The kings of Itihāsas Were were the Late Harappans.🔥
Most textbooks create an invisible wall:
Harappan Civilization (2600–1900 BCE) 》 "Collapse" 》 Vedic Age 》Ramayana & Mahābhārata.
But there was no "collapse"!
Archaeology tells a different story.
The drying of the Sarasvatī around the 4.2 kyr climatic event (~2200 BCE) did not erase civilization.
People moved.
The same lineages remembered in Indian tradition preserve this migration:
Kuru > Pradīpa > Śantanu
Kuru ruled in the Sarasvatī region.
Pradīpa shifted toward the Yamunā.
Śantanu established power on the Gaṅgā at Hastināpura.
Similarly:
Sagara > Aṃśumat > Bhagīratha
Sagara belonged to the Sarasvatī world.
Aṃśumat settled on the Yamunā (Amsumati)
Bhagīratha became associated with the Gaṅgā (Bhagirathi)
There is no collapse here!
This is a story of migration and continuity.
The civilization did not disappear.
It moved east.
The Gaṅgā civilization was not born from nowhere. It emerged from the transformation of the Sarasvatī civilization.
The heroes of the Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata were the descendants of the very people archaeologists call the Eary & Mature Harappans which we know as the Rgvedic People!
Sarasvati Sindhu civilization did not collapse.
It simply changed rivers.
Sarasvatī > Yamunā > Gaṅgā > Gomati > Sarayu > Gandaki > Sadanira > Kaushiki
A migration remembered simultaneously by archaeology, geography, Rgveda and Itihāsa.
The real mystery of the Indus Civilization is not where it disappeared, but where it went?