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Violence, infectious disease and climate change contributed to Indus civilization collapse -- ScienceDaily

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Violence, infectious disease and climate change contributed to Indus

civilization collapse
Date: January 16, 2014

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Source: Appalachian State University

Summary: A study of skeletal remains from the ancient city of Harappa provides
evidence that inter-personal violence and infectious diseases played a
role in the demise of the Indus Civilization.

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Evidence for maxillary infection in individual G.I.S.15. The lesions included

porosity, alveolar resorption, abscessing at the right canine and ...
[show more]
Credit: Gwen Robbins Schug, K. Elaine Blevins,
Brett Cox, Kelsey Gray, V. Mushrif-Tripathy.
Infection, Disease, and Biosocial Processes at the
End of the Indus Civilization. PLoS ONE, 2013; 8
(12): e84814 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0084814

[Click to enlarge image]

new study on the human skeletal remains from the ancient Indus city of
Harappa provides evidence that inter-personal violence and infectious
diseases played a role in the demise of the Indus, or Harappan
Civilization around 4,000 years ago.
The Indus Civilization stretched over a million square kilometers of what is now
Pakistan and India in the Third Millennium B.C. While contemporaneous civilizations in
Egypt and Mesopotomia, are well-known, their Indus trading partners have remained
more of a mystery.
Archaeological research has demonstrated that Indus cities grew rapidly from 22001900 B.C., when they were largely abandoned. "The collapse of the Indus Civilization
and the reorganization of its human population has been controversial for a long time,"
lead author of the paper published last month in the journal PLOS ONE, Gwen
Robbins Schug, explained. Robbins Schug is an associate professor of anthropology
at Appalachian State University.
Climate, economic, and social changes all played a role in the process of urbanization
and collapse, but little was known about how these changes affected the human
population.
Robbins Schug and an international team of researchers examined evidence for trauma
and infectious disease in the human skeletal remains from three burial areas at
Harappa, one of the largest cities in the Indus Civilization. The results of their analysis
counter longstanding claims that the Indus civilization developed as a peaceful,
cooperative, and egalitarian state-level society, without social differentiation, hierarchy,

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8/27/14

Violence, infectious disease and climate change contributed to Indus civilization collapse -- ScienceDaily
or differences in access to basic resources.

more related stories

The data suggest instead that some communities at Harappa faced more significant
impacts than others from climate and socio-economic strains, particularly the socially
disadvantaged or marginalized communities who are most vulnerable to violence and
disease. This pattern is expected in strongly socially differentiated, hierarchical but
weakly controlled societies facing resource stress.
Robbins Schug's and colleagues' findings add to the growing body of research about
the character of Indus society and the nature of its collapse.
"Early research had proposed that ecological factors were the cause of the demise,
but there wasn't much paleo-environmental evidence to confirm those theories,"
Robbins Schug said. "In the past few decades, there have been refinements to the
available techniques for reconstructing paleo-environments and burgeoning interest in
this field."
When paleoclimate, archaeology, and human skeletal biology approaches are
combined, scientists can glean important insights from the past, addressing longstanding and socially relevant questions.
"Rapid climate change events have wide-ranging impacts on human communities,"
Robbins Schug said. "Scientists cannot make assumptions that climate changes will
always equate to violence and disease. However, in this case, it appears that the rapid
urbanization process in Indus cities, and the increasingly large amount of culture
contact, brought new challenges to the human population. Infectious diseases like
leprosy and tuberculosis were probably transmitted across an interaction sphere that
spanned Middle and South Asia."
Robbins Schug's research shows that leprosy appeared at Harappa during the urban
phase of the Indus Civilization, and its prevalence significantly increased through time.
New diseases, such as tuberculosis, also appear in the Late Harappan or post-urban
phase burials. Violent injury such as cranial trauma also increases through time, a
finding that is remarkable, she said, given that evidence for violence is very rare in
prehistoric South Asian sites generally.
"As the environment changed, the exchange network became increasingly incoherent.
When you combine that with social changes and this particular cultural context, it all
worked together to create a situation that became untenable," she said.
The results of the study are striking, according to Robbins Schug, because violence
and disease increased through time, with the highest rates found as the human
population was abandoning the cities. However, an even more interesting result is that
individuals who were excluded from the city's formal cemeteries had the highest rates
of violence and disease. In a small ossuary southeast of the city, men, women, and
children were interred in a small pit. The rate of violence in this sample was 50 percent
for the 10 crania preserved, and more than 20 percent of these individuals
demonstrated evidence of infection with leprosy.
Robbins Schug said lessons from the Indus Civilization are applicable to modern
societies.
"Human populations in semi-arid regions of the world, including South Asia, currently
face disproportionate impacts from global climate change," the researchers wrote.
"The evidence from Harappa offers insights into how social and biological challenges
impacted past societies facing rapid population growth, climate change and
environmental degradation. Unfortunately, in this case, increasing levels of violence
and disease accompanied massive levels of migration and resource stress and
disproportionate impacts were felt by the most vulnerable members of society."

The above story is based on materials provided by Appalachian State University.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Journal Reference:
1. Gwen Robbins Schug, K. Elaine Blevins, Brett Cox, Kelsey Gray, V. MushrifTripathy. Infection, Disease, and Biosocial Processes at the End of the Indus
Civilization. PLoS ONE, 2013; 8 (12): e84814 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0084814

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Appalachian State University. "Violence, infectious disease and climate change

contributed to Indus civilization collapse." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 16 January
2014. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140116162019.htm>.

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