Concept of the Ancient Floods with special reference to Indus Valley Civilization.

Floods played an important role in the decline of Harappan civilization.

by

Dr. Nitish Priyadarshi

“And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; fir the earth is filled with violence through them with the earth…And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth. In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life…were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. And the waters returned off the earth continually; and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated…”

Some might feel that times have not changed very much since The Flood, but in this article I am concerned with human morality, frailty and punishment- though it is interesting to note that the great catastrophic flood which is recorded in the mythology of other races through out the world is attributed to punishment by a deity of one form or another for the sins of mankind.

A world – destroying flood ( “world” in those days being localized rather than planetary) is a common legend in the ancient history of many races apart from the Hebrews; for example, the Americans, Babylonians, Indians, Persians, Polynesians and Syrians.

Archaeologists in Mesopotamia have discovered evidence of severe flooding at various levels- in particular a stratum of clay eight feet deep, excavated by Sir Leonard Woolley at Ur, which he identified with the biblical flood.

The Babylonian records say that some 4,000 years old refer to a “dark cloud” that encompassed the planet and intense fire that scorched the land- “all that was bright was turned into darkness. For six days a deluge of water driven by hurricane winds swept over earth, destroying all forms of life and changing the face of the planet.”

Hindu legend tells of the appearance in the sky of a rapidly expanding dark shape in the form of boar, which suddenly broke into loud thunder. The shape hurtled into the water which, convulsed by the motion, rose in enormous waves.

The same basic story is related in the mythology of other races and countries, including even the Celts of Britain and the Maoris of New Zealand.

Research since the 1970s suggests that there were three global super-floods: 15,000 to 14,000 years ago; 12,000 to 11,000 years ago; and 8,000 to 7,000 years ago. The second period ties in with the date Plato ascribed in the Timaeus and Critias to the destruction by earthquakes and flooding of Atlantis, and with the Tamil myth of the submerging of the fabled land of Kumari Kandam. Kumari Kandam, an antediluvian civilization said to have existed thousands of years ago around south India. It is believed to have been a great center of learning with magnificent academies which may have left a legacy of cartographic and astronomical knowledge which exists today in the ancient Indian texts.

There is also strong evidence that nearly half the total melt water released at the end of the last Ice Age was concentrated into these three relatively short periods. Such events would have had a momentous impact on the human inhabitants at that time, leaving a marked impression on oral tradition, the original transmitter of all ancient myths.

Geological record indicates that during Late Pleistocene glaciation, waters of the Himalaya were frozen and that in place of rivers there were only glaciers, masses of solid ice. As and when the climate became warmer, the glaciers began to break up and the frozen water held by them surged forth in great floods, inundating the alluvial plains in front of the mountains.

Floods played an important role in the decline of Harappan civilization. Several individual sites like Dholavira show that floods and rising sea levels leading to increased salinity made them uninhabitable. The Rann of Kutch, for example, was inhabited during the Harappan era. Dholavira, a major Harappan site is located in the Rann.

When we use the term ‘floods’ with the reference to the Harappan civilization, it is important to distinguish between the river floods and encroachment by the flooding ocean due to rising sea levels. The latter is recorded scientific fact.

In coastal areas, floods do not necessarily mean riverine floods but tidal waves and rising sea levels. The Mausala Parva of the Mahabharata seems to record a tidal wave leading to the destruction of Dwarka. The description in the Mausala suggests a massive tidal wave triggered by underwater volcanic activity- sometimes known as the tsunami. There are far more deadly than river floods. More seriously, if it is part of permanent environmental change, their effect can be permanent. This seems to have the case with coastal areas of the Harappan civilization.

Rising sea levels can be devastating for coastal settlements since there is no recovering from it. We find records of floods in the literature all across the ancient worlds. The better known among these ( outside India) are the Bible and the ancient Mesopotamian work known as the Epic of Gilgamesh. The question is : can we find any record of floods on the Indus seals? We have found at least two that record the terrifying effects of floods.

The first of these is a seven – sign message inscribed in the compact form characteristic of most Harappan writing. It is written from right to left and may be deciphered as follows.


Decipherment: saka-ta-va-sa-ma-dra (right –to- left in original)

Reading : Śakta vāsa samudrah


Written in the concise Harappan (sutra) style, this may be rendered into English as follows: “ The sea has entered dwelling places.” The writing on the next seal is more vivid and poignant-almost an anguished cry for help. It is written from left to right which is the more common mode on the Harappan seals. With a total of sixteen signs it is one of the longer Harappan inscriptions on record.

Decipherment: Line 1: da-śa-sa-sra-dha
Line2: a-gha-va-asta-ja
Line3: śaka-ta-kavrahan-yat-ta

Reading Line 1: dāsśuse-śrudhi
Line 2: agho vai astojan
Line 3: śaktikah vrā hanāyattah


The inscription may be explained as follows. The first line is an invocation: “Oh Gods! Hear our prayers as we make our offerings to you in your yajnas”. The second line is a description of the flood: “ We see before us floods (enemy) in eight directions ( or all around us).” The third is a cry of despair: “Powerful people find themselves at the mercy of death.”

