  The Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) was one of the first great civilizations
in prehistory. This bronze age civilization flourished from the end of the
fourth millennium BC. It disintegrated during the second millennium BC; despite
much research effort, this decline is not well understood. Less research has
been devoted to the emergence of the IVC, which shows continuous cultural
precursors since at least the seventh millennium BC. To understand the decline,
we believe it is necessary to investigate the rise of the IVC, i.e., the
establishment of agriculture and livestock, dense populations and technological
developments 7000--3000 BC. Although much archaeological information is
available, our capability to investigate the system is hindered by poorly
resolved chronology, and by a lack of field work in the intermediate areas
between the Indus valley and Mesopotamia. We thus employ a complementary
numerical simulation to develop a consistent picture of technology,
agropastoralism and population developments in the IVC domain. Results from
this Global Land Use and technological Evolution Simulator show that there is
(1) fair agreement between the simulated timing of the agricultural transition
and radiocarbon dates from early agricultural sites, but the transition is
simulated first in India then Pakistan; (2) an independent agropastoralism
developing on the Indian subcontinent; and (3) a positive relationship between
archeological artifact richness and simulated population density which remains
to be quantified.
