Decline and De-urbanisation of the Indus Civilisation
- Date
- c. 1900 BCE
- Category
- Environment & climate
- Region
- Indus Valley (Pakistan/NW India)
- Era
- Ancient Civilizations
- Significance
From around 1900 BCE the Mature Harappan urban order unravelled in a gradual process of de-urbanisation rather than sudden catastrophe.
The great cities were progressively abandoned: standardised weights, writing, long-distance trade and grid planning faded as populations dispersed into smaller villages and farms, many shifting eastward toward the Ganges plain. The leading explanation is climatic and hydrological stress, the global '4.2 kiloyear' aridification event and a weakening, eastward-shifting monsoon, compounded by the drying of the Ghaggar-Hakra (often identified with the Vedic Sarasvati) river system that had supported a dense band of settlements. Reduced and less reliable water undercut the agricultural surpluses that cities required. Localised 'Late Harappan' cultures such as Cemetery H persisted in altered form. The collapse of the Indus civilisation stands as one of the great examples of an early complex society undone largely by environmental change.
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Empires active in c. 1900 BCE
- Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex (Oxus Civilization)2250 BCE – 1700 BCE
- Indus Valley (Harappan) Civilization2600 BCE – 1900 BCE
- Elamite Kingdom2700 BCE – 539 BCE
- Xia Dynasty2070 BCE – 1600 BCE
Related environment & climate events
- The 4.2-Kiloyear Event: Megadrought and the Collapse of the Akkadian Empire and Egyptian Old Kingdomc. 2200 BCE
- Eruption of Thera (Santorini)c. 1600 BCE (debated)
- The Pleistocene–Holocene boundary and the start of the Holocenec. 11,700 years ago (c. 9700 BCE)
- End of the African Humid Period and Desertification of the Saharac. 3500–2700 BCE
- Eruption of Vesuvius buries Pompeii and Herculaneum79 CE (traditionally 24 August)
- Late Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions and the overkill-vs-climate debatec. 15,000 – 10,000 years ago
Further reading
The wider story
A New Green History of the World
The classic accessible account of how environment and climate have shaped human history.
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