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Monsoon decline caused rise and fall of harappan civilisation, sayscientists by ferujkll sdff
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Monsoon decline caused rise and fall of harappan civilisation, sayscientists by FERUJKLL SDFF
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| Article Posted: 07/10/2013 |
| Article Views: 59 |
| Articles Written: 2023 - MORE ARTICLES FROM THIS AUTHOR |
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Monsoon decline caused rise and fall of harappan civilisation, sayscientists |
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Why did the Harappan civilisation, which flourished for hundreds ofyears and once extended across a vast area from northwestern Indiaand across Pakistan, suddenly go into a terminal decline some 4,000years ago and wither away? Like their script that has remained indecipherable, the questionwhat caused a sophisticated urban culture, capable of great featsof town planning and which had established a trading network thatextended across the Middle East, to suddenly collapse is one thathas aroused much scholarly debate and writing. It has been suggested that reduction in water availability, perhapsas a result of climatic change or because tectonic activity causedrivers to change course, could have played a significant part inthe decline of this ancient civilisation. In a paper being published this week in the Proceedings of theNational Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a team of scientists from theU.S., U.K., Pakistan, India and Romania has argued that long-termchanges in monsoon rainfall altered river flow, creating conditionsthat initially allowed the Harappan civilisation to thrive but ledlater to its demise. There is evidence that about 10,000 years back the Indiansubcontinent went through a period when monsoon rainfall wasgreater than it is now, according to R.
Ramesh of the PhysicalResearch Laboratory in Ahmedabad who works on reconstructing thepast climate and is not an author of the PNAS paper. Then an eastward shift of the monsoon reduced rainfall in thenorthwestern part of the subcontinent, which became particularlymarked some 5,000 years ago. In their PNAS paper, Liviu Giosan and the other scientists haveexamined how river dynamics affected the Harappan civilisation. Thedeclining rainfall reduced the cataclysmic floods produced byrivers in the region. This decrease in flood intensity"probably stimulated intensive agriculture initially andencouraged urbanisation around 4,500 years before present." The Harappan towns tended to be established on higher elevation,"in close proximity to floodable, agriculturally viableland," the scientists noted.
Lacking canal irrigation, thesepeople relied on floods, which had to be regular and also benignenough to foster intensive agriculture without crippling theirtowns and cities. But it was a delicate balance that ultimately tipped against theHarappans. As the monsoon continued to weaken, "riversgradually dried or became seasonal, affecting habitability alongtheir courses," the paper pointed out. "After 500 years of flourishing urbanism, the increasingaridification due to a shifting monsoon led to a crisis in theagriculture of the hinterland that supported the cities,"remarked Ronojoy Adhikari of the Institute of Mathematical Sciencesin Chennai, one of the authors of the paper. This led tolarge-scale migrations towards moister regions to the north and adecline in the urban system of the Harappan civilisation.
The PNAS paper also examined the Ghaggar-Hakra river system thatsome have identified with the legendary Saraswati, which wasdescribed as a mighty glacier-fed river in the Rig Veda. Thesedays, the Ghaggar has a sustained water flow only during a goodmonsoon. The paper's findings support those published by V. Rajamani, nowretired from the faculty of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, histhen doctoral student and two German scientists in the journal Current Science in 2004.
After examining the isotopic characteristics of sediments found inthe Ghaggar river in the Thar desert, they reported that thesesediments did not appear to have originated in the glaciatedregions of the Himalayas. The Ghaggar-Harappan civilisation was, they concluded, a‘true river valley civilisation' supported by monsoonrainfall in the sub-Himalayan catchment, the reduction of which wasresponsible for the extinction of the river and the associatedcivilisation. The PNAS paper, however, does not cite the Current Science work. I am an expert from Bag & Luggage Agents, usually analyzes all kind of industries situation, such as mercerized cotton socks , scuba wet suit.
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