Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c12.10

c12.10

The record of the chroniclers of Alexander the Great’s campaigns suggests that in the fourth century B.C. Sind (the region of Mousikanos) was still a fertile tract of country, and there is even evidence of the persistence of conditions kinder than now up to the time of the Moghuls. The most reasonable explanation of the climatic deterioration within comparatively recent times is the supposition that the edge of the south-western monsoon area has shifted eastwards, and that the Indus was formerly within the area of monsoon rains. On the whole this explanation seems more likely than the alternative view that the northern storm-belt was deflected southwards by conditions in immediately post-glacial times, and that the effect persisted after the establishment of otherwise normal climatic conditions. Though South Baluchistan had certainly reached its present conditions of arid climate by the time of Alexander's retreat, the Indus region may have preserved its moister climate within the western fringe of the monsoon until later centuries.