'Lost' river that ran through Thar Desert 172,000 years ago found near Bikaner

Researchers have found evidence of a "lost" river that ran through the central Thar Desert, near Bikaner, as early as 172 thousand years ago, and may have been a life-line to human populations enabling them to inhabit the region. Evidence indicates a river flowed with phases of activity dating to approximately up to 172 thousand years ago, nearby to Bikaner, Rajasthan, which is over 200 kilometers away from the nearest modern river. These findings predate evidence for activity in modern river courses across the Thar Desert as well as dried up course of the Ghaggar-Hakra River, the researchers said.

The presence of a river running through the central Thar Desert would have offered a life-line to Paleolithic populations, and potentially an important corridor for migrations, they said. “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," said Jimbob Blinkhorn from The Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

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. Studies of satellite imagery have shown a dense network of river channels crossing the Thar Desert, according to the researchers.

"To demonstrate how old such channels are, we had to find evidence on the ground for river activity in the middle of the desert," said Professor Hema Achyuthan of Anna University. The timeframe over which this river was active also overlaps with significant changes in human behaviour in the region, which have been linked with the earliest expansions of Homo sapiens from Africa into India, said the activist.