Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c11.7

c11.7

It is in these mountainous and desert areas that the earliest agricultural communities yet known in India have been identified. Human settlement in the region is likely to go back at least to the beginning of the third millennium B.C., and shows from the beginning significant links with the ancient Bronze Age cultures of the regions farther west. The abundant evidence of ancient occupation in the Baluchi hills or the Indus plain implies less exacting climatic conditions in the past than at present, and, though historical evidence implies that by the time of Alexander conditions in Baluchistan approximated to those of today, yet we shall see in the next chapter that there is good evidence for a heavier rainfall, and extensive forests, in the Indus Valley in ancient times. The very fact that kiln-burnt bricks were used so lavishly in the Harappā culture shows that almost unlimited timber must have been available for fuel in the third millennium B.C. A westward extension of the monsoon rains by a comparatively small amount could entirely change the character of this western Indian region.