Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Archaeologists in Pakistan have rejected research of Indian archaeologists’ and said that Indus Valley civilisation was 8,000-years-old instead of 5,500, originated from inland proper India proliferated and spread westward from India to the eastern border of Pakistan.

The research was conducted by the researchers of Archeological Survey of India and Indian Institute of Technology and presented through one of prestigious journal ‘Nature’ with title “Indus Valley civilisation much older than thought.”

Archeology expert and former director general of Archeology and Museums, Dr Fazal Dad Kakar, said that this research was based on false facts and was an intellectual aggression on the front of Indus Valley civilisation. Dr Kakar refused to accept the age of Indus Valley civilisation as 8,000-years-old and said that somebody surely twisted the reports of the scientists intentionally to create furor academics, provoking excessive excitement over intellectual issues.

The researchers referred to the dates of antecedents and formative stages of cultures from Mesolithic period through Neolithic from 9,000-6,000 in this part of the world which culminated into mature bronze age of 300 BC Indus valley civilisation at a date, which might be estimated about 2,500-2,400 BC, at the sites of Harappa and Moenjodaro as the Indus Valley civilization”, said Dr kakar.

He said that a method of thermo luminescence was used as a means of dating ancient artifacts, particularly the property of some ceramics and other materials of becoming luminescent when pretreated and heated. He said the researchers have recovered the oldest pottery from the civilization, which is misleading. “They actually recovered pottery from a site but not civilisation as single site which is even not named, do not constitute neither a culture nor civilisation,” he said.

He said Indian scientist trying to make world believe that Indus Valley civilisation is originated from inland proper India proliferated and spread westward from India to the eastern border of Pakistan, comprising of Cholistan and Thar deserts which is wrong.

Dr Kakar emphasised that the basic aim of the Indian team of the scientists had actually set out to prove that the civilisation proliferated to other Indian sites like Bhirrana and Rakhigarrhi in Haryana apart from the Harappa and Moenjodaro in Pakistan, and Lothal, Dholavira and Kalibangan in India.

He said the Archaeological milieu of the world knows very well that the sites of Balochistan Plataeu and high land of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) represents all cultural levels such as pastoral, early farming village communities and urbanised village life. These were the result of process of evolution from the Mesolithic period or stage lasting in this region from about at least 18,000 BC, known from Magdalenian painting and engraving and from some flint tools sites in region, transformed into Neolithic stage, Mehrgarh 9,000-6,000, than Chalcolithic and finally to the mature bronze age of 3000 BC stage.