An analysis of hundreds of homes points to a striking Bronze Age shift that challenges assumptions about how early cities developed. In the part of the city where researchers could distinguish building phases over time, the measure of residential inequality fell from about 0.39 around 2500 BC to 0.23 around 2100 BC. Mohenjo-daro was a major city of the Indus Civilisation, which flourished in South Asia from about 2600 to 1900 BC. Across Mohenjo-daro as a whole, the residential Gini coefficient was 0.44. Some Neolithic settlements regarded by archaeologists as relatively equal have residential Gini coefficients around 0.2 or lower.