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Time of India
2 days ago
- General
- Time of India
‘Colonialism impacted Africa's animals — it disrupted traditions of respectful distance'
Nancy J. Jacobs is Professor of History at Brown University. Speaking to Srijana Mitra Das at Times Evoke , she discusses animals in times of capture — and freedom: What is the core of your research? My work is at the intersection of social and environmental history. I was trained as a South Africanist in the 1980s-90s. The most powerful form of history then was social history. However, this had very little to say about the environment, people's relationships with plants, animals, soil, rain — and what disrupted those ties. So, I began working on these areas. In my last project, I've tried to centre non-human actors who are more than just instruments in human history — they are subjects of their own history. Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Costco Shoppers Say This Wrinkle Cream Is "Actually Worth It" The Skincare Magazine Undo ONCE I WAS FREE... Native to equatorial Africa , the African grey parrot is famously intelligent — but its charm harms its two species, the birds taken from the wild to be caged 'performing' pets ( and iStock) Did political processes like imperialism, resource extraction and Apartheid impact non-humans? Yes. Like the medieval stage in Europe, there is an entire colonial era in African history. During this, animals also came under the colonial state and became its subjects. The book ' Segregated Species ' by Jules Skotnes-Brown talks about the racialisation of black subjects and how their relationships with non-human species came under this strain too. How the colonial state dealt with animals cannot be separated from how it thought of Africans. The book highlights, for instance, what was considered a 'pest' — that sounded a lot like how black people were framed in Apartheid discourse. In my work, I've found birds are less subject to the impositions of colonisers because they are so global — it's a lot easier for them to get away. But there was this other huge development in Africa, the intrusion of capitalism, which impacted them — species like the African grey parrot became a commodity for such markets. That goes lockstep with resource extraction for outsiders' profit — the history of Africa's relationship with Europe is the extraction of wealth, going back to the tragedy of enslaved people. While African labour power was extracted, so were minerals, food crops, industrial commodities like rubber and wood, plants — and animals. These extractions then impacted human interactions with the environment, producing feedback effects on the quality of life, etc. LET'S TALK! With 11 parakeet species, vibrant parrots appear often in India's cultural fabric ( and iStock) Can you tell us about the African grey parrot? I'm writing a global history of it. The status of the African grey parrot worldwide makes it an important subject. Europe is the only continent on Earth without native parrots — the first such birds Europeans encountered were from India, who returned with Alexander the Great . These birds who could talk blew their minds — Europeans became parrot-mad. In the 15 th and 16 th centuries, they travelled to Africa, the Indian Ocean and the Americas and found parrots in all these places — they were amazed. Am Italian map made in 1502, the 'Cantino Planisphere', shows Africa, Brazil and different species of parrots. The African grey parrot is widely considered the most intelligent of these birds, best at vocalising and even better at mimicking than macaws. The African grey is packed with intelligence and character — its reputation grew and this charismatic bird was taken from Africa and transported worldwide. CAN I FLY? Many of the macaw's 19 species are 'pets' from South America in distant East Asia ( and iStock) In 'The Tame and the Wild', Marcy Norton argues that prejudiced older historians felt the Americas had lagged behind the supposed achievements of Europe in not having domesticated many wild animals — a reason trotted out was the supposed 'inferiority' of indigenous Americans. Norton argues it was not that native Americans couldn't domesticate animals — they chose not to. They had a different set of relationships with animals — she shows how indigenous communities in Brazil and the Caribbean made friends with animals and treated them as family. Unlike domesticated animals in Europe, they couldn't be eaten — they became true companions. Norton celebrates this as a choice by indigenous communities, not a deficiency. I turned to Africa to explore its traditions — certainly, domesticated animals existed widely. However, I couldn't find evidence of friendships between people and animals — going by the evidence, pre-colonial Africans were not taming birds, making pets and living with them. Instead, there was a respectful distance maintained between species — parrots watched people, people watched them. Yet, they lived in different planes. I used the concept of 'conviviality' — it seemed parrots and people lived in Africa in proximate conviviality, close to each other, sharing space but not