These seem to be inspired by the experience of floods and their own helplessness before them.

Prompted by the discovery of some 30 skeletons in the ruins, Sir Mortimer Wheeler, dean of subcontinent archaeology in the 1940s and 1950s, wrote that “men, women, and children were massacred in the streets and houses, and were left lying there or, at the best, crudely covered without last rites.” To Wheeler the “massacre” tracked with verses in the Rig-Veda, a collection of ancient Hindu hymns that recounts the destruction of cities by the fierce and war like God Indra.

Today archaeologists point out that no weapons or other evidence of an attack were found at Mohenjo Daro. Some believe that skeletons were of persons who died of disease. And many archaeologists doubt that there was an invasion. Examination of skeletons from Indus cemeteries has failed to show that the original people were supplanted by new-comers with different characteristics.

No one can say with certainty why the subcontinent’s long-lived civilization came to an end, but experts suspect unruly rivers. Geological and archeological evidence, it turns out, give strong evidence that a long and devastating drought followed by devastating floods led to the abandonment of the settlements along the banks of the Indus and Saraswati rivers in western India, ending an urban civilization that had flourished, archeologists now surmise, sometime between 2,600 BC and 1,900 BC. Experts think the fluctuations of the Indus had a major impact on Mohenjo Daro. It whipped back and forth across the plains, causing floods that destroyed the agricultural base of the city. Trade and the economy were disrupted. Hundred of villages may have been destroyed by floods or by rivers carving new channels.



Reference:

National Geographic, June 2000, vol. 197, no.6.

Patten, D.W. 1966. The Biblical flood and the ice epoch. Pacific Meridian Publishing co., Seattle.

Rajaram, N.S. 1999. Sarasvati Civilization in the Harappan Seals. In ed. B.P. Radhakrishna and S.S. Merh, Vedic Sarasvati Evolutionary history of a lost river of Northwestern India. Geological Society of India, Bangalore.

http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/science/sc-harry.htm
http://sanskrit.safire.com/pdf/ORIGINS.PDF

Did climate change killed ancient civilization?

Did climate change killed ancient civilization?
by

Dr. Nitish Priyadarshi
Devastating Kosi floods in India, floods in China, floods in Mexico, droughts in some parts of the world, extremes of climates and lots more. Effects are dying people and displacement. Is these phenomenon is recent or earlier too our ancient civilization was affected with climate change?

We assume that we are first to deal with such severe environmental issues, when that’s just not the case. Earlier too our oldest civilization passed through environmental disaster and climate change which gradually ended the ancient civilization. Even the most developed civilization like Indus Valley civilization, Maya civilization and Sumerians were affected with environmental changes like floods, droughts etc. Lots of theories and causes have been put forward regarding decline of these developed civilizations. But after going through the different research reports, it can be said that climate change ended the ancient civilizations in different phases.
Native global flood stories are documented as history or legend in almost every region on earth. Old world missionaries reported their amazement at finding remote tribes already possessing legends with tremendous similarities to the Bible's accounts of the worldwide flood. H.S. Bellamy in Moons, Myths and Men estimates that altogether there are over 500 Flood legends worldwide. Ancient civilizations such as (China, Babylonia, Wales, Russia, India, America, Hawaii, Scandinavia, Sumatra, Peru, and Polynesia) all have their own versions of a giant flood.
This article attempts to bring to light some of the environmental problems which occurred through out our history from one civilization to other.

