END OF HARAPPA AND MOHENJO-DARO
Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro were abandoned between 1900 and 1700 B.C. Trade and writing stopped. The unicorn symbol and the weight system of measurements disappeared. Nobody is sure exactly why the Indus Valley civilization collapsed but most archeologist speculate it was due to climatic change, flooding, invasion and/or disease.
The Indus Valley civilization probably collapsed at least partly as the result of the changing course of channels of the Indus river, which may have flooded some areas and left others high and dry. This may have disrupted agriculture and trade and brought the entire economy to an untimely end.
Flooding is often mentioned as a cause. Archeologist Jonathan Mark Kenoyer of Wisconsin University told National Geographic, "I think the fluctuations of the Indus had a major impact on Mohenjo-Daro. It whipped back and forth across the plains, causing floods that destroyed the agricultural base of the city. Trade and the economy were disrupted." The same thing may have happened at Harappa. There is some evidence that earthquakes may have shifted the earth’s crust to effectively block the Indus, forcing it to overflow its banks and flood a wide area.
Collapse of the Indus Valley Civilization
The Indus Valley civilization collapsed for unknown reasons some time after 2000 B.C. The possible reasons for the decline of Harappan civilization have long troubled scholars. Invaders from central and western Asia are considered by some historians to have been the "destroyers" of Harappan cities, but this view is open to reinterpretation. More plausible explanations are recurrent floods caused by tectonic earth movement, soil salinity, and desertification.
Archaeologists once believed that civilization began in the subcontinent along the Indus River valley in what is now Pakistan. It is now known that this great civilization covered a much larger area, about as large as modern Europe (minus Russia), extending from northern Pakistan to the Arabian Sea and along the tributaries of the Indus River in western India and Pakistan. Excavated sites such as the cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro reveal a well-organized system of town planning based on a rectangular street grid. [Source: Steven M. Kossak and Edith W. Watts, The Art of South, and Southeast Asia, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York]
Andrew Lawler wrote in Archaeology: “Wheeler suggested in the 1940s that several skeletons discovered in an alley were evidence of a massacre, what he claimed to be an invasion of Aryan peoples from the north and west, an event mentioned in later Indian texts. Other scholars believed that a massive Indus flood forced the city’s abandonment. Both of these theories are now out of favor. Archaeologists now think that the city’s decline was more gradual; though whether economic dislocation or political turmoil was the main cause remains uncertain. Climate change may also have been a culprit, but scientists are at odds over whether the region suffered from a drought that might have led Indus urban dwellers to flee to the countryside. [Source: Andrew Lawler, Archaeology, January/ February 2013]
Indus Cities and Aryan Conquest
It was originally thought that Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa and other Indus settlements were conquered by Aryans. The Aryan invasion theory is based on 30 skeletons,, including women and children, found in later period Mohenjo-Daro ruins and descriptions of a "massacre" in the Rig-Veda, the collection of ancient Hindu hymns. The theory goes that the decline of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa made them vulnerable to an invasion of Aryan "barbarian tribes" from Persia and Afghanistan. Indus technology was far superior to that of Aryans in every way except weapons technology.
Many scholars dismiss this theory because no weapons or evidence of an attack have been found. The skeleton could easily of come from people who died of disease. Moreover dating technology seems to indicate that the city fell into decline long before the Aryans arrived.
In any case as Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro declined, the Aryans "occupied the best land, cleared the forests, built permanent villages, and found a series of petty kingdoms in which they set themselves up as rulers over the region's indigenous inhabitants" (perhaps the source of the Brahma high caste). In some cases, new settlers dismantled Indus buildings and uses the materials to build new buildings.
