Hanumangarh Kalibangan Indus Valley Wheat Canal Colony

Hanumangarh district in northern Rajasthan contains Kalibangan — a major Indus Valley Civilization site (2600-1900 BCE) on the now-dry Ghaggar river where archaeologists found the world's earliest evidence of a ploughed field, fire altars, and a pre-Harappan settlement with mud-brick structures. The Ghaggar-Hakra river (the ancient Sarasvati?) flowed through the district before it was captured by the Indus and Yamuna systems, and the Kalibangan site provides the clearest evidence of the civilisation's northernmost extent. Hanumangarh district today is part of the Indira Gandhi Canal command area that has transformed north Rajasthan's desert into productive wheat, mustard, and cotton farmland since the 1980s.