South Asia’s first cities rose beside the Indus
Village life in South Asia stretches back some nine millennia to Neolithic Mehrgarh in Balochistan; urban life about five millennia to Harappa and Mohenjo-daro. The land that is now Pakistan was both a cradle of early civilization and a gateway between South Asia, Central Asia, and the Near East.
Mehrgarh, found in 1974 on the Kachi Plain, dates roughly 7000–5500 BCE in its early phase: mud-brick houses, granaries, copper tools, barley and wheat, dates and jujubes, and herded sheep, goats, and cattle. Crafts later included bead-making and metalwork; continuous occupation lasted until about 2600 BCE, when aridity pushed people toward the Indus Valley. The Soanian Lower Paleolithic culture of the Soan Valley near today’s Islamabad is dated between about 774,000 and 11,700 BCE.
The Bronze Age Indus Valley Civilization began around 3300 BCE. With Egypt and Mesopotamia it was one of three early Old World civilizations—and the most widespread, covering about 1.25 million square kilometres across Sindh, Punjab, Balochistan and adjacent river systems. At its peak perhaps five million people lived in hundreds of settlements from the Arabian Sea toward Afghanistan and the Himalayas. The Mature phase, about 2600–1900 BCE, built brick cities with roadside drains and multi-storey houses at centres such as Harappa, Ganeriwala, and Mohenjo-daro; most cities were abandoned by around 1700 BCE.
Later layers include Vedic culture in the Punjab, Achaemenid satrapies after Darius I marched through the Khyber Pass in 518 BCE and reached the Sindh coast by 516 BCE, and Alexander’s Indus campaign from spring 326 BCE—battles with Aspasioi and Assakenoi, the siege of Aornos, alliance with Ambhi of Taxila, and the Battle of the Hydaspes against Porus. Dynasties such as the Soomra and Samma, Mughal Lahore, East India Company rule, and creation of Pakistan in 1947 followed. Sites from Taxila to Thatta still mark that long corridor of exchange.
Source: History of Pakistan
