Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T18:40:25.326Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Mohenjo-daro Floods

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

R. L. Raikes
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In a recent paper a theory was put forward to account for the end of Mohenjo-daro and of other, smaller, Indus Civilization cities in Sind and along the Mekran Coast.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 39 , Issue 155 , September 1965 , pp. 196 - 203
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 1965

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

[1] Raikes, R. L., ‘The end of the ancient cities of the Indus’, American Anthropologist, 66,1964, 284–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The genesis of this paper has a certain interest as it illustrates how two people from different disciplines, Dr G. F. Dales, an archaeologist, and the author, a hydrologist, converged independently on similar conclusions about the same problem. Dr Dales, writing in the pages of this journal four years ago, said, ‘the coast is in an active geological zone and indications are that it has been gradually rising for thousands of years at least’ (antiquity, 1962, 86).

[2] The original excavation reports of Sir John Marshall (1931) and E. J. H. MacKay (1938), and the deductions made from them by Stuart Piggott in his Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. (1950) and by Sir Mortimer Wheeler in his The Indus Civilization (1953), Early India and Pakistan (1959), and his chapter, ‘Ancient India’, in Piggott (ed.), The Dawn of Civilization (1961).

[3] Sotka Koh, near Pasni, and Bala Kot, near Sonmiani, discovered by Dr Dales and the author respectively.

[4] Piggott, S., Ancient India (1948), 4, 26 Google Scholar.

[5] Sir John Marshall’s report of 1931.

[6] Ullah, Asrar, Pakistan Geographical Review, IX (1), 1953, 1 Google Scholar.

[7] Sahni, M. R., Journal of the Palaeontological Society of India, 1 (1), 1956, 101.Google Scholar It is believed that there are other references. Sahni points to uplift of the lower Indus valley as a possibly contributory cause of the decline of the civilization.

[8] Casal, Jean-Marie, Les Fouilles d’Amri (1964)Google Scholar.

[9] Claims that the second millennium B.C. climate of the Indus Valley was wetter that that of today are regarded as not proven by the author and Dyson, Robert H. (American Anthropologist, 63, 1961, 265 Google Scholar). I am now convinced that there has been no climatic trend toward either wetter or drier conditions since Harappan times.

[10] Marshall’s report.

[11] Op. cit., [7] above.

[12] Snead, Rodman E., Geographical Review, LIV, 1964, 546 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

[13] Pendse, C. G., ‘The Mekran earthquake of the 28th November 1945’, India Meteorological Department, Scientific Notes, X, 1946, 125 Google Scholar.

[14] M. Savornin, Geologist and Head of the United Nations Special Fund minerals survey in Pakistan, gave invaluable help in general interpretation of the geological maps.

[15] Mackay, E. J. H., Chanhu-daro Excavations 1935–6 (American Oriental Society, 1943)Google Scholar.

[16] Op. cit., [8] above.

[17] Dales, G. F., ‘The Mythical Massacre at Mohenjodaro’, Expedition, VI, 1964, 36.Google Scholar Reviewing Expedition (antiquity, 1964, 307), Wheeler refers to a new theory produced by Dales working with a hydrologist. The hydrologist is the present author, but his theory was, and is, somewhat different from that of Dales and does not deal with either salinity or a rising water-table.