intersecting much. When Europeans arrived, they were very scornful at Africans for not keeping parrots as pets. Yet, proximate conviviality is a good model for how to live with wildlife — respectful distance can be a positive way when you consider how all over the world, people have wiped out so much fauna. Megafauna in North America was decimated but Africa has large mammals and they have managed to live together with people — why? Perhaps Africa has traditions of respectful cohabitation which appear to define how humans lived with parrots as well. This way of life was disrupted when global capitalism arrived and Africa became a supplier of resources to the world — people elsewhere wanted parrots and particularly the smartest African greys. They became commodities and were taken away. With capitalism's expansion, there's been more specialisation in these birds' sales — tragically, both the two species of African grey parrots are now endangered. They've disappeared from many parts of west and central Africa. What are 'herding birds'? There are traditions about birds all over Africa. One such species is the drongo which eats insects and hangs around cattle. In eastern and southern Africa, people talk about them not just as eating insects though but 'herding' cattle. Yet, why and how would that happen? WATCHING YOU: Some birds in Africa are said to 'herd' cattle ( and iStock) As I studied this, I found in indigenous knowledge, no-one actually thinks birds are particularly good at cattle-herding — but for some herders, it was useful to point to them and say, 'Oh look, they're here to work' because then, they could get some relief. As the birds were always around — some apparently even whistled to the cattle, as per herd boys — the latter sometimes saw them as co-workers and could sneak off for a nap, leaving the birds supposedly in charge. The birds had reasons to be around animals and people — the latter recognised this, saw them as allies and used their ways to make their own lives a little easier. That explains the funny stories around birds 'herding' cattle — this is animal agency. Often, it can change human attitudes.
Time of India
01-06-2025
- General
- Time of India
‘Gold mirrors capitalism — its mines echo with hardship and ecological harm'
Stephen Tuffnell is Associate Professor of Modern United States History at Oxford University. Speaking to Srijana Mitra Das at Times Evoke , he discusses how gold shaped the modern world: You've co-edited 'A Global History of Gold Rushes' — which are some profound ones? ■ California is one of the most important — it fires the starting gun for a series of rushes that continued uninterrupted until Klondike which ended at the turn of the 20 th century. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Of course, gold was mined for millennia before that but California was the first phenomenon characterised by the mass movement of people around the world. Americans came there from the east coast but some of the earliest people to reach were also Peruvians, Australians and Chinese miners from Shandong province. 'Rushing' developed into an economic practice and a cultural idea and the technology also changed then — until then, there was alluvial mining or removing gold flakes from riverbeds. By 1853, a highly capital-intensive phase began and the industrialisation of mining started. The other goldrush I'd mention was in southern Africa , where such capitalisation took on a new form. There, gold flakes were spread through a very complex ore body. Extraction required chemicals, processing plants and large amounts of capital — we then see the globalisation of 'mass mining' or taking out as much earth as possible and processing it with chemicals, etc. WORKERS ALL: Black, Chinese and White labourers in a gold mine in South Africa ALL THAT GLITTERS... The mining of gold has meant the tearing down of entire mountains and jungles, the blasting of rock, the bleaching of ore with hazardous chemicals and their leaching into rivers, reaching animals and humans with deadly impacts (Photos: Getty & iStock) Did these movements change communities? ■ In California, when the rush began, the port that was San Francisco was just a community of around 800 people — it mushroomed into 10,000 within two years and that's just the people who stayed there. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now There were hundreds of thousands transiting through it. A 'gold rush community' developed rapidly, then moved into the gold regions. Some of the most direct consequences were on the indigenous communities living in these gold regions — they were already suffering a decline after Spanish colonisation but the gold rush accelerated that enormously, in part because of the destruction of indigenous ways of life and the environments upon which they depended. Gold mining meant the degradation of rivers, large movements of earth and deforestation. And then, genocidal violence occurred in California, especially against indigenous groups like the Yuki Indians. There was a dramatic population decline, replaced by this Anglo mining community that began defining itself around ideas of white republicanism — it enacted things