In British India in the 1920's odd stone seals kept popping up at ruins near Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro along the Indus river valley. They baffled everyone, with their inscriptions in a never before seen written language. Archaeologists, intrigued by this, started excavating these previously ignored sites.

They soon uncovered a 4,500-year-old civilisation. A civilisation completely absent in the historical record. One of the earliest urban civilizations in human history. It flourished alongside Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and China around 3300-1900BC but was bigger than all of them. A civilisation that built wonders not to gods or kings but to sanitation. A civilisation without war. Made up of massive planned cities built in brick. Masters of bronze and sculpture. They created their own writing system, traded across the vast sea, and possibly invented the world’s first indoor toilets and then vanished for reasons still not understood.

So what was this civilisation in the Indus Valley, what did they achieve, and what does it have to do with rubber duckies? Well let’s find out.