Topic summary
Sarasvati River
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Saraswati River.
Pre-Holocene diversion of the Sutlej and Yamuna
According to Chaudhri et al. (2021) "the Sarasvati River used to flow from the glaciated peaks of the Himalaya to the Arabian sea," and an "enormous amount of water was flowing through this channel network until BCE 11,147." This study suggests that the Saraswati was initially glacier-fed, weakened as glaciers shrank after 4000 BCE, relied mostly on rain until around 2000 years ago, and fully dried up by 1402 CE.