Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c11.8

c11.8

It is less easy to find evidence of the former climate of Baluchistan than it is for the Indus Valley. Today the territories of the Makran, Kharan, and Jhalawan in South Baluchistan, which contain a large number of prehistoric settlements, are very sparsely populated (not more than two persons to the square mile in Kharan), and this population is partly migratory. The settlements which will form the subject of this chapter are, as will be seen, today represented by ‘tells’ of accumulated debris which can result only from settled communities continuously inhabiting one site for centuries. In the Kolwa region such settlements are particularly numerous, and today this tract is (to quote Stein) ‘by far the greatest dry-crop area of Makran, and its export of barley to other parts in years of good rainfall is considerable. Yet,’ he goes on to say, ‘how rare such rainfall is, and how precarious this cultivation in Kolwa, is shown by the very scanty population of the tract being practically all nomadic.’ This nomadism or seasonal migration is under the present conditions a marked feature throughout Baluchistan, and again one cannot do better than to describe it in Stein’s words: