Fragmentation of a civilizationThe age of Indus died out around 1750. Contrary to a a long time constant idea, its end was neither brutal nor dramatic. The assumptions accusing of the massive invasions coming from the Central Asia - preceding that by the Aryan ones - or of the natural disasters (floods, exhaustion of the ground, movements tectonic) seem not very founded today.
Recent archaeological work tends to prove that the disappearance of this civilization followed cultural transformations started towards the end of thousand-year-old IIIe. As of this time, the cultural uniformity harappéenne yielded the place to a regionalization which leads to the appearance of entities distinct from/to each other: culture of Mehrgarh VIII in Baloutchistan, late cultures harappéennes of Gujerat, Mohenjo-Daro, Harappa and those of the North-West of India.
This fractionation - facilitated by the extension of the age of Indus on a territory vaster than that of Sumer and of Egypt joined together - was accompanied by a phenomenon of transculturation to which the recent made archaeological discoveries with Mehrgarh VIII, Sibri and Quetta testify, in Baloutchistan. The presence on these sites - in significant amount - of typical archaeological material of Bactriane of the Bronze Age indicates that Harappéens adopted cultural traditions come from the southernmost Central Asia.
Changes of the agrarian system
Moreover, one knows, since the excavation of Pirak - occupied site baloutche of 1800 to 700 before J. - C. -, that the beginning of the II E thousand-year-old corresponded in the system of Indus to notable transformations of agriculture; to cereals of winter (corn, barley), cultivated since the Neolithic era, came to be added estival species (rice, millet and sorghum). This widening of bases of the agricultural economics, by the installation of a system of double annual harvest, was also accompanied by the appearance of the horse, the camel and the ass, species probably introduced since Bactriane. These upheavals completed to destabilize the cities of Indus. Those, from now on unsuited to the new economic conditions, were on a downward slope and made place with urban areas in marked rural matter.