Dholvira and Akkadian Collapse: Climate Change Parallels

Akkadian civilization was established in Mesopotamia around 4,300 years ago along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (now southern Iraq) and included areas of modern-day Syria and Turkey. It prospered almost during the same phase when the ancient Indus civilization thrived in the Indian subcontinent. Like the Indus civilization, the Akkadian civilization was highly dependent on agricultural production from the surrounding regions. Dholvira was one of the most prosperous and thriving cities of the Indus civilization. The annual torrential rainfall in Dholvira provided the necessary water for the surplus crop production to sustain the urban population. Similarly, in the case of Akkad, the productivity of the northern lands of Mesopotamia was used to feed the non-agrarian community of army and townsmen. While Dholvira survived for almost five centuries, the Akkadian civilization collapsed within a century. But in both the cases, one of the prime reasons was the shortage of rainfall in certain highly productive areas. Harvey Weiss believes that the sudden collapse of Akkad was caused by an abrupt onset of drought conditions in the northern part of Mesopotamia that severely affected the production cycle (Harvey Weiss (ed.). Megadrought and collapse: from early agriculture to Angkor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). Similarly, in Indus civilization, which has a large area of existence, collapsed due to variation in rainfall pattern. Like Akkad, the Indus Civilisation also collapsed because of climate change, the evidence of which is an earlier form of step-well in Dholvira. The archaeological shreds of evidence and water channel structures in Dholavira suggest that it was highly prosperous. Its prosperity depended a lot on the surplus agricultural produced from the surrounding region. But today the entire surrounding area lies in a dry arid zone, and the Rann of Kuchch is in close proximity to the ancient town. People living in this part of the grand Indus civilization possibly migrated to other areas because of the changed rainfall pattern when the shortage of rains led to the loss of productivity for many years. The gradual shift of the concept of 4000 yrs old step-wells in Dholvira (Gujarat) towards eastern part is in an indication of this change. Step-wells began to be dug up in further east such as, in Ahmedabad, Dausa (Abhaneri) and Delhi (Agrasen’s Baoli) after some 3000 years. It happened because the zone of torrential rainfall shifted towards the east, which is an indicator of climate change. In other words, the earlier torrential downpour areas of western Gujarat gradually became dry.  So one of the prime reasons for the collapse of cities like Dholvira and Akkad was the longterm rainfall pattern change in the erstwhile agriculturally productive zones.