Imagine a future where Earth’s melting icecaps had flooded far and near
Imagine a future where global warming has made the world’s great civilisations simply... disappear
London, beneath the swollen Thames is not even a memory to those who survived the onslaught of Mother Nature’s fractured fate
Climate change has reaped its whirlwind; mankind had left it all too late
Cairo, Sydney, Los Angeles – all gone; no one ever knew they were even there
Centuries of rising seas, drought and desert has wiped them out and left the landscape bare
We can wonder what dreads await our fragile world, plagued by climate change and invent a thousand more
But strange to say we know for sure that something similar had happened long before
Come with me and I’ll take you to a city that had vanished from human memory for over three and a half thousand years
And an entire civilisation, bustling and vibrant with people like you and I, with their hopes and loves and fears
How can something so vast and significant be lost and neglected for such a long, long time?
How can a whole race of people disappear without a single sign?
Climate change it seems may well have had a hand in their demise; even then mankind left its mark upon the Earth
Humans taking with impunity the natural treasures of the very world that gave them birth
This is the Indus Valley people’s story; a remarkable culture that flourished and mysteriously passed away
Until a small carved stone was found; a seal to stamp an impression in wet clay
An image of a bull, carved in soapstone to lay claim to goods when trading with other city states and lands around
This was the key that unlocked the door; a vast enigmatic nation, long forgotten had been found
The journey had begun to discover what mystery was hidden beneath the earth where the tiny seal had been
So the archaeologists began to dig, and the scope of what they discovered was like nothing before ever seen
They found the great city of Harappa laid out in a carefully articulated grid of mapped out precision
Where a population of 40,000 citizens shared a world where class and status marked no obvious division
So too in the city of Mohenjo-Daro with its sophisticated plumbing, communal baths and market places
Like Harappa there seemed to be no evidence of royal palaces, hallowed religious temples, garrisons for armies and other grand martial spaces
Houses built with fire-baked bricks all of a uniform size; there seemed to be little difference between the homes of the rich and poor
All of a similar shape and dimension; no fine walled garden with fountains, no carved lintel above a columned door
Astute and organised with standardised weights and measures, the Indus people had a social framework worthy of any modern order
A reasoned and well planned arrangement of towns and cities with no competing border
And very soon it became apparent that this was no minor nation state hidden by millennia of ancient soil and sand
As more excavations revealed a vast topography of towns and cities spread across the land
A million square kilometres of a forgotten utopian society that once pulsed its artery of influence far and wide
Veins of commerce, learning, and an architecture inspired by equality, harmony and beauty rhythmically collide
Through Pakistan and India, Gujarat, Punjab, across the plains of the Indus River to the shore of the deep Arabian Sea
Here was an aesthetic consciousness, a consciousness of order, a consciousness of economy
A town-planner’s dream, a philosopher’s delight
No central seat of government; citizens free from religious hierarchy, from a greedy tyrant’s might
No evidence of conflict recorded on monument or stone; a unique historical revelation
No sculptured reliefs of armies, slaughter, warfare or man-made devastation
And the seal that revealed this undiscovered country to a future world, unaware of its prodigious scale, is the size of a postage stamp, with a mythically imposing creature, somewhat like a unicorn
A delicately carved image of a bull in profile displaying a single massive horn
And more and more seals were discovered with wonderfully incised impressions of beasts, all very plain to see
Elephants and rhinos, lions and bulls, and sometimes yogic human figures meditating, or a single sacred tree
And above the image on every seal, inscrutable symbols are indecipherable to any will
A language etched in stone five thousand years ago retains its secret, still
A secret kingdom, a secret race of people who traded and travelled far wider than the Indus Valley plain
As far away as the great cities of Umma and Ur in Mesopotamia and the coast of the Arabian Peninsula, their imprint in clay tags would seal the mouths of jars and sacks of grain
But such a vast commonwealth of communities require vast resources to prosper, thrive and grow
And sooner or later too many people can overwhelm the very land where they live and reap and sew
Granaries once full to bursting are no longer a refuge for those bleak years of poor harvests, drought and need
And when nature suddenly intervenes, well there are just too many mouths to feed
Tectonic shifting can divert a mighty river; turn a fertile landscape into a barren wasteland bereft of productive soil to nourish tender shoots
And when the monsoon rains refuse to fall on time, millet, wheat and barley wither at their roots
And river lifelines interrupted by climate change are not the only problem for a population who have cut down whole forests for timber and fuel and exhausted the valley plains that fed them well
A once great civilisation is abandoned as families’ desert their houses built of bricks baked on fires from the trees they had to fell
Empty homes, empty buildings and empty streets vanish like smoke with the ghosts of the Indus Nation’s race
Silent beneath the heavy sands of time – gone without a trace
Imagine a future where Earth’s melting icecaps had flooded far and near
Imagine a future where global warming has made the world’s great civilisations simply... disappear
And ice shelves in the Arctic are cracking and splitting apart; great frozen anchors are slipping their ancient moorings from the seabed far below
And as the ice dissolves, the oceans rise, storm clouds gather and the heavy rain begins to fall as rivers swell and flow
Massive flooding rips through the landscape everywhere as we face nature’s response to humanity’s insatiable assault
We ignore history’s lessons at our peril - there is no Planet B, no reset button, no Planet Earth default
The Indus Nation lay undetected until a tiny stone triggered the story of their rise and fall; a message that should make us all take heed
But deforestation, fossil fuels, wild fires and extreme weather is the deadly testament of mankind’s reckless greed
And if we selfishly exploit our planet, like the Indus people before, will there be anyone here to find evidence of our existence: microchips, cellphones, the rusting hulks of cars?
Or will they lie forever unrevealed; ripples of a life once lived, buried in a world devoid of life beneath a galaxy of indifferent stars?