like the Foreign Miners' Tax Act in 1850 to push out migrants like the Chinese and create a kind of white American republic on the shores of the Pacific. In Southern Africa, the discovery of gold transitioned into British settler colonialism — the mines started drawing migrants from far away into compounds where they were housed, searched daily and subjected to a regime of racial management by white foremen and engineers. This was the origin of the liquor laws, restrictions on travel and other discriminations that become central to the Apartheid state. The mass transfer of Anglo miners transformed this colony into a powerful part of the idea of white settler dominions in the British empire. How did technologies and processes of capitalism evolve? ■ In California, the pick, pan and shovels of the early alluvial phase transitioned into hydraulic mining — that needed iron, industrial nozzles and the deforestation of large parts of Sierra Nevada and other areas of California for the wood and flumes rivers were diverted into, so they could wash out rock from gold and amalgamate it with mercury. This needed massive funding — so, San Francisco rapidly became a sort of capital in the American West and a local elite established around gold developed, although, ironically, the state itself was a debtor — all the gold was leaving and finding its way into the Bank of England, which was keen to keep raw gold to peg the pound to the international gold standard. You thus see the early seeds of a gold mining capitalism in California — when you reach South Africa, you see the gold rushes have become as much a race for the money that can be made on the stock exchange in London as to actually extract gold from the ground. There was booming company formation in London then, with enterprises claiming they could extract gold and make large profits. But they were really vehicles for speculation, booms and bubbles — that transformed cultures of risk in the capitalist world. Previously, the mine itself was the gamble — you'd go to diggings and may or may not strike it rich. But 30 years on, the culture of risk around mining became centred on the stock market, normalising investing in shares, speculation and industries which formed part of high financial capitalism. A SOLID ASSET: Central banks store up gold What ecological impacts did this gold frenzy cause? ■ In the early rushes like California, Victoria and Australia, the destruction of landscapes was phenomenal — environments were entirely overturned. Miners themselves said they resembled 'moonscapes', denuded of flora and fauna and riverbeds diverted. In California, hydraulic mining washed away mountains, filling rivers with slurry and rock — this set in motion California's current politics of water and consequences like wildfires. TRAPPED UNDER: Gold mining also gave rise to many practices of Apartheid Another extremely destructive aspect was the use of mercury for gold extraction — that reached rivers and there are still advisories, suggesting people don't eat fish from these because the mercury causes health problems. Meanwhile, a lot of cyanidation was used in South Africa, where high concentrations of cyanide dissolved rock into a kind of sand. The waste was put behind dams — but often, there were spillages and seepage. Also, in abandoned mines, water built up and eventually, when it flowed into rivers, mass perishings of fish and other animals occurred. Were miners themselves mixed? ■ Yes, these were incredibly diverse populations. They tended to be dominated by Britons and Americans. But there were other Europeans, and large numbers of Chinese — they've been depicted as ' coolie labourers ', indentured miners, etc. Actually, they were often voluntary migrants, working in companies together as a collective enterprise. California also had black Americans and indigenous miners. In South Africa, the workforce in mines tended to be black Africans and the supervisors, white Europeans or Americans — extreme forms of racialisation took place. But even then, in response to a decline in employment of black Africans, they imported Chinese miners. A social consequence of this movement of Chinese workers to mines was the rise of ideas around 'restriction' heard in the US, Australia and London or stopping the migration of non-whites around the world. Those notions of gatekeeping, connected to migration, were linked to gold mining. Meanwhile, mining attracted non-miners too — a 'gold rush outfitters' started in San Francisco where a German Jewish migrant made a fortune selling denim to miners, servicing gold rushes rather than engaging in mining itself. Do societies which went out actively seeking gold, like the US or China, differ in history from those who didn't send their people looking for it? ■ Gold partly helps us understand why certain regions of the world were plugged into a kind of global economy earlier than others. By the late 19th century, this industry required the movement of enormous personnel, capital and goods. Gold is part of the story of how ideas about capitalism connected to concepts like economic development and how some industries promised jobs and growth from resource extraction.
