Indus Valley cultures existed without a river!
Posted On: Dec 1st, 2017 at 13:30
India
All ancient cultures, and thus later modern cities, sprung up because of running water. In other words, they were originally built next to rivers. Natural fresh, running water is a vital element of every day life, and the bigger the settlement, the bigger the water supply that is required. A small stream is not an adequate supply for a large city, hence why such water supplies exist in small villages. Larger cities, however, have expanded because they exist alongside large rivers (London, New Delhi, and so on).
Therefore I am just as shocked as anyone to read that several Indus Valley cultures existed long after river beds had dried up! I’ve had to read this article three times just to get my head around the idea, to try and envisage how they lived. While the dates of the cultures may be wrong, the river data probably is not, so even with a reasonable amount of error or doubt this problem still remains. I do like the idea that these people made use of fresh water from monsoon rains that would have provided drinking water and also crops, but certainly this does not explain how they survived in the hotter months of December towards June. There is no doubt in my mind that these cultures accessed underground water supplies as this is the only explanation for their existence. Monsoon rains flooding the area with fresh rain water would have provided an ample supply, and with temperatures exceeding 50 degrees Celsius there is just no way these people were able to live without a year-round supply of water.
However, this is a remarkable discovery and an insight into the ingenuity of Indus cultures. I stick to my guns that civilisation started here, and most modern “inventions” can be attributed to the ancient Indians. In this case, the area of Rajasthan and Haryana in which the Palaeo Channel runs through. “Tanks”, large swimming-pool sized (sometimes smaller and often many times larger) man-made reservoirs, were invented here in the Indus Valley at least 6,000 years ago, so I would imagine an earlier form of these was being used to ensure adequate water supply. If there is no evidence of these, then clearly ample water was available underground and they used wells to access it.
