Counter-intuitive influence of Himalayan river morphodynamics on Indus Civilisation urban settlements

Ajit Singh; Kristina Jørkov Thomsen; Rajiv Sinha; Jan-Pieter Buylaert; Andrew Carter; Darren F. Mark; Philippa J. Mason; Alexander L. Densmore; Andrew Sean Murray; Mayank Jain; Debajyoti Paul; Sanjeev Gupta

doi:10.1038/s41467-017-01643-9

Counter-intuitive influence of Himalayan river morphodynamics on Indus Civilisation urban settlements

Ajit Singh, Kristina Jørkov Thomsen, Rajiv Sinha, Jan-Pieter Buylaert, Andrew Carter, Darren F. Mark, Philippa J. Mason, Alexander L. Densmore, Andrew Sean Murray, Mayank Jain, Debajyoti Paul, Sanjeev Gupta

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Abstract

Urbanism in the Bronze-age Indus Civilisation (similar to 4.6-3.9 thousand years before the present, ka) has been linked to water resources provided by large Himalayan river systems, although the largest concentrations of urban-scale Indus settlements are located far from extant Himalayan rivers. Here we analyse the sedimentary architecture, chronology and provenance of a major palaeochannel associated with many of these settlements. We show that the palaeochannel is a former course of the Sutlej River, the third largest of the present-day Himalayan rivers. Using optically stimulated luminescence dating of sand grains, we demonstrate that flow of the Sutlej in this course terminated considerably earlier than Indus occupation, with diversion to its present course complete shortly after similar to 8 ka. Indus urban settlements thus developed along an abandoned river valley rather than an active Himalayan river. Confinement of the Sutlej to its present incised course after similar to 8 ka likely reduced its propensity to re-route frequently thus enabling long-term stability for Indus settlements sited along the relict palaeochannel.

Original language	English
Article number	1617
Journal	Nature Communications
Volume	8
Issue number	1
Number of pages	14
ISSN	2041-1723
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-01643-9
Publication status	Published - 2017

Bibliographical note

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Keywords

CLIMATE-CHANGE

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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Singh et al 2017 Nature CommunicationsFinal published version, 16.3 MB

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abstract = "Urbanism in the Bronze-age Indus Civilisation (similar to 4.6-3.9 thousand years before the present, ka) has been linked to water resources provided by large Himalayan river systems, although the largest concentrations of urban-scale Indus settlements are located far from extant Himalayan rivers. Here we analyse the sedimentary architecture, chronology and provenance of a major palaeochannel associated with many of these settlements. We show that the palaeochannel is a former course of the Sutlej River, the third largest of the present-day Himalayan rivers. Using optically stimulated luminescence dating of sand grains, we demonstrate that flow of the Sutlej in this course terminated considerably earlier than Indus occupation, with diversion to its present course complete shortly after similar to 8 ka. Indus urban settlements thus developed along an abandoned river valley rather than an active Himalayan river. Confinement of the Sutlej to its present incised course after similar to 8 ka likely reduced its propensity to re-route frequently thus enabling long-term stability for Indus settlements sited along the relict palaeochannel.",

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Counter-intuitive influence of Himalayan river morphodynamics on Indus Civilisation urban settlements

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

UN SDGs

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