Time of India
25-05-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
‘South Africa once excluded black people from land — the state now seeks peaceful reform'
William Beinart is Emeritus Professor at the African Studies Centre, Oxford University. Speaking to Srijana Mitra Das at Times Evoke , he discusses the issue of land — and its fruit — in South Africa : As seen at the Donald Trump-Cyril Ramaphosa interaction recently, we are hearing allegations now about white farmers in South Africa being thrown off their lands and even killed — how historically accurate is this? It's an absurd inversion of history. South Africa's history has been about the dispossession of black South Africans from their land, with the Apartheid system ensuring they could not get access to it until the 1990s and the political transformations that took place then. By that time, only a small proportion of land in rural areas was owned by Africans, with most whiteowned farms, which were largely commercial in nature, having workforces almost entirely composed of these people. The new South African government, after the transition post-Apartheid and the move towards democracy, put land reform quite high on its agenda — it was entirely justified in doing so. The system had cemented racial exclusion for so long. They've gone slowly and I'd say they have done reasonably well. The large farm sector has not been destroyed — on the contrary, becoming one of the most rapidly-growing parts of the economy over the last two decades, it has done quite well. The state also instituted a 'willing buyer, willing seller' system of land reform — if the authorities target particular areas, government buys the land from white farmers there. White farmers being thrown off the land is just not the case. Image credit: iStock When Maize is a maze... Apartheid plundered black South Africans — whites, who are 7% of the population, reportedly still own half the country's land, with 30% redistribution aimed at by 2030 In addition, it is important to emphasise that South Africa has been a very violent place for many years, going back to the Apartheid era — this didn't change much post-1994. Rates of murders and violent crimes remain high in urban and rural areas — however, proportionately, the numbers of white farmers attacked or killed is relatively small. The people most susceptible to violent crimes are actually young men in cities. Yet, this narrative has been picked up by the global right-wing and the Trump Presidency for a range of reasons. They are unhappy with the position of the current South African government on many issues — and Elon Musk , who was born and raised until university in South Africa, is plugged into right-wing Afrikaner groups which have become very effective propagandists on a global scale. Musk apparently didn't always take these views — but he's chosen to champion them now, both in the United States and in relation to South Africa. What are some of the main climatic changes South Africa confronts now? Global warming is already having an effect there — even 25 years ago, people had predicted the western half of South Africa, along with much of Botswana and Namibia, would experience significant reductions in rainfall. That seems to be happening now. On the eastern side, particularly across the coastal zones, there is an increased intensity of stormy rainfall — there is already frequent flooding across these regions. South Africa is reasonably fortunate in having had over a century of intensive dam-building — this enables a fair amount of water capture in many places but there is a crisis developing in urban water supply now. It's not just reduced rainfall but a lack of investment driving this. The challenge of water is huge, with 60% of the country being semi-arid and arid. This is a difficult situation also for South Africa's successful commercial agriculture — citrus fruit is a very large product, the single biggest agricultural export today, well beyond wine, wool and older goods. The sector offers a lot of employment and is also very valuable in terms of providing nutrition for poorer people. Growing citrus does need sustained irrigation though — dangers lie thus in this fairly rapid global climate change and there needs to be more effective and coordinated state engagement. One area where the state has been quite successful in association with the private sector is conservation and the beginnings of biodiversity restoration — a significant part of South Africa is now seeing some return to greater biodiversity. This increase in wildlife is also valuiStock able for water retention and the rejuvenation of watersheds. Of course, there is the question of whether work like ecotourism can