civilisation

A recent academic paper argues that there is an indigenous development of civilisation in India going back to at least 6000 BCE (Mehrgarh). It proposes that the great Harappan or Indus Valley urban culture (2600-1900 BCE), centred on the Saraswati river of Vedic fame, had much in common with Vedic literary accounts. It states that the Harappan culture came to an end not because of outside invaders but owing to environmental changes, most important of which was the drying up of the Saraswati. It argues further that the movement of populations away from the Saraswati to the Ganges, after the Saraswati dried up (c 1900 BCE), was reflected in the literature with Vedic Saraswati based literature giving way to Puranic texts extolling the Ganga. Perhaps more shockingly, the paper states that the Aryan invasion theory reflects colonialism and Eurocentrism and is quite out of date. Note the conclusion: