The Indus Civilization c9.56

c9.56

Agriculture must have been one of the chief industries, for many large cities had to be supplied with food, as well as numerous smaller settlements. There is undoubted evidence that cotton, wheat, barley, melons, and dates were cultivated; seeds of the last four have been found and identified, and mention has already been made of the fragments of cotton cloth found with one of the hoards of jewellery. A great many other plants must also have flourished—for example, the lotus, whose seed capsules serve as a motif on pin-heads, and whose root is still eaten in parts of India to-day. The country seems to have depended on the annual floods for its irrigation, but there are no traces of canals through which the water could have run. This apparent lack of any preparations for dry seasons, together with the representations of forest-loving animals on the seals, seem to point to the view that the rainfall in Sind and the Punjab must have been very much heavier than it is at the present day.