Decline of the Indus Valley civilization

Decline of Indus valley civilization

Abstract

There are many theories explaining the decline of the Indus valley civilization. Climate change is one of the theories. There is an influence of climate; however, the failure of monsoon cannot be the reason for the abandonment of places located on the banks of the perennial river Indus. My theory is that the Indus cities never declined at all. These excavated places like Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa were necropolises. Because these places were graveyards, they naturally gave an impression of a deserted look.

When the British archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler discovered a dozen skeletons in Mohenjo-Daro, he propounded a theory about the final massacre by marauding invaders that ended the Indus civilization. When an Indian scholar told him of Hariyuppa being mentioned in the Rigveda, he took it to mean Harappa. And since a fort was known as pur, and Indira, the Aryan god, was known as Purandhara or destroyer of forts, it all fitted neatly. Yet the past 50 years, and more so the last decade, showed just how wrong Wheeler was. The last massacre theory was his imagination running riot. Far from being snuffed out, there was a brilliant resurgence of Indus culture further south for a while. In India, the sites in Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan increased from 218 to 853. (1)

Allchin argues that there is a clear indication that the rainfall pattern, which had initially brought fertility, had become adverse in the Sindh region. He theorizes that, given the instability of the Himalayan region, there may have been a massive earthquake that possibly changed the course of rivers such as the Sarasvati and affected many Indus cities. The Indus people then migrated eastward. Lal talks of a steep decline in trade because of problems in Sumer that resulted in the Great Depression and turned many urban centres into ghost cities. (1)

Some of the writings survived in the pottery of the succeeding ages. The weight and decimal system, too, lived on. And so did the bullock-cart technology that the Indus had perfected. Rather than a violent transition, there may have been an orderly interaction with incoming Aryans. Lal even puts the most audacious theory in his recent book: Could the Bronze Age Harappans be Aryans themselves? He says this because of fire worship and the discovery of horse remains and idols in Indus sites. Meadows dismisses it as premature and points out that it was more likely that ass remains were mistaken for a horse’s. Further, the Vedas also show a great antipathy for urban centres. (1)

The decline of IVC was due to monsoon failure

Recently a paper was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) by a team of scientists from the U.S., U.K., Pakistan, India and Romania. They have argued that long-term changes in monsoon rainfall altered river flow, creating conditions that initially allowed the Harappan civilization to thrive but later to its demise.

Liviu Giosan, a geologist, and colleagues have also reconstructed the landscape of the plain and rivers wherein the long-forgotten IVC had flourished. “Our research provides one of the clearest examples of climate change leading to the collapse of an entire civilization”, he adds.

“After 500 years of flourishing urbanism, the increasing aridification due to a shifting monsoon resulted in a crisis in the agriculture of the hinterland that supported the cities,” remarked Ronojoy Adhikari of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Chennai, one of the authors of the paper. This aridification led to large-scale migrations towards moister regions to the north and a decline in the urban system of the Harappan civilization. (2)

Counterpoint

This above-mentioned Monsoon failure theory is a doubtful correlation. Yes, there was a decline in Monsoon activity; there is no objection to that. The problem is that this monsoon decline theory is correlated to the Indus Valley Civilization’s fall, which is wrong.

This “Monsoon Decline” theory is being stretched beyond a limit to accommodate the “IVC Decline” theory. The Indus River is perennial and doesn’t dry up even in harsh summers because of the melting of glaciers. The river Indus supports nearly 18 crores of people in Pakistan even today. Couldn’t it have helped a few thousand people 5000 years back? It looks like there is some misinterpretation here.

Further, the research team proposes that the “Saraswathi River” sites all dried up. That may be true because the Saraswati river turned into a seasonal river in the year around 6000 BC because of tectonic shifts. (3) However, that does not apply to the sites on the Indus river basin. This research team needs fundamental lessons on geography before diving deep into ancient Indian History.

The decline of IVC and El Nino effect

This article on Wikipedia describes the change in El Nino, which affected civilizations worldwide; in that process, we should include the decline of IVC also because the period coincides with the fall of other cultures.

The El Nino theory on IVC decline may not be correct. The most plausible reason is the extended drought that occurred during that period. Such a drought would not have wiped out IVC because the Indus River is a perennial river fed by mountain glaciers. The effect of drought would not have been as catastrophic as it was in Egypt and Mesopotamia.

