In the autumn of 1924 the ancient civilization of the Indus valley was discovered, an archeological find as historically significant as the unearthing of Troy or Crete. Its discovery caused the re-writing of history books and forever changed the timeline of ancient history. This book tells the intriguing story of this discovery. It is filled with interesting and quirky characters, such as Luigi Pio Tessitori, the Italian linguist-turned-explorer who unearthed Kalibangan but never lived to tell the tale; Alexander Cunningham, the archaeological pioneer and Harappa's first excavator; and John Marshall, a Cambridge classicist who finally solved the tantalizing puzzle of data on the long-forgotten Indus civilization. In the end, this story spans nearly a century, combining history and archeology to tell the fascinating story of this world-changing discovery for the first time.