daro, Harappa and other towns imply a large consumption of fuel for firing, and that certainly meant timber. Wood was also used extensively in Harappan buildings. Extensive felling of forests can alter a climate by reducing rainfall and encouraging soil erosion. It has happened in other parts of the world, and may have happened in the Indus Valley.

These at the moment can only be speculations, but it is certain, from an examination of the upper levels of Harappan cities, that in later years there was deterioration. The older, larger buildings were cut up into smaller rooms by partitions;' the wide streets were encroached upon, lanes were choked with mean dwellings; clear evidence of political and economic decay. Yet the final blow which felled the tottering structure undoubtedly came from without. Dramatic evidence -of armed attack was found at Mohenjo-daro and elsewhere.

In one room at Mohenjo-daro the excavators came upon the skeletons of thirteen women with a child, some wearing bracelets, beads and rings, in attitudes suggesting sudden death. One of the skulls had a sword-cut, and another showed signs of violence. Elsewhere in the city nine skeletons lay in strangely contorted attitudes in a shallow pit with two elephant tusks. It has been suggested that they are the remains of a family, possibly of ivory-workers, who in attempting to escape had been cut down by the attackers. The raiders may have looted the bodies but left the tusks, which would be of no value to them. One of the public "well-rooms" disclosed a scene of grim tragedy. "On the stairs were the skeletons of two persons, evidently lying where they died in a vain endeavour to use their last remaining strength to climb the stairs to the street. Remains of a third and fourth body were found closed outside. There seems no doubt that these people were murdered." In other parts of the town skeletons had been buried in tumbled heaps, without the funerary equipment which would have accompanied them had they been formally buried. In other places the bodies had been left where they lay.

In the light of such evidence, which appears to date from about the middle of the second millennium-the traditional date of the Aryan invasion-there seems little doubt of the identity of the attackers. "Indra," as Sir Mortimer Wheeler comments, "stands accused."

The founders of Hindu civilization brought with them the cultural traditions, of their Aryan homeland, but, even from the few examples of Harappan art which have been found to date, there seems no doubt that the elements of the civilization of the conquered were absorbed by the conquerors, though some were ignored, e.g. Harappan sanitary engineering. Eventually a time came when even the