Around 2200 BC, an aridification event was one of the most severe climatic events of the Holocene period, which impacted many civilizations. It is likely to have caused the collapse of the Old Kingdom in Egypt and the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia. Also, the drought may have affected the Indian sub-continent resulting in the decline of the Harappan civilization. (3)

In ca. 2150 BC, the Old Kingdom was hit by a series of shallow Nile floods, instrumental in the sudden collapse of the centralized government in ancient Egypt. A phase of rehabilitation and restoration of order in various provinces followed famines, social disorder, and fragmentation for approximately 40 years. (3)

The aridification of Mesopotamia may have been related to the onset of cooler sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic (Bond event 3). An elevation-induced capture of winter Mediterranean rainfall feeds the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.

The Akkadian Empire—which in 2300 B.C. was the first to subsume free societies into a single state—was brought low by a wide-ranging, centuries-long drought. Archaeological evidence documents the widespread abandonment of the agricultural plains of northern Mesopotamia and the dramatic influx of refugees into southern Mesopotamia around 2170 BC. A 180-km-long wall was built across central Mesopotamia to stem nomadic incursions to the south. Around 2150 BC, the Guti, who originally inhabited the Zagros Mountains, defeated the demoralized Akkadian army, took Akkad, and destroyed it around 2115 BC. Widespread agricultural change in the Near East is visible at the end of the 2000 B.C. (3)

The El Niño theory has some relevance because it looks like monsoon rains fed the Sarasvati river basin. A decline in monsoon rains could have affected the Indus civilization towns in the Sarasvati basin (i.e. Rajasthan and Haryana) but not in the Indus river valley plain.

Drying up of Ghaggar- Hakra River

Rajiv Sinha and his team made extensive drilling into the 30-40 m thick sand body in the subsurface beneath a tract of the Ghaggar-Hakra (“Sarasvati”) paleochannel adjacent to the Indus city of Kalibangan. Sinha’s team found that river sediment deposits ceased in this tract of the paleochannel after approximately 14,000 BCE, long before the Indus civilization. (4)

The above research finding shows that different theories relating to the Indus civilization’s decline to drought are incorrect. The Saraswathi River has already dried up in the year 14,000 BC. Attributing drought conditions to the deterioration of IVC is a wrong correlation.

Disease and trauma within collapsing Indus civilization

A study at Harappa suggests that climate, economic and social changes contributed to the disintegration around 2000 BCE. The change is evident in the declining health of the population and the seeming rise of interpersonal violence towards those suffering from visible diseases. (5) The lead author is Gwen Robbins Schug, an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Appalachian State University.

The researchers examined 160 individuals (67% of the total number excavated) from three main burial areas at Harappa: an urban period cemetery (R-37), a post-urban Cemetery (H), and an ossuary (Area G), where it is clear that the prevalence of infection and infectious disease increased through time.

Of the 209 skeletons excavated from Cemetery R-37, 66 (31.6%) were available at AnSI (Anthropological Survey of India) for the present research. Of these 66, 16 were from complete burials, 29 were from fractional burials, and 21 were from multiple burials. Most of the burials were adults, but two young individuals were present over five years of age.

The Harappan skeletons showed evidence of common diseases like sinus infections, leprosy and tuberculosis. Also, there seem to be clear signs of internal and structured violence within what had previously been thought to be a ‘perfect ‘and peaceful society. (5)

The results demonstrated no evidence of violence consistent with invasion or warfare during this critical period that would have supported the general belief of an Aryan Invasion. Instead, most violent trauma seemed to have been directed against women and children of the local population, showing untreated cranial fractures associated with congenital and infectious diseases. (5)

The study of Gwen Robbins is quite informative. First, she was the first researcher to concentrate on the skeletal bones collected from Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro. It is a fact that many skeletal bones were recovered from the sites at Mohenjo Daro and Harappa, and all of them are lying somewhere in the Calcutta Museum. No one bothered about the extensive collection of bones because everyone was busy painting a picture of metropolises for Mohenjo Daro and Harappa. But no one is explaining why there are so many skeletons in the Harappan site. The simple explanation is the identification of Cemetery (H). My answer is that the entire Harappa site was a cemetery, not merely the cemetery (H).

The second observation is that the death of the Indus people was not due to the invasion. Hence, the Aryan invasion theory is sidelined. Death due to disease is the natural explanation. People died of natural causes; this finding supports my necropolises theory. Some skeletons show some violence. Violence is part of any society; the Indus Valley society was not an exemption from it. Only the over-enthusiastic, nationalistic archaeologists have shown a utopian society without violence.

