The indus or harappan civilization was taken over by the aryans, nomadic invaders from central

1922, archaeologist Rakhal Das Banerji discovered a Buddhist mound in the then-British-ruled Sindh province of India. Something about the monument didn’t seem quite right to him. A valuable piece of history was hiding beneath the mound.

Curiosity drove him to dig deeper. Banerji’s team soon discovered a massive Bronze Age metropolis beneath the Buddhist relics. Because of its location atop a large burial mound, the city came to be known as Mohenjodaro, meaning “mound of the dead”.

Banerji discovered Mohenjodaro after his colleagues at the Archaeological Survey of India unearthed Harappa. Mohenjodaro was the second city of the Indus Civilization to be discovered, Harappa being the first.

The discovery of the Indus Civilization, also known as the Indus Valley Civilization or Harappan Civilization, was a watershed moment in history. The findings pushed ancient Indian history back by thousands of years. Indian civilization was much older than previously thought.

Mohenjodaro was a sophisticated ancient city with a granary, bath, and the world’s oldest known drainage system. The city had an extensive network of fortifications.

Over the next two decades, additional excavations revealed numerous human skeletons in one of Mohenjodaro’s streets. The dead bodies of Mohenjodaro became a flashpoint in the debate over how the ancient world’s most peaceful civilization ended.

Theories about the decline of the Indus Civilization were commonplace in the 20th century, with most of them being highly controversial.

Thanks to rapid advances in science and archaeology, we now have better knowledge of why the Indus Civilization collapsed.

To understand the downfall of the Indus people, we need to look at the dead bodies lying on the streets of Mohenjodaro.

Perhaps they can give us clues? Or are the skeletons a false flag? Let us find out!

Raiders from the North?

The Indus Civilization started crumbling about 2200 BC. By 2000 BC, major cities like Mohenjodaro and Harappa had collapsed. Only a few other settlements lasted past the year 1800 BC.

One of the most common theories about why the Indus Civilization fell was that nomads from the Steppes of Central Asia, known as Indo-Aryans, came to the area and took it over.

It’s regrettable that the name “Aryan” has become synonymous with the Nazi ideology and Hitler’s notions of a “superior race.” The real Aryans had nothing to do with the Nazis.

The Sanskrit word “Arya” means noble or cultured, and “Aryan” is derived from this term. The term Aryan has the same meaning in Persian as it has in Sanskrit. Iran means “the land of Aryans.”

Neither the Sanskrit nor the Persian words that define the term “Aryan” have anything to do with race.

So, who were these so-called “civilized” nomads, and why were they blamed for the downfall of the Indus Civilization? Is there any truth to the claim?

Migrations of Indo-European people from Eurasia’s Steppes during the Bronze Age shaped human civilizations for millennia to come. Because of the migrations, Indo-Europeans ended up all over Europe and Asia. Once upon a time, the Indo-Europeans may have spoken a shared language known as proto-Indo European.

Anthropologists and linguists came to this conclusion after researching the similarities between the many Indo-European languages spoken in Asia and Europe.

One branch of the Indo-Europeans moved south. They were the Indo-Iranians. The branch split somewhere north of present-day Afghanistan into two branches: the Iranians and the Indo-Aryans.

Several linguistic parallels between the oldest Sanskrit document, the Rigveda, and the oldest Persian literature, the Zend Avesta, have led us to conclude that the Iranians and Indo-Aryans coexisted at some point.

Both the Rigveda and the Avesta have common geographic descriptions which point to a shared origin of the Indo-Aryan and Iranian peoples.

The Indo-Aryans advanced eastward towards the Indian subcontinent. They were warlike people who excelled in using chariots. Historians think chariots gave the Indo-Aryans a substantial military edge.

In 1926, archaeologist and historian Ramaprasad Chanda suggested that migrating Indo-Aryans struck a fatal blow to the peaceful towns of the Indus. Archaeologists think the Indus people lived in peace and harmony since they have not found weapons at the sites, barring hunting tools.

The hypothesis of Indo-Aryans destroying the Indus towns became known as the Aryan Invasion Theory. Mortimer Wheeler, a British archaeologist, took up this idea and developed it further.

He quoted the Rigveda, which describes the god Indra destroying forts and slaying demons. Wheeler added a racial dimension to the tale by claiming that light-skinned Aryans destroyed and killed dark-skinned Dasas and Dasyus, who dwelt in the Indus towns. Dasas and Dasyus were two tribes described in the Rigveda as enemies of the Aryans.

Remember the skeletons found in the streets of Mohenjodaro? Wheeler used them as proof of a mass slaughter of the natives by invading Aryans. The city’s fortifications served as evidence for the Rigvedic forts.

So, you could ask, what’s wrong with Wheeler’s hypothesis?

The Aryan invasion theory was tossed out of academic circles for several reasons.

To begin with, the 37 skeletons discovered at Mohenjodaro did not all date from the same time period. So they can’t be linked to one event. It’s hard to imagine invaders slaughtering 37 people over centuries.

The second major issue with the Aryan invasion theory was the lack of evidence of military assault on the Indus towns. No weaponry belonging to the Indo-Aryans was found. They did not demolish fortifications in Mohenjodaro, as Wheeler claimed.

