Kharagpur: Scientists at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Kharagpur have found in a study that the Indus Valley civilisation was wiped out 4350 years ago due to a 900-year-long drought. The earlier theory was that the drought lasted about 200 years but this latest study puts that to rest. TOI reports that the study will be published in the prestigious Quaternary International Journal by Elsevier this month. The geology and geophysics department at the institute have been studying the monsoon’s variability for the past 5000 years and they found that for 900 long years, the rains played mischief in the northwest Himalayas and dried up the source of the water along which the civilisation flourished.
Hence, the inhabitants of the valley had to travel south and east where the conditions were better. “The study revealed that from 2,350 BC (4,350 years ago) till 1,450 BC, the monsoon had a major weakening effect over the zone where the civilisation flourished. A drought-like situation developed, forcing residents to abandon their settlements in search of greener pastures,” said Anil Kumar Gupta, the lead researcher and a senior faculty of geology at the institute to the TOI. Gupta added that the people migrated towards eastern and central UP, Bihar and Bengal in the east, MP, south of the Vindhyachal and south Gujarat.
