Part 2: Indus Valley — The hollow bird

Inside a Cemetery H burial urn, a potter in 1700 BC painted a procession of peacocks around the rim and placed a hollow bird at the center. What he put inside it has never been explained. The Indus Valley Civilization was already emptying by then — cities half-abandoned, drainage channels silting over, the monsoon arriving later each year with less water than the year before. The end did not come as a collapse. It came the way a harvest fails. Part 2 of 2.