[music playing]
NARRATOR: Sindh province, Pakistan, 1922.
An officer of the archaeological survey of India
is led by a Buddhist monk to an area believed to have
been a religious monument.
But under the mounds of dirt, archaeologists
find instead an ancient Indus Valley
city dating back to 2000 BC.
It is called Mohenjo-daro, or mound of the dead,
and it is one of the oldest civilizations
discovered in the world.
WILLIAM BRAMLEY: Mohenjo-daro was
very advanced for that time.
They had sanitation.
They had all kinds of good things going.
And they had a lot of trade going with Mesopotamia.
NARRATOR: The city of Mohenjo-daro
rivaled the ancient civilizations
in Egypt and Mesopotamia.
Archaeologists believe that over 35,000
people once occupied the city.
However, only 43 skeletons have been discovered at the site.
There are many theories surrounding
the mysterious disappearance of the Indus people
from Mohenjo-daro.
In 1977, British researcher David Davenport
discovered that part of the archaeological site
showed evidence of having been destroyed by an extremely
powerful explosion.
--epicenter of something that he believed was an explosion--
NARRATOR: Scholars claim that several calcified skeletons
found at the site suggest they suffered
an instantaneous death.
WILLIAM HENRY: In Mohenjo-daro, they
found bodies arm in arm, skeletons arm
in arm that had been vitrified, virtually vitrified.
NARRATOR: For years, restricted access to the site
has prevented scientists from analyzing the vitrified ruins.
But in 2014, mineralogist Dr. Sam Iyengar
was able to obtain a piece of fused pottery from Mohenjo-daro
and put it through a series of tests.
SAMPATH IYENGAR: When I did the elemental analysis,
it showed me that the Mohenjo-daro rock
contained mostly silicon, aluminum with some calcium
and potassium.
So my thought was maybe it could be some type of a clay--
till I did the X-ray diffraction.
NARRATOR: X-ray diffraction is able to determine exactly
how a material was formed.
SAMPATH IYENGAR: When I did the X-ray powder diffraction,
this is the pattern I got.
And you can see some crystal peaks
here along with an amorphous hump,
which usually results from a glassy phase in the rock.
The composition is very similar to volcanic rock.
The only way the clay can be converted into something
which we saw is subjecting the clay to a very,
very high temperature.
I'm talking 4,000 to 5,000 degree Fahrenheit.
That is not something a civilization
can do intentionally.
It has to be something supernatural.
NARRATOR: Could this pottery sample,
which shows irrefutable evidence of having been subjected
to extreme heat, be definitive evidence that Mohenjo-daro
really was the site of some type of powerful explosion
in the ancient past?
David Davenport and other researchers
of India's ancient Vedic texts have suggested
that this is the case and that Mohenjo-daro may, in fact, be
the kingdom of Lanka, a city whose destruction
is detailed in the Indian epic known as the Ramayana.
In the Ramayana, it is described that the god Vishnu decides
the leader of Lanka, a mortal named Ravana,
has grown too powerful.
Vishnu takes the human form of Rama
and does battle with Ravana, who has become like the gods
himself.
DEEPAK SHIMKHADA: Ravana was a very formidable enemy.
In fact, most of his power, it was
acquired from god Shiva himself because he
was a great devotee of Shiva.
And Vishnu gave him lethal weapons.
It was described as the sun turning
into 50 even more brighter suns with this incredible blast.
So some people have suggested that
perhaps, at Mohenjo-daro, some type
of a nuclear blast occurred.
Not only do we have a textual reference
to a possible nuclear blast, but we
also find physical evidence that show vitrification of stone.
And the only way that stone can be vitrified
is if it's exposed to extreme heat.
This is not mythology.
This is not superstition.
This is documented historical events
of people that are warring with each other
using advanced technology.
GEORGE NOORY: I happen to believe that mankind possessed
incredible technology, incredible knowledge,
and that they did things that we're doing right now
and then something happened.
And they had to literally start all over again.