See -
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41...LXIEe30Oo3UuI8HTPzAnpyHgSeQF0W-TPp21ybhkfr8Ak
The Nadu Sukta hymn of the Rig Veda which mentions 19 rivers starting from the Ganges, moving westward to Indus and three of its tributaries flowing from Sulaiman ranges in Afghanistan, places Saraswati between Yamuna and Sutlej.
The later Hindu literature also mentions the drying up and receding of the river.
It is precisely between this and the next 'fact' that you have mentioned that there is a gulf. Placing the Saraswati between the Yamuna and the Sutlej DOES NOT identify the Ghaggra as that Saraswati; it merely encourages speculation that this might be a possible candidate. That is not proof, that is speculation, informed speculation, but one that breaks down in very short order.
Given that the Rig Veda mentions Saraswati in full might, meeting the sea from the mountains; based on geological evidence, its composition would coincide (in the latest) with the Mature phase of the Saraswati civilisation.
Based on the above mentioned paper, Rig Veda will go back between 9-5 ka.
It is precisely for this reason that regressive and wishful thinkers keep trying to push back the date of the Vedas. For one thing, if the Vedic reference to the foaming river is to be identified to the Ghaggra, that river had already dried up by 1300 BCE. So the only way to wish ourselves into being the originators of the IVC is to push back the date of the composition of the Vedas to the dates when the Ghaggra was in full flow.
There is a problem with that. A problem that a mind looking desperately for such an identification will not notice.
The problem can be explained in the following points (these are the findings of palaeo-geologists, the same people who think that the dried-up Ghaggra could have been the Saraswati):
- The Sutlej, and possibly also the Yamuna, flowed south-west into the Hakra, and from there, according to satellite imagery, into the Nara River, a delta channel of the Indus, that today falls into the sea by way of Sir Creek.
- Around 8,000 to 10,000 years ago, the Sutlej changed course, as did the Yamuna, the latter becoming a tributary of the Ganges system. THIS WAS WELL BEFORE THE INDUS VALLEY CIVILISATION HAD BEGUN.
- By 5,000 years ago (another way of saying this is around 3500 BCE, that is, 3,500 + 2,100 = 5,600 years ago), the monsoon rains had diminished. This allowed urban settlements to flourish along the banks of the now-seasonal river system, that is known as the Ghaggra until it falls into the Hakra.
- Contrary to what many people in India think, not every settlement was of a major size. Many of these sites were quite small. The number of sites does not therefore indicate the centre of gravity of the civilisation, merely its extent and spread.
- Between 2500 BCE and 1900 BCE, the course of the channels changed; the older course was left even more short of water, and this was when the decline of the IVC began, in archaeological terms. The end came about 1300 BCE, or about 3,400 years ago.
- It was not an abrupt ending; there was gradual, extended degradation, with the orderly plan of the settlements becoming compromised step by step, with buildings in the middle of what were once empty streets.
- The people abandoned these decaying settlements and, according to pottery remains, and grave-sites (the SWAT Culture and the Cemetery H, and in pottery, the Ochre pottery as a starting and tracking point), spread out in the north-east into the Punjab-Haryana plains (Rakhigarhi being such a site); in the south-east, it went east beyond Lothal into the hinterland.
This should make clear that for the first reference to the Saraswati in the Rg Veda, a foaming brimful river, the Rg Veda should have been composed around 8,000 to 10,000 years ago, when there was no urban community, and only neolithic settlements of hunter-gatherers in archaeological terms, and only the wishful thinking of regressives to suggest that any kind of civilisation existed then.
It also requires a reconciliation of the canonical dates of the Indo-Iranian movement from the Andronovo Culture to the Oxus-Jaxartes region by 2000 BCE or so, and the westward movement of the Mitanni to Anatolia, where their peace treaties spoke of Varuna, the Nasatyas and Indra, and their horse training treatises faithfully followed the Indo-Iranian, and thereafter, the Indo-Aryan numbering system. Unfortunately, those who keep trying to establish the OOI fail at reconciling these points.
On the other hand, that there was renewed effort at setting up urban settlements after the collapse of the IVC and that a percentage of steppe dwellers were involved, is clear from archaeological evidence.
The second reference to the Saraswati in the Rg Veda is to a river that disappears into the desert. This is precisely the condition of the Ghaggar in the period 1300 BCE, around 200 years after the first migrants had entered south Asia. If there is to be an identification of the Ghaggar with the Vedic river, it is this reference that is logical and consistent with the facts, and not the other, earlier one.
It is for these reasons that it is unlikely that the Ghaggar was the Saraswati of Vedic times. At least, it was not the brimful Saraswati; it may have been the Saraswati disappearing into the desert.
Also in this region, no archaeological evidence separating ‘x’ from ‘Harappan’ is found. There is only one culture - Harappan. There is also biological continuity witnessed at this time..
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The legendary river Saraswati of Indian mythology has often been hypothesized to be an ancient perennial channel of the seasonal river Ghaggar that flowed through the heartland of the Bronze Age Harappan civilization in north-western India. Despite the discovery of abundant settlements along a major paleo-channel of the Ghaggar, many believed that the Harappans depended solely on monsoonal rains, because no proof existed for the river’s uninterrupted flow during the zenith of the civilization. Here, we present unequivocal evidence for the Ghaggar’s perennial past by studying temporal changes of sediment provenance along a 300 km stretch of the river basin. This is achieved using 40Ar/39Ar ages of detrital muscovite and Sr-Nd isotopic ratios of siliciclastic sediment in fluvial sequences, dated by radiocarbon and luminescence methods. We establish that during 80-20 ka and 9-4.5 ka the river was perennial and was receiving sediments from the Higher and Lesser Himalayas. The latter phase can be attributed to the reactivation of the river by the distributaries of the Sutlej. This revived perennial condition of the Ghaggar, which can be correlated with the Saraswati, likely facilitated development of the early Harappan settlements along its banks. The timing of the eventual decline of the river, which led to the collapse of the civilization, approximately coincides with the commencement of the Meghalayan Stage
<sigh>
This brimful phase was long before any traces of urban development. For your information, the archaeological research of Raymond and Bridget Allchin showed the gradual growth of villages, then towns, then the full-fledged cities of the IVC, spreading down from the Afghan plateau, to the Indus valley banks, and then proliferating along channels of the Indus and its tributaries. These are clear signs of systematic growth and development, not planned by some higher authority, but as the natural progression of urban development.
It is also clear that the urbanisation along the banks of the Ghaggar was most convenient when weather conditions permitted, not at a time of flooded rivers, but at a time of lesser monsoon precipitation and lesser river activity. That would also explain why there are so many more urban settlements, even though of smaller sizes, along these shrinking tributaries, than along the main Indus itself.