The Harappan Decline

The Harappan civilization flourished around the Indus River Valley on the western Indian subcontinent from about 2700 to 2000 B.C.E. The Harappans exploited the seasonal overflow from their rivers by capturing the water with dams and distributing it to crop-growing farms. They built cities of brick and traded widely, sending wood, fabrics, and other products to Mesopotamia, where other early civilizations thrived.

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By around 1900 B.C E. the Harappan civilization was in decline, a result likely related to environmental degradation. Intensive plant growth, water-saturated land, and hot, dry summer climates cause rapid surface evaporation over time, drawing salts in the earth closer to the surface, where they slowly poison plant life through a process called salinization. Moreover, salt-permeated topsoil is easily blown away by passing winds, causing desertification (fertile land turning into desert). These conditions are further exacerbated where a hard layer of bedrock impervious to water lies not far beneath the surface, as is the case in the valley of the Indus. Such soil formations mean water tends even more to stay close to the surface (a high water table), where the process of evaporation is greatest. Salinization is particularly deadly in regions experiencing a period of decreasing local rainfall, as the drier the air, the faster the evaporation, and hence the quicker the rise in salts to the surface. A shift eastward of seasonal rains may have been responsible for decreasing moisture on the western Indian subcontinent, encouraging a drying trend that became well established there and in Mesopotamia, where civilizations also began to decline around the same period.

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Ironically , both the Harappan and Mesopotamian civilizations’ management of their natural resources may have figured in this mutual decline. Much of the Harappan-Mesopotamian bulk trade was in Harappan wood. Harappan woodsmen may have stripped much of the Indus Valley of its local forests for this trade and to provide fuel for the ovens that dried the bricks used widely in Harappan construction. Mesopotamians had already deforested their lands, hence their need for outside suppliers of wood. The removal of forest cover, for any reason, increases flooding, because trees hold water in the soil. The making of burnt bricks and the trade in wood, combined with drought, was a prescription for disaster.

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Dramatic earth movements have often altered the course of human history: earthquake-related tsunamis (large ocean waves) alone have eradicated cities from ancient Mycenae (Crete) to Port Royal (Jamaica) in the early modern period. The fate of Harappans was probably sealed by a series of earthquakes and other geologic events between 1900 and 1500 B.C.E. that uplifted land and shifted river beds so as to create even greater pooling of water in a time of flood, further increasing salinization. Increasingly unproductive land and declining Mesopotamian trade would have made it harder to fix the damage done by floods and earthquakes. Cities show signs of a slow dissolution of civic cohesion, including the rise of slums (low- quality residential areas) and a decline in the quality of crafts.

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Harappan cities along the Indus and Ghaggar-Hakra rivers may have been the first to perish, as their life-giving waters shifted or largely dried up by 1900 B.C.E. Other cities, such as the port at Lothal, may have survived for perhaps two centuries longer until river courses either shifted away from or flooded over them. In an effort to avoid annihilation, Harappans may have moved farther east and south in search of fertile land and reliable rainfall. Such a migration might explain the ancient Harappan-like dam structures and cultural fragments found along rivers in the Deccan Plateau in India.

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Language offers further evidence of Harappan migration. In an isolated valley of what used to be the Harappans’ region, the earliest form of language found (called Brahui) is related to the earliest form of the Dravidian language group, which is widely spoken in the southern regions of the Indian subcontinent but has few clear connections to other language groups. If the Brahui-speaking inhabitants of Harappan lands are the descendants of speakers of the ancient Harappan language, so also are speakers of Dravidian. The idea of such an ancient lineage is very popular among Dravidian speakers. It is challenged by many other linguists, however, who argue that Brahui speakers migrated to their present location from their original home in the Dravidian-speaking south.

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?The Harappan civilization flourished around the Indus River Valley on the western Indian subcontinent from about 2700 to 2000 B.C.E. The Harappans exploited the seasonal overflow from their rivers by capturing the water with dams and distributing it to crop-growing farms. They built cities of brick and traded widely, sending wood, fabrics, and other products to Mesopotamia, where other early civilizations thrived.