The Saraswati River once flowed in S 65° W, in what are the present-day states of Uttarakhand, Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat in India, and the Punjab and Sindh provinces of Pakistan. It wound its way in the SSE direction, upto the Rann of Kutch, right from about Upper Cretaceous (67.5 Ma) to Lower Pleistocene (1.8 Ma) for about 65.7 Ma in the Sirmaur and Siwalik basin, and later in the Saraswati Basin from about the Upper Pleistocene (30,000 YBP) to Lower Holocene (8,500 YBP), for about 21,500 YBP¹. It finally changed its course towards the Ganga River Basin at about 8,500 YBP, and since then is being addressed as the Yamuna River. Later, immediately after about 8,500 YBP, the Ghaggar-Hakra river systems, the monsoon-fed, but not glacier-fed rivers, occupied the abandoned course of the river Saraswati.
Prehistoric, that is before 6,000 YBP, stone tools have been found from several locations in the Siwaliks. The Acheulian stone tools are reported from the Aravalli ranges in the Gurugram district of Haryana, and from within the campus of the Jawaharlal Nehru University at New Delhi. Prehistoric human occupation is found in the Rohri Hills in the Sindh province of Pakistan. However, in the Sutlej, Ghaggar and Yamuna basin settlement of humans, domestication of plants and animals is lacking so far for the Neolithic/Prehistoric Stone Age and Early Chalcolithic cultures from around 10,000 YBP to 6,000 YBP. However, the recent radiocarbon dates from the sites of Kunal and Rakhigarhi, further pushes back the antiquity of the stone tools to 7,000 YBP.
The settlements in the Saraswati River valley were possible in major way from 6,000 YBP onwards that is after its departure to the Ganga River Basin, about 8,500 YBP. These settlements, which are based on carbon dating, can be categorised into: 1) Pre-Harappan (5,800 to 5,200 YBP), 2) Early Harappan (5,200 to 4,500 YBP), 3) Mature Harappan (4,500 to 3,900 YBP), 4) Late Harappan (3,900 to 3,000YBP) and 5) Painted Grey Ware and Rangmahal (3,000 to 2,600 YBP) cultures. The settlements of serial numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4 fall under the Chalcolithic Age, the settlements of number 5 belong to the Iron Age. The end of the Harappan Civilization was around 3,900 YBP; this was the time when the inhabitants of the Saraswati River Basin migrated to other areas.
Till date, we have been told and taught that the Harappa or Indus River Civilization was the largest civilization that flourished in the remote past in the NW part of undivided India, that is in the present-day states of Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, and the western part of Gujarat, India, and Punjab and Sindh provinces of present-day Pakistan.
The author failed to find a resolution to the queries on this subject in all published books, journals and papers, some of them being: 1) Which was the river(s) that changed the barren Precambrian land in NW part of India into a fertile alluvial plain; and whether it was a glacier-fed or monsoon-fed river, its source of origin, flow direction, width, length and height? 2) From where did early humans move to the Saraswati River Basin; and where did they originate when it came to chemical to biological life? 3) Were they Indo-Aryans who moved to South Asia, or a native race? 4) Should this civilization be called Harappan or Indus River Civilization or 'Saraswati River Civilization' after the recent detailed scientific findings on either banks of the river Saraswati, based on i) Geology, ii) Geography, iii) Satellite imagery, iv) Geomorphology, v) Fossil water, vi) Palynology and vii) Archaeology? At present, there is no mention of the civilization that flourished along the course of the Saraswati River, right from Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, the western part of Gujarat, India, and the Punjab and Sindh provinces of Pakistan.
Thus, the author is making an attempt to answer all the above questions in this book based on a scientific model.
The author's investigations have revealed a great river-the present-day Yamuna River, which originates from the Banderpoonch glacier in the Yamunotri area of Uttarkashi district, Uttarakhand and flowed (named as Saraswati River) as lake/basin/sea/ocean between about 30,000 YBP and 8,500 YBP, in the area of what is now Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, the western part of Gujarat, India, Punjab and Sindh provinces of Pakistan and finally to the Arabian Sea. This river converted a depression aligned in N 65° E-S 65° W and having extensive length, breadth, and depth (more than 400m), into a fertile alluvial plain in the above areas. It has been investigated that the Saraswati River was about 60 to 89 metres wide just downstream of its palaeomouth in the rocks of the Upper Proterozoic (the sediments deposited are from the Upper Cretaceous-Palaeocene to Upper Pleistocene to Holocene) near Dakpathar, Dehradun district, Uttarakhand; about 10 to 12km wide just south of Patiyala; about 50 to 55km wide in the areas of Kalibangan, Suratgarh and Anupgarh; about 55 to 60km wide in the area west of Bikaner; about 60 to 70km wide in the area of Cholistan; about 70 to 90km wide in the area of Jaisalmer, and about 90 to 140km wide in the area of Mohenjodaro in Pakistan.
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