Lost River Of The Thar Desert That Ran 1,72,000 Years Ago Found.

 

Lost River Of The Thar Desert That Ran 1,72,000 Years Ago Found |  Photo Credit: iStock Images

A lost river which ran through Central Thar Desert in 1,72,000 years ago found. This river may have been the lifeline of human inhabiting the region.

The research was conducted and published in Quarternary Science Reviews by Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany, Anna University in Tamil Nadu and IISER Kolkata.

Research finds tell us that this is the oldest river which was running in Nal Quarry in the central Thar Desert.

The study tells us that the stone age population lived in this region in a distinctly different Thar Desert environment than today what we see. The lost river was active about 172 thousand years, near Bikaner in Rajasthan, Which is more than 200 kilometres away from the nearest modern river which is the river Luni.

"The Thar Desert has a rich prehistory, and we've been uncovering a wide range of evidence showing how Stone Age populations not only survived but thrived in these semi-arid landscapes," Jimbob Blinkhorn from The Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History was quoted as saying by PTI.

Blinkhorn said "We know how important rivers can be to living in this region, but we have little detail on what river systems were like during key periods of prehistory,".

Researchers said that studies of satellite imagery have shown a dense network of river channels crossing the Thar Desert. Professor Hema Achyuthan of Anna University explained "These studies can indicate where rivers and streams have flowed in the past, but they can't tell us when,".

Achyuthan said "To demonstrate how old such channels are, we had to find evidence on the ground for river activity in the middle of the desert,".

 

The research team studied deposit of river sands and gravels, which had been exposed by quarrying activity near the village of Nal.

 

Achyuthan said "We immediately saw evidence for a substantial and very active river system from the bottom of the fluvial deposits, which gradually decreased in power through time,".

 

River activity continued between 95 to 78 thousand years ago.

"This river flowed at a critical timeframe for understanding human evolution in the Thar Desert, across South Asia and beyond," Blinkhorn said. "This suggests a landscape in which the earliest members of our own species, Homo sapiens, first encountered the monsoons and crossed the Thar Desert may have been very different to the landscape we can see today."