Harrappan Civilisation

To begin, we can easily understand what ultimately made for the general flourishing of production and trade. First, the area offered rich soils and the possibility of a means of farming that involved nothing in the way of complex irrigation structures. Summer monsoonal flooding gave direct sustenance to crops such as sesame, cotton, and dates, and through its impact on the water content of the soil (Allchin and Allchin 1968, 260) also assisted the production of wheat and barley, which was bountiful especially in the north owing to winter rains from the west. Second, the mountains to the north and west permitted herders to shuttle from plains to high pastures and back again between harvest seasons. Third, the whole area offered numerous points of immediate access to a great variety of raw materials. Southern locations had access to the copper of Baluchistan, and northern ones not only to highlands Afghan copper (the quality of copper ore varies regionally), but also to the gold, silver, and tin of southern Afghanistan. Regional variations in access to precious stones, sandstone, types of timber, and different marine resources existed as well.

the onset of vigorous interregional trade long preceded any possibility of growing cycles of violence and the emergence of increasingly skilled and wellorganized specialists in war. Therefore, elites had little chance, barring external influences, of ever emerging with the particular skills and capital resources that would permit and eventually entice them to engage in the business of large-scale cross-societal and intrasocietal theft..