In the Harappan world, subsistence depended on much the same species as in western Asia and Egypt. On greater the Indus valley plains, barley and wheat, together with peas, gram, sesame and mustard, were grown. Cotton was grown for fibre. Sheep, goat and cattle bones attest to animal husbandry, and cattle comprised both western Asiatic species as well as the humped Indian variety. In Kutch, millets are attested, and at lethal rice husk impressions have been detected in clay. The Harappan heartland lay in a transitional zone between the winter rainfall regime of western Asia and the monsoon rainfall system of South Asia. Punjab may get only 120 mm rainfall in winter, and Sind just 30 mm (both regions have heavier rainfall during the monsoon), but even this is of critical importance because wheat and barley are winter crops. More reliable history of India—and therefore important—than rainfall, however, is ground or subsoil water. You may remember that the city of Mohenjo-daro had an estimated 700 wells for its domestic water supply. Along the now dry stretch of the Hakra river in Pakistan, the water table is high and wells would have been important. Several Harappan sites in western Sind lie close to natural springs or artesian wells. Until recently, in Sind and western Punjab good wheat crops have been connected with well irrigation. At Aladdin, a small Harappan settlement near Karachi, it appears that water from a stone-lined artesian well was utilized. In Saurashtra, Lothal and other settlements were located near a low trough containing, until the 19th century, fresh water that was lifted to irrigate wheat—Gujarat has no winter rainfall. At the important site of Dholavira on Khadir island in Kutch, where there are no perennial rivers, bunds were constructed across the channels of minor rivulets to pond the seasonal flow and divert it into reservoirs in the city. The annual discharge of the Indus is roughly eight-fold that of the Euphrates, and more than twice that of the Nile. Because of the volume of water that it carries, and the slope of the land, the velocity of the Indus is also much the highest. It is therefore a destructive river, and does not bring sheet floods. Much of the flood escapes in well-defined and wide channels like the Western Nara, but in living memory the Indus has also been known to have swept away hundreds of villages. The seasonal rhythm of the floods is also unique. Being at its highest in August (because of heavy rainfall in the Himalaya), the level of the river is low between April and February, the wheat and barley season. Thus canal irrigation would not have been possible for these winter crops in proto historic times.
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