This thesis encompasses a study of past precipitation patterns based on six cave stalagmites from different parts of the Indian Himalaya. This is the first speleothem study in the Indian Himalaya that shows a direct relationship between past precipitation and the collapse of civilization. The stalagmites examined were KL-3 from Jammu and Kashmir; TCS and BR-1 from Himachal Pradesh; and DH-1, SA-1 and CH-1 from Uttarakhand. Based on the high-resolution palaeoclimatic reconstruction (35 U/th dates, 5 AMS dates, 1,500 samples for 18O and 13C values) obtained for the duration of the Pleistocene-Holocene transition (16.2-9.5 ka BP) and Mid-Holocene-Present (ca. 4.0 ka BP-Present), three major events were identified, namely the Older Dryas (OD), Bolling-Allerod (BA) period and Younger Dryas (YD) at ca. 14.3-13.9, 13.9-12.7 and 12.7-12.2 ka BP, respectively. The study showed a gradual reduction in the precipitation from 4 ka BP onwards for about a millennium with a peak arid period between 3.2 and 3.1 ka BP. According to the findings, the LIA (Little Ice Age) covers a time span from 1622-1820 AD, during which the climate was wetter than that in the post-LIA period (1820-1950 AD). In addition, this thesis supports the assumption that the WDs (Western Disturbances) contribute significantly to the total rainfall in the Himalaya region.

During an expedition in Sonora, Mexico, paleontologist Mark A. S. McMenamin unearthed fossils of creatures dated at approximately 600 million years old -- making them the oldest large body fossils ever discovered. These circular fossils, known as Ediacarans, seemed to defy explanation. Representatives of marine life forms that existed in Precambrian times, as much as fifty million years before life on earth began to diversify rapidly, the specimens bore a superficial resemblance to jellyfish.

A typical Ediacaran had a quilted body, three curving arms at the center, and a fringe of fine radial lines. McMenamin's curiosity was fueled by the puzzle of whether the Ediacarans were animals or some other type of organism. How could such complex forms of life appear so suddenly, without extensive records of prior evolution? Yet, this seems to be exactly what the Ediacarans had done.

"The Garden of Ediacara" presents a mesmerizing documentary of a major scientific discovery, detailing McMenamin's trip to Namibia, where, with a party that included the renowned paleontologist Adolf Seilacher, the author investigates a spectacular cast made from a colony of fossils in the Nama desert. He chronicles the long, often futile search made by earlier scientists for Ediacara, which began more than a century ago in Europe, North America, and Africa, and the various types of Ediacaran fossils that have been uncovered in the years since.

McMenamin concludes that Ediacarans were not animals because they never passed through the ball-shaped embryonic stage peculiar to known animal life forms. But, remarkably, Ediacarans seem to have developed a central nervous system and a brain independent from animal evolution. This startling conclusion has profound implications for our understanding of evolutionary biology, for it indicates that the path toward intelligent life was embarked upon more than once on this planet.