A study of Scientists led by the University of Cambridge and Banaras Hindu University has suggested that Climate change contributed in the fall of the Bronze Age Indus Valley Civilisation (also known as the Harappan Civilisation), which spanned across present India and Pakistan. The study has revealed that the Bronze Age megacities declined during the 21st and 20th centuries BC and never recovered back following a series of droughts that lasted for about 200 years in the zone of Indus valley.

To study on the concept of the collapse the team of British Scientists studied snail shells that were preserved in the sediments of an ancient lake bed Kotla Dahar in Haryana. They anlysed oxygen isotopes of the shell and calculated the amount of rain that happened in the lake thousands of years ago.



The results of the project shed a light on the mystery for sudden disappearance of the major cities of the Indus Valley Civilisation. The study has also linked the decline with the documented global scale climate event and its impact on other civilisation of Old Kingdom in Egypt, the early Bronze Age civilizations of Greece and Crete as well as the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia.

Scientists confirmed that climate change as the reason for collapse of the civilization by studying the evidences from Arabian Sea, Oman and Meghalaya and say that unexpected weakening of the summer monsoon affected northwest India 4100 years ago.



The study also involved researchers from Imperial College London, the University of Oxford, the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur and the Uttar Pradesh State Archaeology Department.



The study was funded by the British Council UK-India Education and Research Initiative to investigate the archeology river systems and climate of north-west India using a combination of archaeology and geo-science. The study was published in the journal Geology.



Background

Ancient Indus Valley Civilization city also known as the Mohenjo Daro or Mound of the Dead flourished between 2600 and 1900 BC. It was one of the first world and ancient Indian cities. The site was discovered in the 1920s and lies in Pakistan's Sindh province. The civilisation is considered almost as old as those of Egypt and Mesopotamia.