'Violence, disease caused end of Indus Valley Civilization'

Inter-personal violence, infectious diseases and climate change had played a major role in the demise of the Indus or Harappan civilization around 4,000 years ago, according to a new study.
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, Dr Gwen Robbins Schug, an associate professor of anthropology at Appalachian State University in North Carolina, explained in a statement.
"The collapse of the Indus Civilization and the reorganization of its human population has been controversial for a long time," Schug said, who is the lead author of a paper, published in the journal PLOS ONE.

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 University said in a media release.
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, or differences in access to basic resources, it said.
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, the university said, adding that, the study add to the growing body of research about the character of Indus society and the nature of its collapse.