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The earliest settlement in the subcontinent with evidence of agriculture and domestication at Mehrgarh — now in Pakistan — is about 9,000 years old. This coincides with the peak intensification of the monsoon, the study said... The Arabian Sea sediments and other geological studies show that the monsoon began to weaken about 5,000 years ago. The dry spell, lasting several hundred years, might have led people to abandon the Indus cities and move eastward into the Gangetic plain, which has been an area of higher rainfall than the northwestern part of the subcontinent... About 1,700 years ago, the monsoon began...

A department spokesman termed the find, discovered at Farmana Khas, about 12 kilometers from Meham on Julana Road, as very significant. He said till now urban settlements of the civilisation -- Banawali, Bhirdana and Rakhigarhi -- had come to light in the state, but this was the first discovery of the ruins of a city. He said the site of the discovery, popularly known as Daksh Khera, was spread over 32 acres and the ruins were under a three-metre high hillock.

The legend of the mighty Saraswati river has lived on in India since time immemorial. Ancient Hindu scriptures called the Vedas, recorded thousands of years ago, are full of tantalising hymns about it being the life-stream of the people. In a new radio programme, Madhur Jaffrey recounts the legend of the Saraswati river - and explores startling new evidence that it may not have been a myth after all. Vast and awesome, the Saraswati's holy waters are supposed to have flowed from the Himalayas into the sea, nourishing the land along the way. But as the centuries passed and no...