Indus

This article presents evidence of a system of symbolic markings, which developed in Dilmun between c.1950 and 1500 BC. The symbols predominantly appear on pottery, tokens and seals and may originally have been inspired by similar systems in the post-Indus script period of the Harappan culture. There was a development over time from single symbols on pottery and tokens to more complex sequences on seals that ultimately formed irregular logograms. The system was developed as a means of communication in an illiterate society. Based on the shape of the symbols and related evidence it is argued that they all represent variations on the theme of palm branches, palm trees and altars and that they are connected to the cult of Inzak. From the contexts in which the symbols appear it is demonstrated that the symbols were exclusive to Dilmun's royal house and temple institutions.

The title of this paper has been loaned from Cameron Stracher’s 2011 dystopian novel The Water Wars that depict struggle of Will and his sister, Vera in a country collapsed from the environmental cataclysm. The authorities hoard water, dam rivers, and even exploit clouds as rivers and lakes dry up, glaciers vanish and polar caps melt. Water is more valued than gold or oil and is now in the hands of the powerful few. Only the mysterious Kai (Vera’s friend) knows of a river that exists but is being kept undisclosed by the government. When Kai disappears suddenly, Vera and her brother launch a search of him - between risks of paramilitary groups and gluttonous corporations - and learn the truth about the global water scarcity.

In slightly different way the story has been playing up in Kashmir since 1947 when the erstwhile British India was divided into Pakistan on August 14 and India, a day later. With the division of huge land mass and population, six major rivers flowing down to Pakistan (Western rivers) and India (Eastern rivers) from disputed Kashmir became a bone of contention amidst deadly fighting between the armies of the new born nations. The wars thawed but the dispute over waters remained unresolved until 1960 when both countries agreed to sign a World Bank-brokered treaty - The Indus Water Treaty 1960 or IWT. The treaty could not, however, make considerations for all the river-relevant changes that the future was to produce to the region. Today Pakistan and India are locked in bitter water conflicts. Though diplomatic efforts have prevented a major escalation, both countries are entangled in legal battles as more dams and power projects come up in Kashmir. Inside the Kashmir valley too, politician and civil societies of all hues have been demanding a review of IWT, a treaty they argue, has been detrimental to the disputed region’s economy.

Pakistan and India are dangerously energy and water-starved and nowhere close to an agreement on disputed Kashmir but the impact of climate change and population pressures are teamed offering a forecast on the Indo-Pak water problem that is anything but encouraging.

Predictions that the next major war - fifth since 1947 - will be over water are common. But is such a scenario realistic? Could both the countries amicably solve their water disputes? This paper seeks to analyse the Indus water basin, examines the India-Pakistan water disputes and attempts to offer possible solutions.

Note - Excerpt of this paper was produced in The Diplomat
http://thediplomat.com/2016/06/kashmir-a-water-war-in-the-making/

This study focuses on the nature of interactions and trade between the greater Indus Valley and eastern Arabia during the third millennium BC. The role of Indus trade in eastern Arabia has often been discussed in the general picture of local cultural and economic developments during the Bronze Age, but the organization and mechanism of this important phenomenon are not yet precisely decoded. New evidence from the stone tower ST1 excavated at Salūt, Sultanate of Oman, by the Italian Mission to Oman in collaboration with the Office of the Adviser to His Majesty the Sultan for Cultural Affairs, provided solid information for proposing updated models of transcultural economic interaction. The collection of Indus and Indus-related artefacts from ST1 testifies to an early integration of sites located in the interior of central Oman, within the network of long-distance connections that directly linked the Indus regions with the western shores of the Arabian Sea. The presence of a wide rang...

The aim of this study is to develop mathematical model for Weibull deterioration of items in inventory in declining market when the supplier offers his retailers a credit period to settle the accounts against the dues. The computational steps are explored for a retailer to determine the optimal purchase units which minimize the total inventory cost per time unit. The

Historical and future projected changes in climatic patterns over the largest irrigated basin in the world, the Indus River Basin (IRB), threaten agricultural production and food security in Pakistan, in particular for vulnerable farming communities. To build a more detailed understanding of the impacts of climate change on agriculture s in the IRB, the present study analyzes (1) observed trends in average temperature, precipitation and related extreme indicators, as well as seasonal shifts over a recent historical period (1997–2016); and (2) statistically downscaled future projections (up to 2100) from a set of climate models in conjunction with crop-specific information for the four main crops of the IRB: wheat, cotton, rice and sugarcane. Key findings show an increasing trend of about over 0.1 °C/year in observed minimum temperature across the study area over the historical period, but no significant trend in maximum temperature. Historical precipitation shows a positive annual i...

Jonathan Mark Kenoyer has a long history of work with the ceramic vessels of the Indus Civilization and co-authored the most comprehensive assessments of the pottery from Mohenjo-daro yet attempted (Dales and Kenoyer 1986). For archaeologists, pottery is one of the most significant sources of data, not only for the durability and abundance of ceramic artefacts in the archaeological record, but also for the vast range of information on ancient societies that can be inferred from its study. Amongst various approaches to ceramic analysis, two main methods have dominated the field: the morphological approach, where pottery assemblages are grouped according to macroscopic attributes; and scientific analysis, where ceramics are understood in terms of composition and technologies. Even though the latter approach has been tentatively used in the study of ceramic industries in South Asia since the 1930s, it has become significant only in the past three decades. This contribution reviews the use and development of geochemical and petrographic methods for the study of South Asian ceramic traditions, with special emphasis on assemblages produced and used during the Urban and Post-Urban phases of the Indus Civilization (2500-1600 BC).

