纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 013印度封印（1）

013 ：EPISODE 13 - Indus seal 印度封印

Indus seal (made 4,000 - 4,500 years ago). Stone stamp found in the Indus Valley, Pakistan

Imagine the great cities of the world gone forever. London has slowly disappeared, submerged under the swollen Thames. Cairo, Los Angeles and Sydney have all been abandoned to drought and desert. Climate change has swallowed up our cities and they have vanished without trace.

Whether this apocalyptic scenario is our future, or just another Hollywood disaster movie, we or our successors will find out. But what's certain, is that it 'has' happened 'before'.

I want to take you not just to a city that was lost, but to an entire civilisation that collapsed and then vanished from human memory for over three and a half thousand years, largely due to climate change. Its rediscovery in Pakistan and north-west India was one of the great archaeological stories of the twentieth century. And in the 21st we're still piecing the evidence together. What can we now know about this lost world, the civilisation of the Indus Valley? The story begins with a small carved stone, used as a seal to stamp wet clay.