Pre-history: homo sapiens

Let’s jump a few thousand years and get to around 400,000 to 200,000 years before our time. This is when early homo sapiens (a variety known as Neanderthals…because of where their fossils were found, in Neander valley caves in Germany) eventually evolved in Africa as sons of homo erectus with bigger brains. With this bigger and more industrious brain and previous know-how of path to north-eastern Africa, they traveled away from harsher central African climate. First, they settled in north-east Africa of present day Ethiopia, Somalia, Aritrea and Djibouti. And, from there, using their now mastered skills of rafting crossed Red Sea to land on the coasts of Near East in Yemen. Straits of Red Sea separating Africa and Asia, known as Gate of Grief, is only 20 kms wide right now. 70,000 years ago when this historical event happened, lot of water was still trapped in snow from the Great Ice Age. So, the Gate of Grief could’ve been even narrower than 20 kms. Once this pass was established, humans (and, from now on I’m going to use this term exclusively for homo sapiens), traveled fast and happy along the coasts of Arabia and Persia to enter India around 50,000 years ago.

Humans were happy to arrive in India because they found abundance of water, flora, fauna and wildlife to sustain. Entering India from Iran and Pakistan into Gujarat, humans stayed west of Sindhu river and populated west coasts first, before finally crossing over to east side and spread northward reaching delta region Ganga-Brahmaputra in West Bengal. From there, they spread further into south-east Asia till they reached Australia around 46,000 years ago. During this period mainland Asia was still connected to islands off of coast of south-east Asia. And so was, New Guinea and Australia by narrow straits of land. By 40,000 years ago humans have formed camps in Europe, China and Japan. Americas were populated at the end.

By this time (30,000 to 24,000 years ago), Neanderthals became extinct from their last colonies in Iberian peninsula (modern day Spain and Portugal) from increasing population pressure of modern humans (homo sapien sapien).

Pre-history: Birth of Sindhu, Ganga and Brahmaputra

Large quantities of water trapped between Himalayan ranges during its formation, lead to great glacier and river system. It is estimated that some 15000+ glaciers store about 12000 cubic km of water in them. These glaciers gave birth to lot of the rivers on the eastern and western side of the India.

Major rivers on the western side – Beas, Chenab, Jhelum, Ravi and Sutlej – feed into Sindhu/Indus river that flows south-west to modern day Pakistan to the Arabian sea.

On the eastern side, Ganga and Brahmaputra are the biggest ones meeting in Bangladesh before draining into Bay of Bengal thru the world’s largest river delta system.

Sindhu and Ganga river systems provided backdrop for organic life forms that relied heavily on water for their sustenance. This includes all human and their humanoid predecessors. Over 50,000 years of human presence and history on the Indian subcontinent that we will attempt to understand here is, on a large part, a gift of these two river systems.

Formation of Indian subcontinent thru tectonic activities may not be a revered event in the eyes of Aryans who later inhabit this land and lay foundation of Vedic religion. But, they definitely understood the importance of the Himalayas and the river systems conferred upon them by the great mountains. And, for this reason, mountains and rivers were deified by Aryans. Maybe, we should start doing the same now. Consider this: the glacier systems in Himalayan ranges are retreating as a result of climate change. This means, the water deposits we have in those glaciers are getting drained at a faster rate. If this continues, then as per UN climate report, by the year 2035 all major river systems in India would disappear. This will happen in two phases – first, the melting of all glaciers in a dramatic fashion….flooding India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and Myanmar. And, then there will be a drought. A long one. A very long one.

So, maybe it’s time once again to treat Himalaya, Sindhu and Ganga as deities and try to make them “happy”.