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On the existence of a perennial river in the Harappan heartland - PubMed

  • ️Tue Jan 01 2019

On the existence of a perennial river in the Harappan heartland

Anirban Chatterjee et al. Sci Rep. 2019.

Abstract

The legendary river Saraswati of Indian mythology has often been hypothesized to be an ancient perennial channel of the seasonal river Ghaggar that flowed through the heartland of the Bronze Age Harappan civilization in north-western India. Despite the discovery of abundant settlements along a major paleo-channel of the Ghaggar, many believed that the Harappans depended solely on monsoonal rains, because no proof existed for the river's uninterrupted flow during the zenith of the civilization. Here, we present unequivocal evidence for the Ghaggar's perennial past by studying temporal changes of sediment provenance along a 300 km stretch of the river basin. This is achieved using 40Ar/39Ar ages of detrital muscovite and Sr-Nd isotopic ratios of siliciclastic sediment in fluvial sequences, dated by radiocarbon and luminescence methods. We establish that during 80-20 ka and 9-4.5 ka the river was perennial and was receiving sediments from the Higher and Lesser Himalayas. The latter phase can be attributed to the reactivation of the river by the distributaries of the Sutlej. This revived perennial condition of the Ghaggar, which can be correlated with the Saraswati, likely facilitated development of the early Harappan settlements along its banks. The timing of the eventual decline of the river, which led to the collapse of the civilization, approximately coincides with the commencement of the Meghalayan Stage.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1

Study area and subsurface stratigraphy along the river Ghaggar. (A) Schematic geographical map of north-western India and eastern Pakistan showing drainage basins of the Himalayan rivers. Red dots are studied sections and open squares are major cities along the river Ghaggar. HHC: Higher Himalayan Crystalline, LHS: Lesser Himalayan Series, SH: Siwalik Himalaya. (B) Composite stratigraphy of the Ghaggar alluvium based on field and age data from this and earlier studies. GS: Grey Sand (circles); YBS: Yellow Brown Sand (triangles); BM: Brown Mud (diamonds); MIS: Marine Isotopic Stages.

Figure 2
Figure 2

Source fingerprinting with 40Ar/39Ar muscovite ages and Sr-Nd isotopic ratios of sediments. (A) Probability density plot of 40Ar/39Ar ages of muscovites from different Himalayan litho-tectonic units compared with our data from detrital muscovites from the Ghaggar alluvium - the orange band (18.6–20.1 Ma). (B) εNd vs. 87Sr/86Sr plot of sediments from the Ghaggar alluvium compared with binary mixing curves for the Higher Himalayan Crystalline (HHC) and the Lesser Himalayan Series (LHS) end-members. LS: Local Sources in the Thar Desert. SYG: Sutlej-Yamuna-Ganga.

Figure 3
Figure 3

Evolution of the Ghaggar from changes in sediment provenance and the Harappan settlement dynamics. (A) Stratigraphic changes in sediment Sr-Nd isotopic compositions in the Ghaggar alluvium during last 20 ka. Symbols and abbreviations are as in Fig. 1. (B) Evolution of the Harappan civilization in north-western India and eastern Pakistan as inferred from the settlement dynamics through ages (9.0-3.5 ka),,,. Modern and inferred former courses (dashed lines) of the major Himalayan rivers are also shown. I: Indus; J: Jhelum; C: Chenab; B: Beas; S: Sutlej; SS: Saraswati (Ghaggar); Y: Yamuna; G: Ganga.

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