<P> Research by J. Bates et al. (2016) confirms that Indus populations were the earliest people to use complex multi-cropping strategies across both seasons, growing foods during summer (rice, millets and beans) and winter (wheat, barley and pulses), which required different watering regimes . J. Bates et al. (2016) also found evidence for an entirely separate domestication process of rice in ancient South Asia, based around the wild species Oryza nivara . This led to the local development of a mix of "wetland" and "dryland" agriculture of local Oryza sativa indica rice agriculture, before the truly "wetland" rice Oryza sativa japonica arrived around 2000 BCE . </P> <P> It has often been suggested that the bearers of the IVC corresponded to proto - Dravidians linguistically, the break - up of proto - Dravidian corresponding to the break - up of the Late Harappan culture . Finnish Indologist Asko Parpola concludes that the uniformity of the Indus inscriptions precludes any possibility of widely different languages being used, and that an early form of Dravidian language must have been the language of the Indus people . Today, the Dravidian language family is concentrated mostly in southern India and northern and eastern Sri Lanka, but pockets of it still remain throughout the rest of India and Pakistan (the Brahui language), which lends credence to the theory . </P> <P> According to Heggarty and Renfrew, Dravidian languages may have spread into the Indian subcontinent with the spread of farming . According to David McAlpin, the Dravidian languages were brought to India by immigration into India from Elam . In earlier publications, Renfrew also stated that proto - Dravidian was brought to India by farmers from the Iranian part of the Fertile Crescent, but more recently Heggarty and Renfrew note that "a great deal remains to be done in elucidating the prehistory of Dravidian ." They also note that "McAlpin's analysis of the language data, and thus his claims, remain far from orthodoxy ." Heggarty and Renfrew conclude that several scenarios are compatible with the data, and that "the linguistic jury is still very much out ." ((refn group = note Nevertheless, Kivisild et al. (1999) note that "a small fraction of the West Eurasian mtDNA lineages found in Indian populations can be ascribed to a relatively recent admixture ." at ca . 9,300 ± 3,000 years before present, which coincides with "the arrival to India of cereals domesticated in the Fertile Crescent" and "lends credence to the suggested linguistic connection between the Elamite and Dravidic populations ." According to Kumar (2004), referring to Quintan - Murci et al. (2001), "microsatellite variation of Hgr9 among Iranians, Pakistanis and Indians indicate an expansion of populations to around 9000 YBP in Iran and then to 6,000 YBP in India . This migration originated in what was historically termed Elam in south - west Iran to the Indus valley, and may have been associated with the spread of Dravidian languages from south - west Iran ." According to Palanichamy et al. (2015), "The presence of mtDNA haplogroups (HV14 and U1a) and Y - chromosome haplogroup (L1) in Dravidian populations indicates the spread of the Dravidian language into India from west Asia .") </P> <P> Between 400 and as many as 600 distinct Indus symbols have been found on seals, small tablets, ceramic pots and more than a dozen other materials, including a "signboard" that apparently once hung over the gate of the inner citadel of the Indus city of Dholavira . </P>

Write a note on any one seal of indus valley civilization