Historical Places of the Subcontinent

Arts & Culture History
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Debal, Sindh from where Muhammad bin Qasim began Sindh’s conquest.

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I know of Mehrgarh only, and that civilization is older than the Indus valley civilization.

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Let me work on Balochistan Archeology to see, what historical treasure this beautiful pprovince possess.

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Muhammad bin Qasin mosque in Rohri, it needs some attention.

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Where is this site situated.. As Historians have conflicting views about Deebal.. Some says its current day Karachi, for some its Bhanbhor and some say it was near Thatta.

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Picture of Mehrgarh

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I think the other pictures that there is some Deebal Fort in Bhanbore.

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Some more information of Mehrgarh and its relationship with the Indus valley civilization.

Mehrgarh, Pakistan: Discovery of a 9000-Year-Old Civilized Settlement

Mehrgarh, Pakistan: Discovery of a 9000-Year-Old Civilized Settlement
**
The astonishing discovery in 1921 of the ruins at Mohenjo-Daro, Pakistan, by R.D. Banerji, officer of the Archaeological Survey of India, and their subsequent excavation led by British archaeologists, unveiled a 4th millennium BC city built on a grid that “outclassed the Egyptians and the Mesopotamians.” (1-2)** The city boasted a great public bath, upstairs bathrooms in houses, and covered sewers. (1) Uncovering the mysterious and beautiful city of Mohenjo-Daro immediately begged the question: What was the origin of its people and their culture? Some archaeologists postulated that they may have diffused from the west, i.e., from Balochistan province.

The evidence of a western origin for Mohenjo-Daro and other Indus Valley civilization towns and cities began to emerge in 1974 with excavation of the ruins at Mehrgarh (also spelled Mehrgarh, Merhgahr, and Mehergarh). Mehgarh archaeological site is located at the foot of the Bolan Pass, east of the mountain city of Quetta in Balochistan province, Pakistan.

The stunning Mehrgarh site spans nearly 500 acres and “contains traces of successive settlements since the aceramic (without pottery) Neolithic period (the end of the 8th and the beginning of the 7th millennium BC) until about 2600 BC, before the beginning of the Indus civilization,” when the inhabitants appear to have abandoned the site. (3) The earliest Mehrgarh inhabitants lived more than 9000 years ago!

Implication of the Discoveries at Mehrgarh “Discoveries at Mehrgahr changed the entire concept of the Indus civilization, asserts Ahmad Hasan Dani, professor emeritus of Islamabad’s Quaid-e-Azam University. “There we have the whole sequence, right from the beginning of settled village life” (at Mehrgarh). (2,4)
**
What does Dr. Dani mean by his statement? He means that the Indus valley is a cradle of civilization—something that was not understood about the Indus valley civilization before the discovery of Mehrgarh. Dr. Dani writes, ** The first settled life began in the eighth millennium B.C. when the first village was found at Mehergarh sic] in the Sibi districts of Balochistan comparable with the earliest villages of Jericho in Palestine (bolding added) and Jarmo in Iraq. Here their mud houses have been excavated and agricultural land known for the cultivation of maize and wheat. Man began to live together in settled social life and used polished stone tools, made pots and pans, beads and other ornaments. His taste for decoration developed and he began to paint his vessels, jars, bowls, drinking glasses, dishes and plates. It was now that he discovered the advantage of using metals for his tools and other objects of daily use. For the first time in seventh millennium B.C. he learnt to use bronze. From the first revolution in his social, cultural and economic life. He established trade relation with the people of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Iran and other Arab world. sic]He not only specialized in painting different designs on pottery, made varieties of pots and used cotton and wool but also made terracotta figurines and imported precious stones from Afghanistan and Central Asia.** This early bronze age culture spread out in the country side of Sindh, Balochistan, Punjab and North West Frontier Province.
**
**And this early beginning led to the concentration of population into small towns. Such as Kot-Diji in Sindh and Rehman Dheri in Dera Ismail Khan District. It is this social and Cultural change that led to the rise of the famous cities of Mohenjodaro and Harappa, the largest concentration of population including artisans, craftsman, businessmen and rulers. This culminated in the peak of the Indus Civilization, which was primarily based on intensive irrigated land agriculture and overseas trade and contact with Iran, Gulf States, Mesopotamia and Egypt. Dams were built for storing river water, land was Cultivated by means of bullock- harnessed plough - a system that still prevails in Pakistan, granaries for food storage were built, furnace were used for controlling temperature for making red pottery and various kinds of ornaments, beads of carnelian, agate and terracotta were pierced through, and above all they traded their finished goods with Central Asia and Arab world.

**It is these trade divided that enriched the urban populace who developed a new sense of moral honesty, discipline and cleanliness, and above all a social stratification in which the priests and the mercantile class dominated the society. The picture of high civilization can be gathered only by looking at the city of Mohenjodaro, the first planned city in the world, in which streets are aligned straight, parallels to each other, with a cross streets cutting at right angles. It is through these wide streets that wheeled carriages, drawn by bulls or asses, moved about, carrying well-adorned persons seated on them, appreciating the closely aligned houses, made of pucca bricks, all running straight along the streets. And then through the middle of the streets ran stone dressed drains covered with stone slabs - a practice of keeping the streets clean from polluted water, for the first time seen in the world. (4)

**History of Excavations of Mehrgarh

**Beginning in 1951, French archaeologist Jean-Marie Casal worked at archaeological sites in Afghanistan (Pakistan’s neighbor to the north) and then relocated seven years later to the fertile Indus valley, the traditional reserve of British archaeologists. From 1962 onwards, the French mission (led from 1975 on by Jean-Francois and Catherine Jarrige) concentrated its activities in Balochistan province, Pakistan. Note that the official spelling of what was formerly called Baluchistan is now Balochistan. (5) The French team excavated three important sites—Pirak (1968-1974), Mehrgarh (1975-1985) and Nausharo (1985-1996)–which provided for the first time in the Indo-Pakistani subcontinent, a continuous sequence of dwelling-sites from 7000 – 500 BC. (5) This report focuses on their work at Mehrgarh.