replace agrarian activity and generate similar revenues — it's important to note this brings highly differentiated benefits, with ecotourism essentially for relatively well-heeled global travellers and its profits tending to reach those who own land already. While he has Trump's ear: Elon Musk supports claims of white South Africans being hounded Can you tell us about your research on South Africa's prickly pear plant? An aspect of environmental history which interests me deeply is political ecology — why are resources important, to whom do they become necessary, how do they get commodified and who wins and loses in this process? Prickly pear is a Mexican plant, found extensively over central America. It's a cactus and suited well to semi-arid areas. It was brought to the Cape as it was to India, the Mediterranean, northeast Africa as well as other places around the world — I've heard you can discern traces of destroyed Palestinian villages by spotting the remnants of prickly pear there. This plant has multiple uses. Firstly, the Opuntia ficus-indica has juicy fruit and blossoms for about three months every year. It doesn't need much water and reproduces by itself, birds spreading its seeds or its leaves dropping to the ground and sending out new roots. It expanded across the semiarid areas of South Africa and it was eaten by both white and black people — but it became particularly important to impoverished black people because they had no land. They were marginalised also by the commercialisation of agriculture and the expansion of private land holdings which was largely controlled by white people. The prickly pear was like a gathered plant — its fruit was eaten and its leaves used for fodder, fencing, etc. It became very important for the rural poor. Image credit: iStock Fruits of change: South Africa's prickly pear (L) & citrus (R) Now, prickly pear also has spines and its fruit has spicules — if commerically valuable animals like sheep eat these, it can be quite damaging. So, a huge eradication program started in the 19th century, reaching maturity in the 20 th century — this managed to get rid of about 90% prickly pear. That story — of this food of poor black people vanishing, while the state and wealthy farmers exterminated it — has intrigued me.
Time of India
18-05-2025
- Science
- Time of India
‘Plants embody math — they are little calculators, producing Fibonacci sequences'
Christophe Golé is Professor of Mathematical Sciences at Smith College and co-author of 'Do Plants Know Math?' Speaking to Srijana Mitra Das at Times Evoke , he discusses plants — and their number games: What is the core of your research? It is around phyllotaxis — this has roots in the Greek word 'phyllo' which means 'leaves' and 'taxis' meaning 'order'. This is the ordering of leaves and by extension, any organ around the stem of a plant. These usually form a sort of spiral lattice, with theoretical properties that have been puzzling people for centuries, from Leonardo da Vinci to Johannes Kepler and Charles Darwin. What is the Fibonacci phenomenon you study in plants? I mentioned the spirals leaves and other organs form — think now of a pineapple, pinecones or sunflowers. They all have certain packed organ structures, be it seeds or scales, which form a very regular arrangement of spirals — these can be two intersecting sets, going in opposite directions. If you count these spirals, very often, you'll find those numbers are two successive Fibonacci numbers — these are numbers you get recursively, starting with 1 and 1. Then, you add those two and you get 2. Then you add the last two or 1 and 2 — you get 3. Again, you add the last two or 2 and 3 — you get 5. You add 3 and 5 and get 8. You add 5 and 8 and get 13 and so on. Plants show Fibonacci numbers going upto 233 in sunflowers. It's a very striking phenomenon — Alan Turing wrote computer programs seeking to understand this. It's strawberry fields forever! Try counting these 'achenes' or seeds Why does this Fibonacci sequence occur in plants? Scientists are figuring out whether this is an optimisation of resources. What we know for certain is the root mechanism that generates these patterns is somewhat of local optimal packing — a new organ occurs where there is the most space left by others. In 1868, Werner Hoffmeister, a botanist, discovered this. It was confirmed later by biochemistry and biomechanics. This seems like a local phenomenon which has global repercussions on the structure of a plant that take place microscopically. Some biologists argue this could be plants trying to maximise their exposure to the sun while others state — and I quite like this idea — this helps plants pack many organs onto a small bud. If a plant