, in Pakistan, died violent deaths as a megadrought dragged on.

Three seals from Banerjee's excavation bore images and scripts similar to those from Harappa in the Punjab province in present-day Pakistan.

In the northwest of the Indian subcontinent, the Indus civilization flourished in the third millennium bc, with remarkable cities at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro that featured brick houses, advanced drainage and a large public bath.

One of my favorite moments in Tokyo occurred late one afternoon at a smaller adventure playground, Komazawa Harappa, a long sliver of space in a tight residential neighborhood, masked from the street by a simple hedge.

The biggest cities here were Harappa and Mohenjo Daro, where some 80,000 people are believed to have lived.