Overview
- An IIT Gandhinagar–led international team integrated cave and lake records with climate and hydrologic models to reconstruct the Indus basin’s hydroclimate from roughly 3000 to 1000 BCE.
- The researchers identified four basin‑wide droughts lasting more than 85 years between about 2425 and 1400 BCE, with the third peaking near 1733 BCE and enduring about 164 years with a 13% rainfall drop.
- Modeling indicates lakes and shallow waterbodies shrank, river flows decreased, and soils dried, curbing navigation, trade, and agriculture and contributing to population relocations and gradual deurbanisation.
- The study estimates temperatures rose by about 0.5°C and rainfall fell by 10–20%, with aridification intensifying around 4,260 years ago and affecting 65–91% of the region for centuries.
- Authors describe adaptive responses such as crop shifts, diversified trade, and moves toward perennial water sources, and multiple outlets report publication in Communications Earth & Environment.