Huge Ancient Civilization’s Collapse Attributed to Climate Change

Huge Ancient Civilization’s Collapse Attributed to Climate Change

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The mysterious fall of the largest of the world’s earliest urban civilizations nearly 4,000 years ago in what is now India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh now appears to have a key culprit — ancient climate change, researchers say.

Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia may be the best known of the first great urban cultures, but the largest was the Indus or Harappan civilization. This culture once extended over more than 386,000 square miles across the plains of the Indus River from the Arabian Sea to the Ganges, and at its peak may have accounted for 10% of the world population. The civilization developed about 5,200 years ago, and slowly disintegrated between 3,900 and 3,000 years ago — populations largely abandoned cities, migrating toward the east.