So far, the archaeologists have searched for remains of weapons, arrows and spears, and defence fortifications to determine the peaceful nature of the Indus valley people. How will there be any evidence of war and violence in a graveyard? Only the skeletal remains will tell the truth about violence. None has researched that aspect except Gwen Robbins, which exposes the true nature of IVC society.

Theories of Minoan demise

Santorini is a small island located about 100 km north of the isle of Crete. The Santorini eruption occurred around 1600 BC and is estimated to have had a Volcanic Explosivity Index of 6. Ash fallout in eastern Crete, other islands, and nearby littoral areas of the Aegean Sea and Eastern Mediterranean Sea have identified this massive volcanic eruption. The enormous explosion of Santorini led to the volcano’s collapse into a submarine caldera, causing tsunamis that destroyed naval installations and settlements along the coast of the Mediterranean sea.

It is theorized that the Santorini eruption and the city’s destruction at Akrotiri provided the basis for or inspired Plato’s account of Atlantis. The blast caused significant climatic changes in the eastern Mediterranean region, the Aegean Sea and much of the Northern Hemisphere. There is also evidence that the explosion caused the failure of crops in China, inspired certain Greek myths, contributed to turmoil in Egypt, and influenced many biblical Exodus stories.

A significant amount of Minoan remains have been found above the Santorini ash layer, implying that the Santorini eruption did not cause the immediate downfall of the Minoans. The Minoans were a sea power and depended on their naval and merchant ships for their livelihood. The Santorini eruption likely caused the destruction of merchant ships on a large scale because of a tsunami, resulting in significant economic hardship for Minoans and probable loss of empire in the long run.

Whether these effects were enough to trigger the downfall of the Minoan civilization is under intense debate. The Mycenaean conquest of the Minoans occurred in the Late Minoan period, not many years after the eruption. Many archaeologists speculate that the eruption induced a crisis in Minoan civilization, which allowed the Mycenaean to conquer them easily.

The relevance of quoting this Minoan decline is that the entire Bronze Age culture collapsed with the Minoan civilization’s fall after the Santorini volcano eruption. The decline in civilization occurred all along with the Mediterranean coastal states. The so-called ‘sea people‘ migrated and destroyed the already destabilized societies. These Harappan towns were the outermost border towns of the bronze age civilization of Europe. There is a possibility that this collapse of the Bronze Age trade could be the reason for the partial decline of the IVC.

These Indus Valley excavation sites look deserted because these places were used as graveyards from time immemorial by various occupants of these lands. These sites have been wrongly identified as Metropolises, whereas they were only Necropolises. This wrong identification is the reason for the confusion surrounding the decline of IVC. There is a possibility that IVC never declined at all.

1. cycleoftime.com/. cycleoftime.com/articles_. http://www.cycleoftime.com. [Online] 2015. http://www.cycleoftime.com/articles_view.php?codArtigo=51 .

2. Gopalraj.N. /monsoon-decline-caused-rise-and-fall-of-harappan-civilisation-say-scientists/article3466772.ece. thehindu.com/sci-tech/science. [Online] http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/monsoon-decline-caused-rise-and-fall-of-harappan-civilisation-say-scientists/article3466772.ece.

3. Aggarwal, Mayank. Upcoming-elections-in-haryana-boost-efforts-to-revive-the-ancient-saraswati-river. India.mongabay.com. [Online] 2019. https://india.mongabay.com/2019/07/upcoming-elections-in-haryana-boost-efforts-to-revive-the-ancient-saraswati-river/.

4. wikipedia(4.2_kiloyear_event). 4.2_kiloyear_event. wikipedia. [Online] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4.2_kiloyear_event.

5. Sinha, Rajiv. /~rsinha/Publication/2012_Geoelctric%20resistivity_QI.pdf. home.iitk.ac.in/. [Online] 2017. http://home.iitk.ac.in/~rsinha/Publication/2012_Geoelctric%20resistivity_QI.pdf.

6. Robbins, Gwen. /disease-and-trauma-within-collapsing. //zamoraprotohistorica.blogspot.in/. [Online] 2017. http://zamoraprotohistorica.blogspot.in/2013/12/disease-and-trauma-within-collapsing.html?m=1.