It is quite possible that the decline in civil society extended to other areas such as agricultural planning and maintenance of irrigations systems making the civilization more vulnerable to natural disasters such droughts, floods, fires or earthquakes - thus contributing to the eventual extinction of that vibrant civilization. This suggests that technological progress cannot be divorced from social conditions that may either encourage the progress of technology or conversely cause civilizations that may be (in relative terms) quite advanced to stagnate and even decline.

For instance, 3000 years after Harappa, we find anecdotal evidence of impressive urban settlements constructed during the Mauryan period. Greek travellers have left behind admiring descriptions of Patliputra - the Mauryan capital. But social strife brought a precipitous end to the grand civilization. The growth of a parasitic, exploitative and socially oppressive elite led to massive social upheavals. In the course of the civil wars, fires and looting destroyed virtually all of the wood-based dwellings including grand palaces and public buildings.

Thus, an entire tradition of wood-based urban construction - (which may have taken several centuries to develop) was destroyed. But it also led to a greater emphasis on the use of more lasting construction materials. The very social conditions that destroyed technological progress in one direction gave birth to technological progress in another. Sculptural finds from the Mauryan period indicate that Mauryan sculptors of that time had achieved a high degree of proficiency in working with stone. They must have had tools and implements that enabled them to create smoothly modelled and highly polished representations of human and animal figures. Later civilizations in India employed these skills not only for the purposes of sculpting but for creating entire monuments constructed from a variety of hard building materials. For instance, various methods for preparing cements were developed, and by the 7th century, cement of highly durable quality came into use in the construction of important monuments that survive to this day.