This paper explores the historical inundation of the city of Dera Ghazi Kkan (Punjab, Pakistan) in 1909. The rich documentation about this episode available—including historic news reports, books and maps—is used to reconstruct the historical dynamics between an urban settlement and the river morphodynamics in the Indus alluvial plain. Map and document-based historical regressive analysis is complemented with the examination of images obtained through different Remote Sensing techniques, including the use of new algorithms specifically developed for the study of topography and seasonal water availability which make possible to assess long-term changes in the Indus River basin. This case of study provides an opportunity to examine: (1) how historical hydrological dynamics are reflected in RS produced images; (2) the implications of river morphodynamics in the interpretation of settlement patterning; and (3) the documented socio-political responses to such geomorphological change. The...

Climate is one of the principal controls setting rates of continental erosion. Here we present the results of a provenance analysis of Holocene sediments from the Indus delta in order to assess climatic controls on erosion over millennial time scales. Bulk sediment Nd isotope analysis reveals a number of changes during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene (at 14–20, 11–12 and 8–9 ka) away from erosion of the Karakoram and toward more sediment flux from the Himalaya. Radiometric Ar-Ar dating of muscovite and U-Pb ...

The aim of this study is to develop mathematical model for Weibull deterioration of items in inventory in declining market when the supplier offers his retailers a credit period to settle the accounts against the dues. The computational steps are explored for a retailer to determine the optimal purchase units which minimize the total inventory cost per time unit. The

This review evaluates Minoan and Indus Valley hydro-technologies in southeastern Greece and Indus Valley Pakistan, respectively. The Minoan civilization first inhabited Crete and several Aegean islands shortly after the Late Neolithic times and flourished during the Bronze Age (ca 3200–1100 BC). At that time, the Minoan civilization developed fundamental technologies and reached its pinnacle as the first and most important European culture. Concurrently, the Indus Valley civilization populated the eastern bank of the Indus River, its tributaries in Pakistan, and the Ganges plains in India and Nadia (Bangladesh), spreading over an area of about one million km2. Its total population was unknown; however, an estimated 43,000 people resided at Harappa. The urban hydro-technologies, characteristics of a civilization can be determined by two specific aspects, the natural and the social environment. These two aspects cover a variety of factors, such as climate and social conditions, type o...

Rivers play an essential role to humans and ecosystems, but they also burst their banks during floods, often causing extensive damage to crop, property, and loss of lives. This paper characterizes the 2014 flood of the Indus River in Pakistan using the US Army Corps of Engineers Hydrologic Engineering Centre River Analysis System (HEC-RAS) model, integrated into a geographic information system (GIS) and satellite images from Landsat-8. The model is used to estimate the spatial extent of the flood and assess the damage that it caused by examining changes to the different land-use/land-cover (LULC) types of the river basin. Extreme flows for different return periods were estimated using a flood frequency analysis using a log-Pearson III distribution, which the Kolmogorov–Smirnov (KS) test identified as the best distribution to characterize the flow regime of the Indus River at Taunsa Barrage. The output of the flood frequency analysis was then incorporated into the HEC-RAS model to de...

Although no historical information exists about the Indus civilization (flourished ca . 2600–1900 B.C.), archaeologists have uncovered about 3,800 short samples of a script that was used throughout the civilization. The script remains undeciphered, despite a large number of attempts and claimed decipherments over the past 80 years. Here, we propose the use of probabilistic models to analyze the structure of the Indus script. The goal is to reveal, through probabilistic analysis, syntactic patterns that could point the way to eventual decipherment. We illustrate the approach using a simple Markov chain model to capture sequential dependencies between signs in the Indus script. The trained model allows new sample texts to be generated, revealing recurring patterns of signs that could potentially form functional subunits of a possible underlying language. The model also provides a quantitative way of testing whether a particular string belongs to the putative language as captured by th...

Mn, Cr and Cu K X-ray absorption edges were measured in various compounds containing Mn in Mn, Mn and Mn oxidation states, Cr in Cr and Cr oxidation state and Cu in 2+ states in different compounds. Few compounds are having tetrahedral coordination in the 1 shell surrounding the cation while others are having octahedral coordination. The measurements have been carried out at the energy dispersive EXAFS beamline at INDUS-2 Synchrotron radiation source at RRCAT, Indore. Energy shifts of ~ 8-16 eV were observed for Mn K edge in the Mn-compounds while a shift of 13-20 eV were observed for Cr K edge in Cr-compounds compared to their values in elemental Mn and Cr respectively. Cu showed an energy shift of 4-7 ev compared to the elemental Cu. The different chemical shifts observed for the compounds having the same oxidation state of the cation but different anions or ligands show the effect of different chemical environments surrounding the cations in determining their X-ray absorption edg...

Mn, Cr and Cu K X-ray absorption edges were measured in various compounds containing Mn in Mn 2+ , Mn 3+ and Mn 4+ oxidation states, Cr in Cr 3+ and Cr 6+ oxidation state and Cu in 2+ states in different compounds. Few compounds are having tetrahedral coordination in the 1 st shell surrounding the cation while others are having octahedral coordination. The measurements have been carried out at the energy dispersive EXAFS beamline at INDUS-2 Synchrotron radiation source at RRCAT, Indore. Energy shifts of ~ 8-16 eV were observed for Mn K edge in the Mn-compounds while a shift of 13-20 eV were observed for Cr K edge in Cr-compounds compared to their values in elemental Mn and Cr respectively. Cu showed an energy shift of 4-7 ev compared to the elemental Cu. The different chemical shifts observed for the compounds having the same oxidation state of the cation but different anions or ligands show the effect of different chemical environments surrounding the cations in determining their X-ray absorption edges in the above compounds. The above chemical effect has been quantitatively described by determining the effective charges on Mn, Cr and Cu cations in the above compounds.