The Times of India tells us that it’s time to rewrite the history books. New evidence has surfaced which claims that the Indus Valley Civilisation is much older than we initially thought. Even older than the Egyptian and Mesopotamian ones. More than 8,000 years old.

The Times of India should be complimented for spotting this valuable research story, published in Scientific Reports, a journal published by Nature publications. Perhaps, it was the first newspaper to cover the story.

However, the story has some false claims.

First, its not ‘new evidence’. It’s an old study. The authors of the paper themselves have cited Rao, L. S., Sahu, N. B., Sahu, P., Shastry, U. A. & Diwan, S. New light on the excavation of Harappan settlement at Bhirrana. Puratattva 35, 67–75 (2005). 2005, that’s 11 years old news.

In fact, their central idea in the paper is about the possibility of a connect between climate, agriculture and subsistence pattern during the Harappan civilization.

Also, the claim that scientists have said climate change killed the Indus civilisation is plain wrong. This is not the impression one gets when reading the original research paper. Things are more complicated than that. The authors of the research paper say this in the abstract itself: