(The Hockey Schtick) Climate change was a key ingredient in the collapse
of the ancient Harappan civilization almost 4,000 years ago, a new study
suggests.
The Harrapans once occupied more than one million
square kilometres of the plains of the Indus River in what is now a vast desert region that
includes parts of Pakistan, northwest India and eastern Afghanistan.
The civilization extended from the Arabian Sea to
the Ganges River and was the largest of the early urban societies along with
those of Egypt and Mesopotamia.
An international, interdisciplinary team of
geologists, archaeologists, mathematicians and geo-morphologists collected
samples from the area once occupied by the little-known civilization over a
period of five years and reconstructed the landscape and topography of the
area.
"Once we had this new information on the
geological history, we could re-examine what we know about settlements, what crops people were planting and when, and
how both agriculture and settlement patterns changed,"
co-author Dorian Fuller, an archaeologist with
University College London, said in a news release.
Researchers collect samples from a trench to
determine the nature of the landforms in the area of the Indus River plains
once occupied by the Harrapans. (Peter D. Clift/School of
Geosciences/University of Aberdeen)
The researchers' analysis suggested that climate
change that weakened monsoon rains and tamed the tributaries of the Indus River
and reduced run-off from the Himalayan mountains enabled the Harappans to
practice agriculture on the river banks.
But when monsoon rains began to decline, the rivers
and regular flooding the civilization relied on to maintain a strong
agriculture dried up, and they were forced to move east toward the Ganges River
basin and were no longer able to sustain large cities.
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