Writing began to disappear and the standardized weights and measures used for trade and taxation fell out of use. Scholars have put forth differing theories to explain the disappearance of the Harappans, including an Aryan Invasion and climate change marked by overwhelming monsoons.
The Indus Valley Civilization may have met its demise due to invasion. According to one theory by British archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler, a nomadic, Indo-European tribe, called the Aryans, suddenly overwhelmed and conquered the Indus River Valley. Wheeler, who was Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India from to , posited that many unburied corpses found in the top levels of the Mohenjo-daro archaeological site were victims of war.
The theory suggested that by using horses and more advanced weapons against the peaceful Harappan people, the Aryans may have easily defeated them. Yet shortly after Wheeler proposed his theory, other scholars dismissed it by explaining that the skeletons were not victims of invasion massacres, but rather the remains of hasty burials. Wheeler himself eventually admitted that the theory could not be proven and the skeletons indicated only a final phase of human occupation, with the decay of the city structures likely a result of it becoming uninhabited.
Various elements of the Indus Civilization are found in later cultures, suggesting the civilization did not disappear suddenly due to an invasion. Many scholars came to believe in an Indo-Aryan Migration theory stating that the Harappan culture was assimilated during a migration of the Aryan people into northwest India.
Aryans in India: An early 20th-century depiction of Aryan people settling in agricultural villages in India. Other scholarship suggests the collapse of Harappan society resulted from climate change. Some experts believe the drying of the Saraswati River, which began around BCE, was the main cause for climate change, while others conclude that a great flood struck the area. Any major environmental change, such as deforestation, flooding or droughts due to a river changing course, could have had disastrous effects on Harappan society, such as crop failures, starvation, and disease.
Skeletal evidence suggests many people died from malaria, which is most often spread by mosquitoes. This also would have caused a breakdown in the economy and civic order within the urban areas. Another disastrous change in the Harappan climate might have been eastward-moving monsoons, or winds that bring heavy rains. Monsoons can be both helpful and detrimental to a climate, depending on whether they support or destroy vegetation and agriculture.
The monsoons that came to the Indus River Valley aided the growth of agricultural surpluses, which supported the development of cities, such as Harappa. The population came to rely on seasonal monsoons rather than irrigation, and as the monsoons shifted eastward, the water supply would have dried up.
Ruins of the city of Lothal: Archaeological evidence shows that the site, which had been a major city before the downfall of the Indus Valley Civilization, continued to be inhabited by a much smaller population after the collapse. The few people who remained in Lothal did not repair the city, but lived in poorly-built houses and reed huts instead. The Harappans may have migrated toward the Ganges basin in the east, where they established villages and isolated farms.
These small communities could not produce the same agricultural surpluses to support large cities. With the reduced production of goods, there was a decline in trade with Egypt and Mesopotamia.
Privacy Policy. Skip to main content. Early Civilizations in the Indian Subcontinent. Search for:. The Indus River Valley Civilizations. Inhabitants of the ancient Indus River valley developed new techniques in handicraft, including Carnelian products and seal carving, and metallurgy with copper, bronze, lead, and tin.
Sir John Hubert Marshall led an excavation campaign in , during which he discovered the ruins of the city of Harappa. The Indus River running through northwest India into Pakistan received its name from the Sanskrit term sindhu.
The Persians designated the land around the Indus River as Hindu, a mispronunciation of the Sanskrit sindhu. In archaeologists uncovered evidence of an ancient civilization along the Indus River, which today is dated to around BC and thought to represent one of the largest centers of human habitation in the ancient world.
Scholars believe that the Indus Valley Civilization had begun to decline by BC, possibly due to climate change. Because of its location between the Indian Subcontinent and the Iranian plateau, the area has seen many military invasions including Alexander the Great, the Persian empire, and the Kushan empire. To distinguish themselves, they called all non-Muslims Hindus; the name of the land became, by default, the name of the people and their religion Schoeps, , p.
Hindus hold that there is one supreme God--Brahman. Brahman is the impersonal ultimate reality or world soul. All beings are part of Brahman and Brahman is likewise part of all things. Humans cannot describe or comprehend Brahman. Syvitski, University of Colorado. Weakened monsoons and reduced run-off from the mountains tamed the wild Indus and its Himalayan tributaries enough to enable agriculture along their valleys.
During the early and mature phases of the Harappan civilization, settlements bloomed along the Indus from the coast to the hills fronting the Himalayas and along the most likely course of the mythical River Sarasvati, in what is now a waterless region, part of the Thar Desert.
With continued aridification, the population moved eastward toward the Ganges basin, where summer monsoon rains remained reliable, and winter monsoon rains increased marking a shift toward small farming communities and the decline of cities during late Harappan times. He uses techniques that span isotope geochemistry, next generation DNA sequencing, and satellite tagging to study the ecology of a wide variety of ocean species. He recently discovered that blue sharks use warm water ocean tunnels, or eddies, to dive to the ocean twilight zone, where they forage in nutrient-rich waters hundreds of meters down.
Born in New Zealand, Simon received his B. With much of his work in the South Pacific and Caribbean, Simon has been on many cruises, logging 1, hours of scuba diving and hours in tropical environs.
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For more than 30 years, Greg has been actively involved in the study of life history, ecology, and physiology of sharks. His shark research has spanned the globe from the frigid waters of the Arctic Circle to coral reefs in the tropical Central Pacific. Much of his current research centers on the use of acoustic telemetry and satellite-based tagging technology to study the ecology and behavior of sharks.
He has written dozens of scientific research papers and has appeared in a number of film and television documentaries, including programs for National Geographic, Discovery Channel, BBC, and numerous television networks.
His most recent book, The Shark Handbook, is a must buy for all shark enthusiasts. An emblem used as a means of authentication. Seal can refer to an impression in paper, wax, clay, or other medium. It can also refer to the device used. The area of this civilization extended along the Indus River from what today is northeast Afghanistan, into Pakistan and northwest India.
The Indus Civilization was the most widespread of the three early civilizations of the ancient world, along with Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. Their discovery and excavation in the 19th and 20th centuries provided important archaeological data about ancient cultures. Map of the Indus Valley Civilization. The major sites of the Indus Valley Civilization.
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