Almost 5,000 years ago, a civilization developed in what is today northwest India and Pakistan, rivaling Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt in scope. The people of the Indus civilization farmed everything from cotton to dates, and eventually established at least five major cities with basic indoor plumbing and public sewage systems.
A few of these cities, including the famed sites of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, sit along major glacier-fed rivers. But the bulk of the Bronze Age Indus villages that have been found so far sit far from flowing water, north of the Thar Desert and between the Ganges-Yamuna and the Indus river systems. As early as the late 1800s, archaeologists and geologists noted a dry paleochannel, like an old riverbed, which ran through many of these settlements. The assumption was that the settlements first grew alongside the river, and then dried up when the river did.
Now, new research reveals that this old story is entirely wrong. In fact, the river that once filled the dry channel dried up more than 3,000 years before the heyday of the Indus civilization. Instead, the ancient people who populated those villages may have relied on seasonal monsoon flooding and the rich, water-trapping clays of the old river valley for a flourishing system of agriculture. Read more...
Back to History
A few of these cities, including the famed sites of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, sit along major glacier-fed rivers. But the bulk of the Bronze Age Indus villages that have been found so far sit far from flowing water, north of the Thar Desert and between the Ganges-Yamuna and the Indus river systems. As early as the late 1800s, archaeologists and geologists noted a dry paleochannel, like an old riverbed, which ran through many of these settlements. The assumption was that the settlements first grew alongside the river, and then dried up when the river did.
Now, new research reveals that this old story is entirely wrong. In fact, the river that once filled the dry channel dried up more than 3,000 years before the heyday of the Indus civilization. Instead, the ancient people who populated those villages may have relied on seasonal monsoon flooding and the rich, water-trapping clays of the old river valley for a flourishing system of agriculture. Read more...
Back to History
No comments:
Post a Comment