The Indus Civilization (Cambridge History of India, Supplementary Volume) c8.17

c8.17

The upland valleys and the plains alike, therefore, must in the third millennium B.C. have presented a more congenial background for human society than do the same tracts at the present day. It is sufficiently obvious, however, that the two milieus themselves afforded a very differing range of possibilities, which fundamentally affect their status in the long view of history. A relatively fertile upland valley provides the optimum conditions for the earlier essays in communal life within the boundaries of an easy rural self-sufficiency. The riverine plains, on the other hand, throw out a challenge. The dangerous annual flood can only be constrained or utilized by combined effort on a large scale. The river itself and its flanking lowlands facilitate and stimulate traffic, commercial or military, and at once enlarge human relations far beyond the precedent of the upland valley. The opportunities and difficulties implicit in civilization are present and insistent. Village life of the kind perfected in the hills is urged forward to success or failure amidst these new horizons, and becomes in perspective an introductory or transitional phase.