Decline of Dholavira Urban Settlement of Harappan Civilization in Kachchh was Associated with Global Climate Change Rather than the Decline of any Major Fluvial System

The Indus civilization, also known as the Harappan civilization, has long been thought to have been river-based since two of its largest and best-known sites, Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, are located next to sizable perennial Himalayan Rivers. One of the five major Harappan sites in the Indian subcontinent is Dholavira in Gujarat, which is situated in the Great Rann of Kachchh on the western edge of Khadir Island. Many have argued that the Great Rann of Kachchh formerly contained a powerful fluvial system and that the decline of the Indus civilization was brought on by the desert region’s dried-up rivers. The disappearance of the Himalayan River Saraswati and a severe global drought at the start of the Meghalayan Stage, according to Sengupta et al. (J Quat Sci 35(3): 382–395, 2019) and other researchers, may have contributed to the downfall of the Harappan city of Dholavira. The goal of the current study is to determine whether a fluvial system existed in the EGRK and to test the theory that the collapse of the Harappan civilization’s Dholavira urban settlement was influenced by changes in the hydrological conditions. On the NW edge of Khadir Island, thick quaternary alluvium layers of about 4.5 m exposed were looked into for this purpose. Our study also supports the earlier hypothesis that the abandonment of the Dholavira urban settlement in EGRK was primarily brought on by a gradual decline in the ISM between 5 ka and 2 ka rather than the presence of a significant fluvial system, based on sedimentological, geochemical, and geochronological analysis.