**Narrative of Mehrgarh’s Evolution 7000-2000 BC
**
**Mehrgarh Period I (7000-5500 BC)**The French team excavated nine levels of building with nine corresponding levels of burial grounds for Mehrgarh period I. The Guimet Musee National des Arts Asiatiques in Paris houses their relics. The team describes what they found:

Houses of crude rectangular brick, some decorated with paintings on the external walls, were built to a roughly similar design. The agricultural economy was dependent on the cultivation of barley, but the staple meat diet was provided by hunting, even though the beginning of the domestication of goats was recorded at this time. During this same period, livestock farming overtook hunting and not only was the Indian zebu (Bos indicus) domesticated, the farmed variety became more common than the wild.Palynological studies have shown that plant growth was less lush then than exists today. The excavation of nearly 360 tombs has enabled a detailed study of funerary effects, which provides a wealth of anthropological and social indicators. The funerary effects include utilitarian objects, but also especially an abundance of ornaments of a quality which bears witness to the skill and energy of craftsmen using materials from relatively faraway regions, notably several seashells, lapis lazuli, turquoise, steatites and calcites. The dead were sometimes buried with tarred baskets at their feet. Amongst the layers at the end of Period I were found ornaments with copper beads, one of which still carried the trace of a cotton thread, the oldest known example of this fibre being used.” (3,9)

Moulherat, et al. note, “The metallurgical analysis of a copper bead from a Neolithic burial (6th millennium BC) at Mehrgarh, Pakistan, allowed the recovery of several threads, preserved by mineralization. They were characterized according to new procedure, combining the use of a reflected-light microscope and a scanning electron microscope, and identified as cotton (Gossypium sp.). The Mehrgarh fibres constitute the earliest known example of cotton in the Old World and put the date of the first use of this textile plant back by more than a millennium. Even though it is not possible to ascertain that the fibres came from an already domesticated species, the evidence suggests an early origin, possibly in the Kachi Plain, of one of the Old World cottons.” (9)

In 2006, the oldest and first early Neolithic evidence for the drilling of human teeth while the person was living was found in Mehrgarh and reported by Coppa, et al. in Nature. The authors “describe eleven drilled molar crowns from nine adults discovered in a Neolithic graveyard in Pakistan that dates from 7,500 to 9,000 years ago. These findings provide evidence for a long tradition of a type of proto-dentistry in an early farming culture.” (10)

Periods II and III (5500-4800 BC and 4800-3500 BC)“Mehrgarh Period II 5500 BCE–4800 BCE and Mehrgarh Period III 4800 BCE–3500 BC were ceramic Neolithic (i.e., pottery was now in use) and later chalcolithic [chalco=copper, lithic=stone]. Much evidence of manufacturing activity has been found and more advanced techniques were used. Glazed faience beads were produced and terracotta figurines became more detailed. Figurines of females were decorated with paint and had diverse hairstyles and ornaments. Two flexed burials were found in period II with a covering of red ochre on the body. The amount of burial goods decreased over time, becoming limited to ornaments and with more goods left with burials of females. The first button seals were produced from terracotta and bone and had geometric designs. Technologies included stone and copper drills, updraft kilns, large pit kilns and copper melting crucibles. There is further evidence of long-distance trade in period II: important as an indication of this is the discovery of several beads of lapis lazuli — originally from Badakshan” (northeastern Afghanistan and southeastern Tajikistan). (11)

Period VII (2600 BC-2000 BC)“Somewhere between 2600 BCE and 2000 BCE, the city seems to have been largely abandoned, which is when the Indus Valley Civilization * was in its middle stages of development. It has been surmised that the inhabitants of Mehrgarh migrated to the fertile Indus valley as the Balochistan became more arid due to climatic changes.” (11)*

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Rohri is Arod of Muhammad Bin Qasim’s time. :k: All historical places need attention by our archeology department.

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I think the history of Balochistan has over the centuries been aligned more with Persian empires, unlike Sindh, Punjab and many parts of KP.

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Yes.. but Sindh, Punjab & KP directly / indirectly remained under the influence of Persian empires.

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yep, unfortunately cant find much about the historical sites in balochistan

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Thanks to PTA.. many websites containing information about Baloch History are not running.. I got a book on Baloch History.. Let me go through it to find some facts.

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yes anything related to baloch nationalism has been blocked even if it's not related to separatists.

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A true scholar. :biggthumb:

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these steps will alienate baluch further.........:(

we dont have any baluch on GS?

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should i put my Baloch cap on now?

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Are you baluch?:eek:

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I’m just a student of history.. :smiley:

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Carry on :k:

:smilestar: itni hairat kiyun?