Archaeology News - Aboriginal India and the Harappan Empire - 0 views
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The Harappan rulers, by contrast, collected large quantities of grain into fortified storehouses, which suggests a major centralization of the land’s wealth. The rulers most likely introduced a system of plantation farming. They claimed large tracts of riverside land and cleared them of trees. Then they dug ditches from the river to irrigate the newly denuded areas. Instead of growing scattered gardens of many useful plants, the supervisors probably reserved their best fields for crops of a single species, and weeded out all other plants. The workers who did this may have been slaves, hired hands, or villagers required to donate days of labor. They probably worked under command, and not for themselves.
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Thanasis Kouris on 29 Sep 09Strong government. Eventually leads to collapse of society.
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The Harappan cities of wood-fired brick, the large granaries, and the bones of wild animals (including bears, crocodiles, elephants, tigers and forest squirrels) from Harappan times, all suggested that the environment of Pakistan was once far greener. But as mentioned before, recent studies of soil and climate show no significant decline of rainfall over the course of history. Jacquetta Hawkes says the old vegetation was destroyed “not by a loss of rainfall, but by tree-felling and the grazing of goats and sheep
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Such deforestation tends to produce water logging on a flood plain, because trees constantly pump the groundwater up to their leaves. Removing the trees halts most of the pumping.
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