A report on Pakistan, South Asia and Indus River

The Indus Valley civilisation (IVC), also known as the Harappan civilisation or Indus civilisation, and described as ancient Indus, was a Bronze Age civilisation in the northwestern regions of South Asia, lasting from 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE, and in its mature form from 2600 BCE to 1900 BCE.

Its sites spanned an area from northeast Afghanistan and much of Pakistan to western and northwestern India.

The civilisation flourished both in the alluvial plain of the Indus River, which flows through the length of Pakistan, and along a system of perennial monsoon-fed rivers that once coursed in the vicinity of the Ghaggar-Hakra, a seasonal river in northwest India and eastern Pakistan.

– "India (Republic of India; Bharat Ganarajya)" is a country in South Asia.

Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast, it shares land borders with Pakistan to the west; China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the north; and Bangladesh and Myanmar to the east.

Settled life emerged on the subcontinent in the western margins of the Indus river basin 9,000 years ago, evolving gradually into the Indus Valley civilisation of the third millennium BCE.

Punjab (ਪੰਜਾਬ; ; ; also romanised as Panjāb or Panj-Āb) is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, comprising areas of eastern Pakistan and northwestern India.

In the 16th century Mughal Empire it referred to a relatively smaller area between the Indus and the Sutlej rivers.

Sindh (سنڌ;, ; historically romanized as Sind) is one of the four provinces of Pakistan.

Sindh's landscape consists mostly of alluvial plains flanking the Indus River, the Thar Desert in the eastern portion of the province along the international border with India, and the Kirthar Mountains in the western portion of the province.

In 712, Muhammad bin Qasim conquered the Sindh and Indus Valley, bringing South Asian societies into contact with Islam.

The Iranian plateau or Persian plateau is a geological feature in Western Asia, Central Asia, and South Asia.

From the Caspian in the northwest to Balochistan in the southeast, the Iranian plateau extends for close to 2000 km. It encompasses a large part of Iran, all of Afghanistan, and the parts of Pakistan that are situated west of the Indus River; covering an area of some 3700000 km2.

Geopolitically, it includes the countries of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.

The terms Indian subcontinent and South Asia are often used interchangeably to denote the region, although the geopolitical term of South Asia frequently includes Afghanistan, which may otherwise be classified as Central Asian.

The Himalayas (from Brahmaputra River in the east to Indus River in the west), Karakoram (from Indus River in the east to Yarkand River in the west) and the Hindu Kush mountains (from Yarkand River westwards) form its northern boundary.

The Hindu Kush is an 800 km mountain range in Central and South Asia to the west of the Himalayas.

It stretches from central and western Afghanistan into northwestern Pakistan and far southeastern Tajikistan.

It divides the valley of the Amu Darya (the ancient Oxus) to the north from the Indus River valley to the south.

It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmenistan to the north, by Afghanistan and Pakistan to the east, and by the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf to the south.

Later conquests under Cyrus and his successors expanded the empire to include Lydia, Babylon, Egypt, parts of the Balkans and Eastern Europe proper, as well as the lands to the west of the Indus and Oxus rivers.

Owing to its geopolitical position, Iran has influenced cultures as far as Greece and Italy to the west, Russia to the north, the Arabian Peninsula to the south, and south and east Asia to the east.