The Rivers Are About to Raise Cities

Let us rest here a moment, the way travellers pause at the top of a long climb to look back at the road. We have come a great distance together, through the deep past of this land.

Remember where we began. The painted shelters in the hills, and the bands who hunted and gathered and marked their walls. Then the first farmers, with their fields and their cattle, learning the patient art of settled life.

We followed the quiet trails of trade, where a blue stone could travel from far mountains to a distant wrist. We watched the dawn of copper, the first metal mastered by fire. And we saw the scattered regional cultures slowly weave themselves into one shared way.

We paused, too, at the river the oldest hymns remember, the Sarasvati — and at the honest edge of what the silent things can tell us. None of this was small. Each step quietly prepared the next.

And now, at last, everything stands ready. The land is settled and joined together. The crafts are sure and skilled. The web of trade runs wide. All the long preparing of these deep ages has done its work.

So look ahead now, to the rivers of the northwest. There, something new is about to rise: planned streets laid out with care, great walls, and cities to stand beside any in the whole ancient world. The rivers that once fed the villages are about to raise cities. Sindhu^[1]

That is where our journey turns next. But there is no hurry. Rest here a little while, at the eve of the cities. Hold all we have walked through. Then, when you are ready, we will go on together into the age of the great cities by the rivers.