The Rigveda describes a fierce battle between Indo-Aryans and Dasas and Dasyus. If such a battle took occurred at Mohenjodaro, why was not a single dead body recovered in the city’s main citadel? Skeletons on the streets show that the fatalities may have occurred because of a robbery raid during a period of decline in the city.

Other Indus Civilization sites like Harappa, Kalibangan, Lothal, and Dholavira lack signs of warfare, making the Aryan invasion idea much more implausible than it already is.

The Rigveda describes the Dasas and Dasyus as warrior tribes who challenge the Indo-Aryans. If we assume Wheeler to be correct, why is there a lack of evidence of weapons used by the people of the Indus? A warlike people must have left behind some swords and axes. We may conclude from the existing evidence that the Dasas and Dasyus were separate people from the inhabitants of the Indus Valley.

Further doubts about Wheeler’s theory can be seen from his lack of academic integrity. Chanda proposed the Aryan invasion theory but afterward changed his opinion.

As more information emerged from excavations of the Indus cities, Chanda concluded that the Aryan invasion was an absurd concept. He wrote that there was no large-scale war between the Indo-Aryans and the Indus people. However, Chanda’s updated recommendations were lost in scholarly publications, while Wheeler’s theory became popular.

Using a religious book to present a historical narrative that lacks archaeological proof is a problematic approach. Hence, scholars no longer see the Aryan Invasion idea as a viable explanation for the fall of the Indus Civilization.

Recent genetic investigations, linguistic data, and archaeological findings all point to Indo-Aryan migrations occurring after the decline of the Indus Civilization. People from the Indus influenced the Indo-Aryans in various ways. In the wake of this cultural interaction, the Hindu religion as we know it today was born.

You may wonder if Indo-Aryan raiders from the North didn’t cause a decline of the Indus civilization, then what did?

Did natural disasters and climate change affect the Indus Valley?

In 1966, archaeologist George F. Dales traveled to Sehwan, 90 miles from Mohenjodaro along the Indus river. He was examining the city’s silt layers, which suggested repeated flooding.

Rock faulting pointed to tectonic movements occurring in Sehwan, according to Dales. These tectonic events created a natural dam, stopping the Indus from flowing into the sea. Thus, Mohenjodaro was flooded and turned into a massive lake, forcing the city’s inhabitants to flee.

Scholars are skeptical about the tectonic movement idea. Floods affected Mohenjodaro several times, but tectonic movements may not be the reason behind the flooding. Other Indus Civilization sites, such as Harappa, show no evidence of frequent floods. The rising of the Arabian Sea levels, to which the Indus flows, is a more credible explanation for the inundation.

The land along the Indus Civilization appears to have become increasingly salty, making it unfit for cultivation during the last days of the culture.

Other scholars argue that, like in Egypt and Mesopotamia, there may have been excessive agriculture and deforestation. As farming and cattle grazing areas grew, trees kept being cut down, which changed the climate in the area.

The area could not keep up with the growing number of humans and domesticated animals. The knowledge of modern farming wasn’t around back then, so the damage to the soil caused by too much cultivation couldn’t be fixed.

Floods, rising sea levels, more people, and unsustainable farming practices may have led to the end of the Indus Civilization.

A lesser-known factor cited by archaeologist Shereen Ratnagar is the decline of the lapis-lazuli trade.

Lapis-lazuli was a rare stone mined in Afghanistan that was sought after by the ancient world’s elite. The Indus people traded the lucrative resource to the Elam culture in Iran and the Mesopotamian civilizations.

According to Ratnagar, when the lapis-lazuli trade collapsed, the Indus people’s revenue shrank. Hence, they had less cash to rebuild their cities from natural disasters and feed a growing population.

The theory Ratnagar came up with is interesting, but it’s based on a lot of guesswork. We do not know how important the lapis-lazuli trade was, since the trade volume is not documented. The lack of records in Mesopotamia and the undeciphered Indus script has left us with many unanswered questions about the importance of the lapis-lazuli trade.

After the decline of the major cities of the Indus civilization, there is evidence suggesting people shifted eastwards and southwards. We know this phase of the Indus civilization as the Late Harappan phase. During this era, we see a growth in settlements along the river valleys of Ganga and Yamuna.

Climate change, flooding, and poor agricultural practices resulted in the loss of one of the leading civilizations of the ancient world.

The Indus people abandoned their sophisticated cities. We do not see such a sophisticated urban culture in the Indian subcontinent for several centuries after the collapse of the Indus people.

Unlike Mesopotamia, Egypt, or China, the script of the Indus people is not yet deciphered. The civilization is full of mysteries and unanswered questions which still puzzle scholars.

Interested to know more? Do read the following story.

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• Asko Parpola, 2015, The Roots of Hinduism: The Early Aryans and the Indus Civilization, Oxford.
• Upinder Singh, 2008, A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India From the Stone Age to the 12th Century.
• Ratnagar, Shereen (2006). Understanding Harappa: Civilization in the Greater Indus Valley.
• Marshall, John, ed. (1931). Mohenjo-Daro and the Indus Civilization: Being an Official Account of Archaeological Excavations at Mohenjo-Daro Carried Out by the Government of India Between the Years 1922 and 1927.