Nearly 260 sites are now considered as belonging to the Indus or Harappan civilization. There are other sites termed pre-Harappan and late-'Harappan and all the three total to 1000. The Harappan sites have the same date of destruction, Scholars were at a loss to understand why all these sites spread over a vast area were destroyed at the same time. Excavations have revealed that these sites were destroyed by natural calamities. What the calamities were nobody knows. The Indus river, after which these sites were named still flows ; perhaps pointing out that it has nothing to do with the destruction of these sites. Of the 260 sites, only about 20 are to the west of the Indus and the rest are on the eastern side. Any culture named after a river will thrive on both the banks of the river. in the beginning, when only Mohenjodaro and Harappa were known, the scholars might have named the civilization after the river Indus because of its proximity to these sites. But now scholars are doubting about the nomenclature. When we look at the dried bed of the river Sarasvati as pictured by the Landsat imagery, the sites which were supposed to be part of Indus civilization, would be on either of the banks of the river Sarasvati. Hence Indus civilization has to be renamed as Sarasvati civilization. Dr. B. B. Lal, Dr. S. P. Gupta and Dr. Shashi Asthana in their article 'Indus Sites', say, "The Indus civilization was the culmination of a long process of cultural configuration that was going on through several millennia in the geographical tract between the hills of Baluchistan and the Ghaggar basin. The culmination or the change from the early Harappan to Harappan seems to have taken place in the Sarasvati basin. The distribution map of Harappan sites shows quite clearly the concentration of Indus sites with early Harappan material overlaid with mature Harappan in the basin of Sarasvati and its tributaries". It is for this reason, that Dr. S. P. Gupta suggests that instead of persisting with the older title, Indus civilization, we might as well call it Sarasvati civilization.

Ghosh and Hussain of the Central Arid Zone Research Institute, Jodhpur have discovered a number of beds of Sarasvati river in which one is of ocean going Sarasvati. Other beds they have dated 1800 BC and the ocean going Sarasvati bed is thousands of years earlier than those, according to them.

The Sarasvati civilization had flourished for thousands of years over a vast area and abundant waters of the river, were helping the civilization in every way. But the drying up of the river, which was a natural calamity, forced the sites to be vacated.

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