wants to protect its early organs, it's easier if you pack more into a small area. Consider the Romanesco broccoli — this exhibits both spirals and a fractal structure, its florets splitting into baby florets which themselves split more and more. This is a wonderful example of math in the plant kingdom. There are also many plant organs which don't show Fibonacci structures — corn is an example. These have spirals but those are not organised in Fibonacci sequences. Instead, these are often close to one another — instead of having 8-13, for instance, you'll have 6-7 or 7-8. We've been using a dynamical model which thinks about these new organs like disks on a cylinder or cone — you pile these in the smallest possible place and you can observe most of the patterns occurring in plants. Interestingly, decreasing the radius of these disks has the same effect as enlarging the tip of the plant where the structure is born — so, if you imagine a strawberry plant, a few leaves emerge and suddenly, there is an explosion of fruit. The advantage of having this sequence could be the plant saying, 'Ok, I'm going all out for reproduction now.' The change of parameter is crucial in these structures. Spiralling: The red cabbage's inner world is fascinating So, do plants know math — and how to use this? In a sense, plants embody math — they are constantly doing this. Plants actually are little geometrically calculating machines, small calculators which create these structures and have done this for millions of years. Evidence shows us early plants weren't Fibonacci but quasisymmetric though — so, clearly, plants have evolved to do this. Climate change is causing huge shifts among plants now — is the Fibonacci sequencing likely to change? We have circumstantial evidence of changed phyllotaxis in stressed plants. My colleague, Stephane Douady, once collected a bunch of The red world is fascinating pinecones from a particular tree — these were around 95% Fibonacci. Next year, they were much less so. A farmer told him someone had cut some branches of the tree — that would have changed the tree's parameter, causing stress and altering the phyllotaxis. Climate change could induce similar stress — this needs more research. Image credit: iStock Do plants respond to change, using math, biology, physics and chemistry? There is growing evidence that plants have far more developed sensory systems than thought earlier — those systems work at many levels, from biochemical to physical. There is evidence that trees can hear sounds in some capacity and scientists find one part of a plant can sense what's happening in another part. Plants adjust very fast to their environment and change structure — plants that love light can evolve within one generation to those which sustain shade. They are extremely adaptive but some are perishing now under great pressure. Math in bloom: The dahlia arranges petals in Fibonacci spiral sequences
Time of India
03-05-2025
- Science
- Time of India
‘Tectonics pushed up the Himalayas — they brought monsoons, creating the Indus 50 million years ago'
Peter Clift Part of Peter Clift's research is based 66 million years ago — but the geologist conveys an excitement which makes you feel his subject emerged just yesterday. In fact, it didn't, as Clift explains, 'I'm interested in the Indus river, when it was born and how it developed. Recently, I've studied the evolution of the river over the last 10,000 years,' — a blink in the eye of geophysical time — 'To see how it may have interacted with human societies. More broadly, I'm interested in the Indus as a way to look at evolving environment and climate in South Asia.' Fifty Shades of Blue How old is the river after whom our very civilisation is named, TE asks? Clift outlines, 'The Indus seems to have been formed when the Indian continent collided with mainland Asia — it's probably at least 50 million years old. The big eastern tributaries in Punjab joined the mainstream coming out of Tibet and flowing through Ladakh around then. But there's some discussion about how much material also came from the East — in particular, there's a question about the Yamuna.' Clift pauses here, like he's unveiling a detective story. He says, 'Now, 50,000 years ago, the Yamuna, which flows east into the Ganges today, was flowing west into the Indus. We think that stopped about 20,000 years ago. But it used to join the Sutlej and Beas once.' The Yamuna wasn't the only enigmatic river. Clift says, ' Rivers are constantly evolving and meandering, maybe not a lot but with implications for the people they interact with. Rivers also interact with geophysical entities — the Thar desert moved a little bit east and west through time. That pushed some