Indus Valley Civilisation sites

"In the course of a survey project limited to only a section of the Hakra/Ghaggar in the Cholistan desert in Bahawalpur state (representing three hundred miles of the Pakistan side of the Hakra part of the riverbed), Mughal mapped out a total of 414 archaeological sites on the bed. This dwarfs the number of sites so far recorded along the entire stretch of the Indus River which number only about three dozen. The centrality of the river, both archaeologically and culturally, has led a minority of Indian archaeologists to propose, and to begin to adopt, die term Indus- Sarasvati Civilization in lieu of the labels Harappan or Indus Valley Civilisation."

"B. B. Lal (1997) is a little more cautious in denying the nomadic character of the Indo- Aryans: "Just as there were cities, towns and villages in the Harappan ensemble (as there are even today in any society) there were both rural and urban components in the Vedic times. Where then is the glaring disparity between the cultural levels of the Harappan and Vedic societies?" (285)."

"‘The major reduction of sites [along the Sarasvati] in the Early Post-urban period (c 2000-1700 BC) strongly suggests that a major part of the river’s water supply was lost around that time’"

"Scholars such as Romila Thapar, Irfan Habib and the late RS Sharma started questioning this identification in the 1980s. What prompted this rather late reaction? It was a new development: A study of the evolution of the pattern of Harappan settlements in the Saraswati basin now revealed that in its central part — roughly southwest Haryana, southern Punjab and northern Rajasthan — most or all Harappan sites were abandoned sometime around 1900 BCE, a period coinciding with the end of the urban phase of the Indus civilisation. Clearly, the river system collapsed — which archaeologists now saw as a factor contributing to the end of the brilliant Indus civilisation. Why was this a problem? We must remember that the Saraswati is lavishly praised both as a river and a Goddess in the Rig Veda, a collection of hymns which mainstream Indology says was composed by Indo-Aryans shortly after their migration to India around 1500 BCE. However, by that time, the Saraswati had been reduced to a minor seasonal stream: How could the said Aryans praise it as a ‘mighty river’, the ‘best of rivers’, ‘mother of waters’, etc? There is a chronological impossibility. Hence, the objectors asserted, the Ghaggar-Hakra was not, after all, the Saraswati extolled in the Rig Veda. While some (Rajesh Kochhar) tried to relocate the river in Afghanistan, others (Irfan Habib) decided that the Saraswati was not a particular river but “the river in the abstract, the River Goddess”; but both theses ran against the Rig Veda’s own testimony that the river flowed between the Yamuna and the Sutlej."

"Combined, these geological changes meant major changes in the hydrology patterns of the region. These natural geologic processes had significant consequences for the food producing cultural groups throughout the greater Indus Valley area. Archaeological surveys have documented a cultural response to these environmental changes creating a “crisis” circumstance..."

"‘The large number of these ancient sites contrasts strikingly with the very few small villages still on the same ground.’..."