A Harappan port may hold the oldest engineered tidal dock ever found.
Lothal (c. 2400 BCE) has a large brick basin connected to a river channel, interpreted by its excavator as a tidal dockyard for boats.
— Lothal, Indus civilisation (c. 2400 BCE)
Hydraulic/maritime engineering — docks and tidal management.
A genuine, defensible parallel.
Lothal's huge rectangular brick basin, with an inlet channel and what looks like a sluice to manage water level, was interpreted by archaeologist S.R. Rao as a tidal dockyard — which would make it among the earliest known anywhere, evidence of serious Harappan maritime trade.
Honest framing: the 'dockyard' interpretation, while widely cited, is debated — some scholars argue the basin was a reservoir or irrigation tank rather than a dock. So treat the headline as the leading interpretation, not settled fact. Either way, Lothal shows large-scale Bronze-Age hydraulic engineering and a bead-and-trade economy connected to the wider world.