Indus valley civilization
The Indus or the Harappan culture is older than the chalcolithic cultures. It arose in the north-western part of the Indian subcontinent. It is called Harappan because this civilization was discovered first in 1921 at the modern site of Harappa situated in the province of West Punjab in Pakistan.
Comparatively rainless, the Indus region is not so fertile these days. Its prosperous villages and towns show that it was fertile in ancient times. At present it has only rainfall of about 15 cm. in the fourth century B.C. one of the historians of the Alexander informs us that Sindh was a fertile part of the country. In earlier times the Indus possessed more natural vegetation which attracted more rainfall. It supplied timber fuel for baking bricks on a large scale, and also for construction. In course of time, natural vegetation was destroyed by the extension of agriculture, large scale grazing, and supply of fuel.
A possible natural reason for the Indus Valley civilization decline is connected with climate change that is also signaled for the neighboring areas of the Middle East: The Indus valley climate grew significantly cooler and drier from about 1800 BCE, linked to a general weakening of the monsoon at that time. Alternatively, a crucial factor may have been the disappearance of substantial portions of the Ghaggar Hakra river system. A tectonic event may have diverted the system's sources toward the Ganges Plain, though there is complete uncertainty about the date of this event as most settlements inside Ghaggar-Hakra river beds have not yet been dated.
The Harappan culture declined suddenly between 1800-1700 BC and its end is as puzzling as its beginning. How and why did this first great empire of South Asia decay into oblivion? One cannot say with certainty whether massacres by marauders or the inbuilt decay that had set in caused the decline of this powerful civilization. Another school of thought relates the demise of the Indus valley civilization to have been brought about by a major tectonic shift that caused continuous floods of this area.
Research has proved that the decline of the glorious Harappan culture was due to a variety of factors, both manmade and natural. In the beginning of the second millennium BC, there were great changes in the environmental conditions-the climate changed and large parts of the plains were flooded when tectonic changes threw up a dam in the lower Indus Valley.
Sumerian civilization:
Sumer, located in southern Mesopotamia, is one of the earliest known civilizations in the world. The Sumerians were the first group that everyone can agree is worthy of being called a “civilization”. They arose in what is today Iraq some time around the 6th millennium BC, and were conquered by about 2400 BC. The Sumerians arose in the area known as the “Fertile Crescent”. This area of land, also called Mesopotamia, was an oasis of fertile land sandwiched between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
Soil salinity in this region had been long recognized as a major problem. Poorly drained irrigated soils, in an arid climate with high levels of evaporation, led to the buildup of dissolved salts in the soil, eventually reducing agricultural yields severely. During the Akkadian and Ur III phases, there was a shift from the cultivation of wheat to the more salt-tolerant barley, but this was insufficient, and during the period from 2100 BC to 1700 BC, it is estimated that the population in this area declined by nearly 3/5ths.
Most farms had to be irrigated with ditches fed by the rivers. This was wildly successful. For the first time in history, there was a food surplus. This in turn led to a population surplus, with people in cities abandoning agricultural labor and eating the surplus produced by farmers.
Like all good things, it couldn’t last. There was an inherent flaw in the system. The hot sun evaporated most of water, leaving behind salt. Where the water didn’t quickly evaporate, the water table rose, also bringing salt to the surface.
After years and years of salt slowly accumulating, a tipping point was reached. The land had become too salty for the wheat production. The only way to reclaim the land was to let it lie fallow for several years.

There is a wealth of evidence pointing to severe environmental issues in the Sumerian civilization. One of the most important pieces of information from that time is the Epic of Gilgamesh, an ancient poem about the mythological hero-king Gilgamesh and his search for immortality. Even in this work there are mentions of environmental problems. After thousands of years of existence, a lack of food brought on by the unproductive soil crippled the Sumerians.
Maya Civilization:
Originating in the Yucatan Peninsula, the ancient Maya civilization occupied a vast area of Mesoamerica between the time period of 2600 BC and 1200 AD. Constructing thousands of architectural structures and developing sophisticated concepts surrounding the disciplines of astronomy and mathematics, the Maya civilization rose to a cultural florescence between the years of 600 to 800 AD. Although this prosperity reigned for nearly two centuries, the Maya civilization met with misfortune between the years of 800 and 900 AD.
During this time period, known by archaeologists as the Classic Collapse of the Maya civilization, many southern cities were abandoned and most cultural activities ceased. The Maya, never able to regain their cultural or geographical prominence, were assimilated into other Mesoamerican civilizations until the time of the Spanish Conquest in 1530 AD.
The cause of the collapse of the Classic Maya civilization represents one of the great archaeological mysteries of our time, and has been debated by scholars for nearly a century. Some scientists theorize that the paleoclimate of the region was not only different than the present day climate, but the natural climate variability of the past could have included a period of intense drought that occurred in conjunction with the Classic Maya Collapse.

The sudden demise is one of the greatest archeological mysteries of our time. What caused the collapse of the great Maya civilization?


The answer, say researchers, is climate change. According to a new study published in the issue of Science journal , a long period of dry climate, punctuated by three intense droughts, led to the end of the Maya society. "Climate change is to blame for one of the most catastrophic collapses in human history," said Gerald Haug, a professor of geology at the University of Potsdam, Germany, and one of the study's authors.
The drought hypothesis is not new. Sediments taken by scientists in 2001 from a lake on the Yucatan peninsula showed that a series of extended droughts coincided with major cultural upheavals among the Maya people.

Experts say the Maya were particularly susceptible to long droughts because about 95 percent of their population centers depended solely on lakes, ponds, and rivers containing on average an 18-month supply of water for drinking and agriculture.

Reference:

Ancient India by Ram Sharan Sharma, NCERT, New Delhi.

http://india.mapsofindia.com/the-country/ancient-history/indus-valley-civilization.html

http://www.mohenjodaro.net/indusdecline.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumer#Decline

http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/offbeat-news/environmentalism-in-3000-bc/912

· Stefan Lovgren for National Geographic News, March 13, 2003. Climate Change Killed off Maya Civilization.
Hodell, D. A., J. H. Curtis and M. Brenner. 1995. Possible role of climate in the collapse of Classic Maya civilization. Nature 375:391-394.