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c. 7000 BCEPeer-reviewed · 3 sourcesDebated

Farming Begins at Mehrgarh

On the edge of the Bolan Pass, a Neolithic village becomes one of South Asia's first farming settlements

On the timeline · around c. 7000 BCE · Mehrgarh and the Indus Valley CivilizationMehrgarh and the Indus Valley CivilizationFarming Begins at Mehrgarh7,000 BCE6,500 BCE6,000 BCE5,500 BCE5,000 BCE4,500 BCE4,000 BCE3,500 BCE3,000 BCE2,500 BCE

Quick facts

Location
Kacchi Plain, Balochistan, Pakistan, near the Bolan Pass
Excavated by
Jean-Francois and Catherine Jarrige, French Archaeological Mission, 1974-2000
Depth of deposits
Over 11 meters, spanning the 7th to 3rd millennium BCE
Key evidence
Mudbrick houses, granaries, domesticated wheat, barley, sheep, and goats

What happened

Mehrgarh sits on the Kacchi Plain of Balochistan, in modern Pakistan, near the mouth of the Bolan Pass that connects the Indus plains to the Iranian plateau. French archaeologists Jean-Francois and Catherine Jarrige excavated the site from 1974 to 1986 and again from 1996, uncovering an archaeological sequence more than 11 meters deep that runs from the seventh to the third millennium BCE. The earliest levels show small mud-brick houses, storage granaries, and the bones of wheat, barley, and domesticated sheep and goats, the package that marks a shift from foraging to settled farming. UNESCO's tentative World Heritage listing describes Mehrgarh as one of the earliest farming settlements identified anywhere in South Asia, and it is now generally treated as an ancestor culture to the later Indus Valley cities rather than an isolated village.

Why it matters

Mehrgarh gives the Indus Valley Civilization a running start centuries before Harappa or Mohenjo-daro existed. The granaries, mudbrick building, and craft specialization visible at Mehrgarh show the region already building the social and technical base, stored surplus, organized labor, permanent settlement, that later Harappan cities would scale up into planned urban centers.

How we know

Dating rests on stratigraphic excavation across Mehrgarh's six mounds, where roughly 32,000 artifacts have been recovered and layered against radiocarbon-dated material. Scholars still debate the precise start date: Jarrige's original chronology placed Period I before 7000 BCE, while more recent radiocarbon work by Mutin and Zazzo on tooth samples pushes the earliest secure dates closer to 5250 to 4650 BCE, so the site's oldest phase is treated as approximate rather than fixed.

Sources

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Part of a timelineAncient India29 events · From the granaries of Mehrgarh to the astronomers of the Gupta court, the long record of the Indian subcontinent's first cities, philosophies, and empiresView all →