Climate Change and the End of Indus Valley Civilization
According to PBS: “Climate change is emerging as a primary reason for its gradual demise. Geological evidence shows that the region's climate grew colder and drier, in part perhaps because of a weakened monsoon. By 1800 B.C., the Ghaggar-Hakra River, a river in the region that paralleled the Indus system and that some scholars suggest is the Saraswati, the lost sacred river of Rig Veda, was severely diminished. As a result, cities were abandoned and though some of the population remained, many migrated to more fertile lands in the east around the Ganges and Jumna River. [Source: PBS, The Story of India, pbs.org/thestoryofindia]
The team of researchers from the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), Institute of Archaeology, Deccan College Pune, and IIT Kharagpur wrote in Nature’s Scientific Reports journal: “‘Our study suggests that the climate was probably not the cause of Harappan decline.” While the ancient people relied upon heavy and regular monsoons between 9,000 and 7,000 years ago to water their crops, after this period, evidence at Bhirrana shows people continued to survive despite changing weather patterns. [Source: Sarah Griffiths for MailOnline, June 2, 2016]
“‘Increasing evidences suggest that these people shifted their crop patterns from the large-grained cereals like wheat and barley during the early part of intensified monsoon to drought-resistant species of small millets and rice in the later part of declining monsoon and thereby changed their subsistence strategy.” However, changing the crops they grew and harvested resulted in the ‘de-urbanisation’ of cities and no need for large food storage facilities. Instead, the people swapped to personal storage spaces to look after their families. ‘Because these later crops generally have much lower yield, the organised large storage system of mature Harappan period was abandoned giving rise to smaller more individual household based crop processing and storage system and could act as catalyst for the de-urbanisation of the Harappan civilization rather than an abrupt collapse.”
Migration of Monsoons Created, Then Killed Indus Valley Civilization?
A study co-authored by Dorian Fuller, an archaeologist with University College London, published in 2012 suggests the decline in monsoon rains led to weakened river dynamics, and played a critical role both in the development and the collapse of the Indus culture. The study set out to resolve a long-standing debate over the source and fate of the Sarasvati, the sacred river of Hindu mythology. Over five years an international team combined satellite photos and topographic data to make digital maps of landforms constructed by the Indus and neighbouring rivers. They then probed in the field by drilling, coring, and even manually-dug trenches and samples were tested. [Source: Sarah Griffiths for MailOnline, June 2, 2016]
Thomas H. Maugh II wrote in the Los Angeles Times: “The slow eastward migration of monsoons across the Asian continent initially supported the formation of the Harappan civilization in the Indus valley by allowing production of large agricultural surpluses, then decimated the civilization as water supplies for farming dried up, researchers reported. The results provide the first good explanation for why the Indus valley flourished for two millennia, sprouting large cities and then dwindled away to small villages and isolated farms.[Source: Thomas H. Maugh II, Los Angeles Times, May 28, 2012]
The Harappans did not attempt to develop irrigation to support agriculture. Instead, they relied on the annual monsoons, which allowed the accumulation of large agricultural surpluses — which, in turn, allowed the creation of cities. The new research was performed by a team led by geologist Liviu Giosan of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Mass., and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. Working in Pakistan, they used photographs taken by shuttle astronauts and images from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission to prepare maps of land forms in the region, then verified them on the ground using drilling, coring and manually dug trenches.
“Before the region was settled, regular and powerful monsoons flooded the Indus River and its tributaries, moving large amounts of sediment across the plains and cutting deep valleys through the deposits. One of the most striking features the researchers found was a mounded plain, 10 to 20 yards high, more than 60 miles wide and running almost 600 miles along the Indus. The rich silt deposited by the river was perfect for agriculture, the team said.
“By about 5,500 years ago, however, the monsoon area had drifted eastward and the devastating floods along the Indus were replaced by overflows that watered the soil and encouraged agriculture. "The Harappans were an enterprising people taking advantage of a window of opportunity — a kind of 'Goldilocks civilization,'" Giosan said. "As monsoon drying subdued devastating floods, the land nearby the rivers — still fed with water and rich silt — was just right for agriculture."
“But as the monsoons continued their eastward drift, the annual floods became weaker and less regular and the Harappan agriculture could no longer support the large cities. Beginning around 3,900 years ago, communities of farmers followed the monsoons to the East, forming small villages along the river that relied on the local rains. Those rains did not support a large agricultural surplus, Giosan said. The cities died out, the writing was lost, trade halted and the Harappan civilization was no more.
“The team also believes that they have solved another mystery, the fate of the mythical river the Sarasvati. The ancient Indian scriptures called the Veda described the Sarasvati as "surpassing in might and majesty all other waters" and "pure in her course from the mountains to the ocean." Those writings suggest that the Sarasvati was fed by Himalayan glaciers and flowed to the ocean. But the new data indicatethat there was no river during the period fed by glaciers, only those fed by the annual monsoons. If, indeed, there was a Sarasvati, it was a monsoonal river just like the others.”
