The Rann did not always present so harsh a picture. Some 5,000 years ago it boasted a city created by a highly centralized and technologically evolved civilization, later to be named Harappa, that spread across an area larger than western Europe, dwarfing its Bronze Age contemporaries in Egypt and Mesopotamia. This well-planned, thriving city was Dholavira, an oasis carved by its first residents out of the Rann's wastes on Khadir Bet, a low plateau surrounded by water during monsoon rains. Recent digging by Indian archaeologists at the site has uncovered an extensive and remarkably sophisticated water supply system that included finely chiseled reservoirs, wells and rainwater tanks. A third of the city's 50 hectares was devoted to the collection and distribution of fresh water. "In its heyday," says R.S. Bisht, director of excavations at the Archaeological Survey of India (asi), "the whole of Dholavira may have looked like a lake city."

Kutch hasn't seen anything like it since. Working with bronze, copper or stone tools, isolated hundreds of kilometers southeast of the Indus Valley's major cities, Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, both now in Pakistan, the people of Dholavira managed the desert more effectively and elegantly than later inhabitants. A volume put out by New Delhi's Center for Science and Environment holds up Dholavira as a model for today in addressing the region's chronic water shortage.

At its height, Harappan civilization stretched from the borderlands of Baluchistan in the west to what is now New Delhi in the east. It was India's first major civilization and the world's third, after Mesopotamia and pharaonic Egypt. Not much is known about the Harappan people --their origins, beliefs, social relationships. But their cities and their artifacts suggest the existence of a common culture based on elaborate social and economic organization. Only recently have experts begun to recognize the extent and impact of the innovations Harappans left behind. "Earlier we thought the culture lacked dynamism," says Jagat Pati Joshi, the former asi director-general who discovered Dholavira in the mid-1960s. "Now, at the end of the century, we are finding a lot of regional variations which indicate a complex and fascinating civilization."

The first great finds--Harappa in 1921 and Mohenjo-daro a year later--brought to light a society impressive for its uniformity. In each city, a raised "palace" area was set off from a rectilinear "middle town" and from less well-developed residences even farther out. Streets were not only drawn on a north-south grid, but were of fixed width--around 9 m for the main thoroughfares, 1.5 m and 3 m for the lanes on which most houses opened. The dimensions of the fired bricks used in palaces, houses and the revetments of heavy fortifications--nearly 14 m wide at their base in Harappa--followed a strict geometric ratio, 1x2x4.

Archaeologists first named this civilization after the great Indus River, in whose valley the two sites were located, 650 km apart. Among the ruins, they found evidence of a flourishing maritime trade with the Mesopotamians--most likely in small valuables such as ivory, pearls and etched beads, and later in timber and grain. Further exploration found that Harappa extended over an area of nearly 1.25 million sq km, well beyond the Indus Valley. Archaeologists thus now prefer to name the civilization after one of its major cities.

Given the distances involved, it is remarkable how closely Dholavira replicates the centralized design of the remote imperial centers, Harappa and Mohenjo-daro. "Somebody had a plan for Dholavira," says Gregory Possehl, curator of the University of Pennsylvania Museum, who has conducted other Harappan excavations. "It was conceived before it was built, much like modern-day planner's cities such as Islamabad and Chandigarh. We're now beginning to think that Mohenjo-daro was built like that, too."

Like the two Indus Valley settlements, Dholavira traces a parallelogram, encircled by a stone-and-brick wall 5 m thick at its base. Inside, the wall of the citadel is 18.5 m thick, while the so-called "middle town" with spacious homes suggesting occupation by well-off traders, has its own fortification. A developed public space--nearly 300 m by 50 m--edges the citadel; Bisht hypothesizes that it could have served as a multi-purpose sports stadium, assembly arena and occasional bazaar. Farther out, a more densely packed colony of houses adjoins the middle town. Beyond the walls, yet another settlement has been found.

The well-preserved site has offered up a trove of Harappan artifacts--pottery, clay figurines and animals, beads made from lapis lazuli, gold, silver and shell, and the objects most associated with Harappan digs: weights and seals depicting bulls, unicorns and other beasts. When excavations began in 1990, Bisht discovered a 10-character inscription in the citadel's north gate that appeared to have been painted on a wooden board--possibly the world's first sign.

As elsewhere, nothing resembling a temple structure has been unearthed at Dholavira, yet two stone statues found in March have refueled speculation about the Harappans' belief system. Among the few sculptures that had turned up earlier at Mohenjo-daro was that of a sitting man. One of the new stone statues similarly depicts a seated man (the second is a mongoose), who looks to have an erect penis, possibly representing some early form of the Hindu god Shiva.

Dholavira, however, differs from the imperial norm in intriguing ways. Its jumble of graves contradicts the burial system established by earlier digs, in which the heads of corpses always point northward: many of Dholavira's graves face east, or even northeast. Even stranger, nearly all are empty but for some pottery, leading to speculation that the graves may have served merely as memorials for citizens who were buried or cremated elsewhere.

The discrepancies re-emphasize the sheer variety of Harappan civilization. Adrift in the desert, the Dholavirans had ample reason to develop their own systems of living. They planted their city on a slope, between two streams that even now run after a rainstorm. At the point where one of the streams meets the city walls, Dholavira's inhabitants carved a large reservoir out of the rock. This was connected to an intricately engineered complex of large and small reservoirs that provided the entire settlement with a year-round supply of water. A 4.25-m-wide well, the largest ever found in a Harappan ruin, leads through a spill channel into the citadel itself. "The scale of the reservoirs is absolutely immense," says Harvard University's Richard H. Meadow, leader of a U.S. archaeological project at Harappa. "After deciding to establish a very large site in a very dry region, the Dholavirans went about creating a very large and unique water conservation system."

The Dholavira dig has revealed evidence of nearly continuous habitation from about 2900 to 1500 B.C. Around 2100 B.C. the culture began to show signs of decay: the citadel was abandoned, building repairs displayed shoddy workmanship and houses encroached on the well-planned streets. By around 2000 B.C. the city was abandoned, to be partially rehabilitated nearly 100 years later. The quality of artisanship crumbled still further, producing weights made not only of stone but also of pottery fragments. After another abandonment, the city appeared to be reoccupied around 1500 B.C., this time by rural folk who lived in circular houses similar to ones built by villagers today. About 50 years later, the site was abandoned for good.

Early 20th century theories that a more technologically advanced army poured through the Hindu Kush passes and laid waste to the Harappan civilization are largely discredited these days. Instead, scientists believe that floods and earthquakes may have doomed most of the civilization. As for Dholavira itself, experts believe that the disruption of trade with war-torn Mesopotamia chipped away at the city's economy, even as rapidly increasing aridity forced a return to a simpler lifestyle. Once the desert proved too much for the Dholavirans' unique water system, they were forced to share the fate of their fellow Harappans.

--Reported by Maseeh Rahman/Kutch