rivers to the west — when the Thar moved, so did the Sutlej.' The Elements Cloud: Indus, hill and cloud There are further forces at play. TE asks Clift about how South Asia's tectonic landscape shaped the Indus — and vice versa. He replies, 'It's a chicken and egg story. Essentially, when India and mainland Asia collided, the first large mountains formed — they attracted rainfall. Those early rains allowed the Indus to form. That was also a trigger for making the Jhelum, Ravi, Sutlej and Beas. As the monsoon grew stronger, those got bigger. There's a feedback effect then — these rivers cut into the mountains. When they scooped out rock and sediment, high peaks rose and became even taller. So, there's a virtuous circle between rainfall and tectonic activity — tectonic activity makes the Himalayas, Karakoram and the Tibetan plateau. Those strengthen the monsoon — as the Himalayas go up, the monsoon grows stronger and the rivers get bigger.' Times Evoke Fascinatingly, these rivers are intricately linked to erosion. Clift elaborates, 'The greater Himalayas are made of deep buried rocks, brought to the surface by shallower rocks being eroded away. This is why there are high mountains on the south side of the Tibetan plateau but not on the north side. There are no mountains like these in the Tarim Basin in western China — that's because it doesn't rain there and the monsoons cause the erosion. There's even a feedback here,' he points out, 'As you smash up Himalayan rocks into small sand grains, they break down into clay material which is washed into the Indian Ocean. As the Himalayas are so big, there's a lot of sediment. This process of breaking down these minerals removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. So, erosion by the big Himalayan river systems, including the Indus, is possibly one reason Earth grew cooler.' Did this combination, red earth to falling rain, as it were, also shape the ecologies of the Indus? 'Oh, yes,' replies Clift, 'That certainly influenced animal life, especially fish and the famous dolphins that live in the Indus and Ganges. Ecology in South Asia is more strongly linked to rain than rivers. About eight million years ago, the monsoon got weaker — with a strong shift in ecology. It changed from forests to a lot more grassland and drier conditions in northwest India and Pakistan.' Indus Dolphin: Echolocating in the swirl As the Indus shifted shape, how did its civilisation manage? Clift answers, 'The Harappans had phases of activity, and then, just around 4,000 years ago, the population mostly moved away from the cities they had built along the Indus. There's been some argument about whether that was caused by the monsoon becoming weaker. I myself have been interested in whether some of this might have been caused by movements of the rivers. One of the tributaries of the Indus is the Ghaggar-Hakra, which now pieces out in the Thar desert. There were Indus Valley sites close to this channel. We wondered if maybe these people sustained themselves in a desert, given a nice water supply from a small river? If you live by a big river and it keeps flooding, that makes your life hard, but a smaller river is simpler to control and easier to grow crops next to. That could have been something the Indus Valley civilisation used. Of course,' Clift adds, just as you settle comfortably into the thought of a happy little Harappan farming community, 'As the climate got drier, the Ghaggar no longer held enough and communities were left with no water.' Town & Gown Were there crops which survived such ebbs and flows? Clift replies, 'There were certainly more drought-tolerant crops like millets. Farmers across Asia always adapted. Rice is very water-intensive, wheat, a little less, hence millets were likely a more sustainable choice. There are lessons here as with global warming, the monsoon could grow stormier and crops will need to be rethought.' Readers write Finally, TE asks what sources Clift uses to study the Indus, born millions of years ago? 'I've worked with marine sediment cores from the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea. We collected a long record offshore Mumbai with a consortium of countries. I also have shorter cores, like one kilometre deep under the ocean floor. I'm working on sediment from the continental margin offshore the Indus river mouth now. We also work onshore, drilling into the floodplain to collect sediment pores, etc.' Clift chuckles, 'Sometimes you can use things which other people have dug — we've had good luck with quarries where people made bricks. There, the mining company had dug a pit and we didn't have to drill. We could just go right in.' Perhaps 'dive in' would be quite accurate as well.