DNA Study Debunks Aryan Invasion Theory
A study published in September 2019 claimed that Indus Valley people (Harappans) and Vedic people are same, which appears to debunk the Aryan Invasion Theory. Pratul Sharma wrote in The Week: “In a major finding that could impact the understanding of Indian ancestry, the DNA study of a 4500-year-old skeleton found in Rakhigarhi, in Haryana, suggests that modern people in India are likely to have descended from the same population.” This finding “came to light after scientists were able to sequence genome from the skeleton of a woman and study the archaeological evidence found in Rakhigarhi, a village located some 150 kilometers from Delhi. Rakhigarhi is the largest Harappan site in India. [Source: Pratul Sharma, The Week, September 6, 2019]
“The ancient-DNA results completely reject the theory of steppe pastoral or ancient Iranian farmers as source of ancestry to the Harappan population. This research also demolishes the hypothesis about mass human migration during the Harappan time from outside South Asia,” Prof Vasant Shinde, director of the Rakhigarhi project, said.
Shinde said the new breakthrough completely sets aside the Aryan migration or invasion theory. “The skeletal remains found in the upper part of the citadel area of Mohenjodaro belonged to those who died due to floods and not (of those) massacred by the Aryans as hypothesised by Sir Mortimer Wheeler. The Aryan invasion theory is based on very flimsy ground,” Shinde said, adding that the history being taught to us in text books should now be changed.
The DNA revealed that there was no migration or inclusion of any Iran or Central Asian gene into Harappan people. "There is a continuity till the modern times. We are descendants of the Harappans. Even the Vedic culture and (that of) Harappans are same,” Shinde said.
“This research, for the first time, has established the fact that people of Harappan civilisation are the ancestors of most population of South Asia. For the first time, the research indicates movement of people from east to west. The Harappan people's presence is evident at sites like Gonur in Turkmenistan and Shahr-i-Sokhta in Iran. As the Harappans traded with Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persian Gulf and all over South Asia, there are bound to be movements of people resulting into mixed genetic history,” he added.
These revelations assume political significance as there have been demands to rewrite the history books to say that Vedic people were the original inhabitants of the country and they did not come from Central Asia. “Our premise that the Harappans were Vedic people thus received strong corroborative scientific evidence based on ancient DNA studies,” he added.
Another significant claim in the study published in the scientific journal Cell, titled "An Ancient Harappan Genome Lacks Ancestry from Steppe Pastoralists or Iranian Farmers”, is that farming was not brought to South Asia by large-scale movement of people from the Fertile Crescent where farming first arose. Instead, farming started in South Asia by local hunter-gatherers.
As the study results were published, separate statements were issued by Harvard Medical School which had collaborated in the study. "Even though there has been success with studies of ancient-DNA from many other places, the difficult preservation conditions mean that studies in South Asia have been a challenge," says senior author David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School, the Broad Institute, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
In this study, Reich, along with post-doctoral scientist Vagheesh Narasimhan and Niraj Rai, who established a new ancient-DNA laboratory at the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences in Lucknow, led the preparation of the samples. They screened 61 skeletal samples from a site in Rakhigarhi, the largest city of the Indus valley Civilisation. A single sample showed promise: it contained a very small amount of authentic ancient DNA. The team made over 100 attempts to sequence the sample. Reich says: "While each of the individual data sets did not produce enough DNA, pooling them resulted in sufficient genetic data to learn about population history."
"Ancestry like that in the Indus Valley Civilisation individuals is the primary ancestry source in South Asia today," says Reich. "This finding ties people in South Asia today directly to the Indus Valley Civilisation." The authors of the study, however, have a word of caution. “Analyzing the genome of only one individual limits the conclusions that can be drawn about the entire population of the Indus Valley Civilization.”
After the Indus Valley Civilization
After its disappearance around 1500 B.C. there was a bewildering variety of princely states and kingdoms, small and large, throughout the subcontinent, creating a long history of war and conquest that was punctuated by foreign invasions and the birth of some of the world's largest religions: Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism, and Sikhism.
Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons, The Louvre, The British Museum
Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, Lonely Planet Guides, Library of Congress, Ministry of Tourism, Government of India, Compton’s Encyclopedia, The Guardian, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, AFP, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic Monthly, The Economist, Foreign Policy, Wikipedia, BBC, CNN, and various books, websites and other publications.
Last updated September 2020