Re: Sarasvati River

To those who looked up references about the Sarasvati and had trouble
wading through the mystical-religious matter, the route of the
Sarasvati seems to have been thus. Its last two known headwaters were
the Sutlej and the upper Jumna alias Yamuna. The upper Jumna did not
flow into the Ganges as now, but turned west across the north of what
is now Haryana state. Further west, a dry desert river bed now called
the Ghaggar is part of its course. After that, the Sutlej joined it.
It flowed southwest through what is now Pakistan parallel to and east
of the Indus. The Rann of Kutch is the remains of its delta. In very
ancient times more of the Indus's present headwaters may have flowed
into the Sarasvati instead. It would have built its flood plain up so
much down the millennia with silt eroded out of the Himalayas and
western Tibet that it would have raised its flood plain level so much
that in the end its headwaters one by one found other courses that
reached lower ground quicker. That is why rivers on aggrading flood
plains shift about. Many of the Indus Valley Civilization sites are
along its course and likely communicated with boats sailing along it.
About 1500 BC its last mountain headwaters diverted to the Indus or
Ganges, and the Sarasvati dried and died, and along with it the
settements along its route, and that would have affected the history
of the area and perhaps thus the linguistics also. The upper Jumna now
flows into the lower Jumna, which flows the Ganges at Allahabad alias
Prayag, and that is why Hindus say that "the invisible river Sarasvati
flows into the Ganges there also".

I read once that in India valley Civilization deposits archaeologists
found some gambling dices which had on their faces pictures of things
whose names resemble the numbers 1 2 3 4 5 6 in Dravidian.