Climate Change Linked To Indus Civilization Decline 4,100 Years Ago 02/27/2014 

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WASHINGTON, U.S., February 27, 2014 (Top News): A new study, published in the journal Geology, has suggested that climate change may have contributed to the decline of a city-dwelling civilization in Pakistan and India 4,100 years ago. 

Scientists from the University of Cambridge have demonstrated that an abrupt weakening of the summer monsoon affected northwest India 4,100 years ago. The resulting drought coincided with the beginning of the decline of the metropolis-building Indus Civilisation, which spanned present-day Pakistan and India, suggesting that climate change could be why many of the major cities of the civilisation were abandoned. 

The research involved the collection of snail shells preserved in the sediments of an ancient lake bed. By analyzing the oxygen isotopes in the shells, the scientists were able to tell how much rain fell in the lake where the snails lived thousands of years ago. Moreover, the finding now links the decline of the Indus cities to a documented global scale climate event and its impact on the Old Kingdom in Egypt, the Early Bronze Age civilisations of Greece and Crete, and the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia, whose decline has previously been linked to abrupt climate change.