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Excerpts

Land area of the Indus Valley Civilization

By about the middle of the 3d millenium BC
   Indus VC : 1.1 K x 1.1K  =		    1.2 m km²
   Babylonian : Tigris / Euphrates valley : 65K sqkm
   Egyptian: 				    34.5K

Nearly twenty time area of Egypt, and over a dozen times the settled area of
Egypt and Mesopotamia combined.

cultivated valley of the Nile: 34,440 km2 (Kees:1961:17)
alluvium between Tigris and Euphrates: 65km2

    By contrast, the Indus civilization extended roughly 1,100 km north to
    south and east to west, covering an area of around 1,210,000 square km.
    This is nearly twenty times the area of Egypt, and over a dozen times the
    settled area of Egypt and Mesopotamia combined.

To get some feel for the distances involved, Harappa, located by the south
bank of the River Ravi, an Indus tributary, is some 625 km from the other
major centre, Mohenjo-daro on the lower Indus (and it is some 500 km from
Delhi, around 859 km from Karachi).  Harappa to Ganweriwala is 280 km,
Ganweriwala to Mohenjo-daro 308 km.  By comparison, virtually the whole
length of the settled Mesopatamian alluvium is spanned by a straight line of
440 km, drawn from Eridu northward through Uruk, Isin and Kish to Samarra.
At Baghdad the Tigris and Euphrates are only 35 km apart, while the longest
transect between the rivers... amounts to only 240km, much of which in the
east is or was marsh. p. 186

[Goes on to compare the Harappan civilization with the Mesopotamian, in some
detail.  The difference lies in the sheer number of Mespotamian cities, which
on the southern alluvium could even be in sight of one another, in turn
reflecting fundamental differences in the relationships between centres and
hinterland.  The consequence is a different level and type of urbanization,
as between Sumer and Harappa, with nearly double the percentage (78%) of the
Sumerian population living in settlements above 40 hectares as the Harappan
(44%).  ... The contrasts have been well made by Ratnagar's comparison of
fifty Mature Harappan sites with fifty-six Early Dynastic II-III site areas
surveyed by Adams (1981).

[Table 4.1:
Number and size of Harappan cities compared with those of broadly
contemporary Sumer] p. 188

Sumer was a society of city-states whose populations had a strong
civic consciousness.
Harappan society consisted of an extensive oecumene or commonwealth, with a
largely village-based population which the cities helped to integrate
economically and culturally.

Not along Indus river, but the Ghaggar-Hakra-

Of the 1,399 sites presently known (917 in India, 481 in Pakistan, 1 in
Afghanistan: Misra 1994:512), only 44 sites are actually on or near the river
Indus.  However, around 1,000 lie along the course(s) of the Ghaggar-Hakra
river|Ghaggar-Hakra / Saraswati river  in Cholistan and, most
importantly, those include the Hakra-ware sites, the earliest of the
pre-Early Harappan wares.  Hakra wares are the core ceramics on the core
sites of Harappan origin, "marking the oldest or earliest human habitation in
Cholistan, which could hav begun sometime during the first half of the fourth
millennium BC (Mughal 1992a:106).

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