Three issues emerge from a study of the ancient landscape of the Ganga valley. First, the Ganga plain, from the time when pioneer settlers first occupied it, has been integrally linked with the zones that fringe it, from the Rajasthan plain to the Chhotanagpur plateau. While the cultural ramifications of those links become much sharper during the historical period, this was an expansion of the preexisting connections that were established during the protohistoric phase. Second, in terms of agricultural geography and settlement archaeology, a secure village base across the Ganga plain was created by Neolithic-Chalcolithic farmers. In several instances, the crops that continued to be cultivated in the various areas till recently, were first farmed by third-second millennia BC cultivators.
Figure 5 Gupta period sculptures on the Jahangira rock in the middle of the Ganga river.
Figure 6 Distribution map of urban sites in the lower Ganga plains, especially around the old channel of the Ganga river.
The nucleated village form is also a legacy of that phase, with continuous occupation at a large number of settlements which were first occupied by these advanced agriculturists. This does not mean that the successors of the people who first inhabited these spots continued to live there for centuries on end. All that it means is that new groups of people came and settled in the very areas, and frequently at the same sites, where farmers had first established their villages in the third and second millennia BC. Finally, political authority has location. The cartography of the political landscape of ancient India reveals the centrality of the middle Ganga plain in the process of early state formation. Eventually, political unification and the first subcontinental empire of India also came to be based in the Magadha section of that tract.
See also: Asia, South: Baluchistan and the Borderlands; Buddhist Archaeology; india, Deccan and Central Plateau; india, Paleolithic Cultures of the South; indus Civilization; Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier; Megaliths; Neolithic Cultures; Paleolithic Cultures; Sri Lanka.
World History
