Site older than Mohenjodaro found in Pakistan?

A painting has also been found at the site and the discovery of more such items could establish the site as 9,000 years old, like the remains found at Mehargarh in Balochistan and Jericho in Palestine, Shar said.

"At present, we can say that it (the site) is older than Mohenjodaro," Ghulam Mustafa Shar, the director of the Lakhian Jo Daro project, told Dawn newspaper. The find is said to be of the Kot Diji era, experts said.

Link

The Kot Diji era culture mention here is....

Kot Diji Culture. (3000 BC)

The Pre Harappa site at Kot Diji consists of two clearly defined areas. Citadel on high ground for the elites separated by a defensive wall with bastions at regular intervals. This area measures about 500 ft x 350 ft. Outer area, or the city proper consisted of houses of mud bricks on stone foundations. Pottery found from this site have design with horizontal and wavy lines, or loops and simple triangular patterns.

Other stuff found are pots, pans, storage jars, toy carts, balls, bangles, beads, terracotta figurines of mother goddess and animals, bronze arrowheads. Well fashioned stone implements were also discovered.

An interesting find that pushs back the boundaries just a tad. The Harappans borrowed some of the basic elements from Kot Dijians. The Harappan decoration designs, such as the "fish scale " intersecting circles and the piped leaf pattern were all evolved from the Kot Dijian decorated elements like the horizontal and wavy lines, loops and simple triangular patterns. There is, however, no proof yet of the place or the region from where these Kot Dijians arrived in The Indus Valley.

The above from a Kot Diji site that declines to be linked!

[edit on 23/1/09 by Hanslune]

[edit on 23/1/09 by Hanslune]

The Indus Valley civilization is quite Interesting since, at a time when other civilizations were going about with their build-with-gigantic-stones-dept, the indus valley inhabitants were busy baking their bricks in kilns.

these folks were quite smart to do with bricks which is a less labor intensive method than with large stones.

Also, they had a wonderful sanitary and sewage system.

Mystery is ..why their advanced (at that time) was not taken up/spread out into other parts of the Indian sub continent!!!

reply to post by coredrill


Howdy Coredrill

Yeah, they were smart enough to use mud brick - they may have been motivated to do that as the first cities were next to rivers where building stone was hard to find. They did spread to a certain extent but the center of their cultures seems to have been around the Indus/Sarasvati River.

Are they postulating that this site was no longer in use by the time Mohenjodaro was founded? However, Mohenjodaro in the Indus Valley came to an abrupt end. From the looks of this site it looks like it just stopped being used like some of our modern day ghost towns. Nice find!

reply to post by pstrron


No. When Mohen Jo daro was found, it was actually found under a /some huge mound/s. of course, people didnt leave off suddnely, the population was decimated either by war or sickness and whatever balance drifted away.

[edit on 29/1/09 by coredrill]

The main reason a whole string of these cities were abandoned is that the course of the rivers changed.

Like hans mentioned these people lived near the rivers and the rivers changed thier courses, so the cities were abandoned.

Throw in some warfare and failed crops and it all goes to hell.
They didnt kiln thier bricks that takes way more wood than they would have had to burn, they were sun dried, (adobe bricks).
Thats how dry the area is, a sun dried brick will last 4000 years.


There is a very good japanese hi def documantary about a couple of the cities in this region.
The people who lived there actively traded with the arabia.

reply to post by punkinworks09


Yep shifting rivers did in those city as they did in Mesopotamia and China. Trade with Dilmun and Sumer are well documented. I do find it interesting that no merchant quarters with Dilmuns and Sumerians has not been found. Having a foreign merchant quarter is one of the indicators of cultural trade.

A good example of one of these trading quarters is in Arikamedu in southern India which had a Roman trading port.