Mehrgarh

Mehrgarh is a Neolithic (7000-3200 BC) site on the Kachi plain of Baluchistan, Pakistan, and one of the earliest sites with evidence of farming (wheat and barley) and herding (cattle, sheep and goats) in South Asia . The site is located on the main route between what is now Afghanistan and the Indus Valley.

The habitation of the area is divided into seven periods, the first is the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period that dates to around 7000 BC or even earlier. The site was abandoned between 2000 and 2500 B.C. during a period of contact with the Indus Civilization and then reused as a burial ground for some time after 2000 BC.

Perhaps the most important element in Mehrgarh is that you may experience a gradual development from an early village society to a regional center that covered an area of 200 hectares at its peak. During this development, a large platform that may reflect some form of authority was built on the site. Mehrgarh was also a center for manufacturing of various figurines and pottery that were distributed to surrounding regions

Research shows that people here lived in houses and were involved in hunting, domesticating animals and farming cereals as barley and wheat. This hunting-farming society developed gradually and their quest was creative. In the early period these people used stone and bone tools i.e. polished stone axes, flint blades and bone-pointers. By 6000 B.C. The hand-made pottery appeared and in the 5th millennium BC Metallurgy and potter wheels were introduced, and they produced some fine terra-cotta figures and pottery with exotic geometric designs. Then they produced and wore ornaments of beads, seashells and semi-precious stones such as lapis lazuli.

Most of the ruins at Mehrgarh are buried under sediment deposits, although some structures could be seen eroding on the surface. Currently, excavated remains on site consists of a complex of large compartmental specific mud-brick structures.

Function of these subdivided units, built of hand-formed plano-convex mud bricks, is still not clear, but it is thought that many were used probably for storage rather than residential purposes. A couple of burial mounds also contain formal cemeteries, parts of which have been excavated.

Although Mehrgarh was abandoned by the time of emergence of the literate urban phase of the Indus civilization around Moenjodaro, Harapa etc., its development illustrates the evolution of civilization's subsistence patterns, as well as its craft and trade. There are indications that bones were used in the manufacture of tools for agriculture, textiles, and there is also evidence of use of cotton even in that period. Skeletons found on site showed that the height of the population in that time was larger than the later period.