When the 4,000 year old Indus Civilization was uncovered in the 1920s by the British, the abandonment of 1,000 cities containing up to five million people, climate change has been suggested as a reason for the end--when all the forests were cut down to fire the bricks to build the cities. I am continuing that speculation, that the particular trees that were cut down for firewood, were the Pseudomonas hosts, that help create the rainfall in the area each year? Anyone else looking into this possibility?
Craig you have bought an interesting aspect for discussion. If we take up this line of argument that climate change was responsible for extinction of this civilization, we cant rule out. But we need to consider that the climate phenomena is slow and these guys were doing trade and maintaing ports so could have migrated. I have been to a site of Indus valley Civilization called Lothal in Gujrat India. I have seen it in 1970s when the excavation was still goling on and it seems burried by a slurry so I assume it was a flood/sea-level rise or possibly a Tsunami which led to the end of these progressive cities.
Craig you have bought an interesting aspect for discussion. If we take up this line of argument that climate change was responsible for extinction of this civilization, we cant rule out. But we need to consider that the climate phenomena is slow and these guys were doing trade and maintaing ports so could have migrated. I have been to a site of Indus valley Civilization called Lothal in Gujrat India. I have seen it in 1970s when the excavation was still goling on and it seems burried by a slurry so I assume it was a flood/sea-level rise or possibly a Tsunami which led to the end of these progressive cities.
I think that the end or collapse of a civilization cannot be explained by an only answer or reduced to one single factor: a complex society is more exposed to periodical crisis, but in my opinion the reason for its end --not for a punctual crisis-- should be multifocal, multicausal and complex too, with a mix of long-term processes and short-term events.
I am quoting from The Cambridge history of India. Supplementary volume: The Indus civilization / by Mortimer Wheeler. Publication Info. Cambridge [Eng.] : University Press, 1953. of the 1920s speculations when the British unearthed the cities that the forests had been cut down to bake the millions of bricks, and I am making an extrapolation to include the possibility that those trees were the Pseudomonas hosts that help create the rainfall for the area?
I got a clue about the Pseudomonas in the India-Pakistan area and the monsoon from Alexander Frater when he chased the India monsoon in his book “Chasing the Monsoon” in 1987 and wrote a diary of that year.
On June 2 he attended a meeting of Mrs. Das’ anti-deforestration committee, where he writes: …”India was once a sylvan country. When Alexander the Great invaded in 327 BC he encountered dense, close-canopied almost impenetrable forests. But peasants were already pursuing a slash-and-burn policy…Trees play a crucial role in the monsoon cycle. By SEEDING clouds they encourage the rain to fall; by trapping it they help recharge the aquifers and hold groundwater in store for the common good.”
I highlighted the word seeding, because the Pseudomonas living on the trees creating the monsoon rainfall was unknown by science in the 1980s, but the local people knew something like cloud seeding was going on, from their observations.
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