A River Didn't Run Through It ...

[Essan]

Quote

The Indus or Harappan Civilisation was a Bronze Age society that developed mainly in the northwestern regions of South Asia from 5300 to 3300 years ago, at about the same time as urban civilisations developed in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Archaeological evidence shows that many of the settlements in the Indus Civilisation developed along the banks of a river called the Ghaggar-Hakra in northwest India and Pakistan.

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Today's study, published in the journal Nature Communications, shows that a major Himalayan river, the Sutlej River, used to flow along the trace of the Ghaggar-Hakra river but rapidly changed course upstream eight thousand years ago. This meant that three thousand years later, when the Indus people settled the area, there was only an abandoned large river valley occupied by seasonal monsoon river flow instead of a large Himalayan river.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171128112209.htm
 

My interpretation would be that the monsoonal floods that flowed down the otherwise dry riverbed would have still left behind not only fertile soil, but also some small lakes in the dry river valley.   These became the focus for villages to develop near, from which the Harappan civiliisation then evolved.    As is mentioned in the article, living closer to a large flowing river would have meant - as today - a much greater risk of catastrophic monsoon floods

Edited November 29, 2017 by Essan

[Orphalesion]

Interesting! Yeah I can see the advantages of living in an area that has the benefits of being a former river valley, but is also safe from monsoon floods. And as it seems they still got seasonal rivers. If Egypt survived on a seasonal flood for millennia, I don't see why a similar system wouldn't have worked elsewhere.

[strunk64]

Probably had wells and cisterns too.