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The reasons for the eventual decline and collapse of the Indus Valley society are unclear. A shift in the course of the Indus River left the city of Marenjo-daro – one of the two centres of the culture – and its surrounds dry and agriculturally unviable. There are theories that, elsewhere, chronic flooding may had the same devastating effect, that disease and disruption to trade helped the decline. The end of a much-weakened culture may have come with the arrival in the region of  (Indo-[[Aryan]]) [[Sanskrit]] speaking people – part of that general migration of people (“volkerwaderunge”) starting with the arrival of the [[Hittites]] in Anatolia ([[modern Turkey]]) about the turn of the third millennium B.C. (c.2000 B.C.) that, over the next millennium would populate most of Europe, Persia, much of the Indian sub-continent and as far east as what is now western China with peoples with common linguistic roots that we call [[Indo-European]] and Indo-Aryan.  

The reasons for the eventual decline and collapse of the Indus Valley society are unclear. A shift in the course of the Indus River left the city of Marenjo-daro – one of the two centres of the culture – and its surrounds dry and agriculturally unviable. There are theories that, elsewhere, chronic flooding may had the same devastating effect, that disease and disruption to trade helped the decline. The end of a much-weakened culture may have come with the arrival in the region of  (Indo-[[Aryan]]) [[Sanskrit]] speaking people – part of that general migration of people (“volkerwaderunge”) starting with the arrival of the [[Hittites]] in Anatolia (modern [[Turkey]]) about the turn of the third millennium B.C. (c.2000 B.C.) that, over the next millennium would populate most of Europe, Persia, much of the Indian sub-continent and as far east as what is now western China with peoples with common linguistic roots that we call [[Indo-European]] and Indo-Aryan.  

The Indus Civilisation was the last of the great truly ancient civilisations to come to light. [[British]] engineers used bricks from some ancient towns whilst working on a new rail line in the 1850s not realising the antiquity of these places, and in the following decades inscribed seals and other finds aroused interest. It was not until well into the 20th century that modern archaeological techniques were used and only since the [[Second World War]] has the full extent of the civilisation been realised.

The Indus Civilisation was the last of the great truly ancient civilisations to come to light. [[British]] engineers used bricks from some ancient towns whilst working on a new rail line in the 1850s not realising the antiquity of these places, and in the following decades inscribed seals and other finds aroused interest. It was not until well into the 20th century that modern archaeological techniques were used and only since the [[Second World War]] has the full extent of the civilisation been realised.