Mehrgarh

Topic: Prehistory: Human Origins and Stone Age Cultures · NCERT: Class 9, Ch 4 "Early Humans and Beginning of Civilisation"

Meaning

Mehrgarh is a Neolithic (New Stone Age) village site on the Bolan River in Baluchistan, present-day Pakistan. Dated to c. 7000 BCE, it is the subcontinent's oldest Neolithic site and earliest farming village.

It matters because one site shows the whole journey in a single place: from the first farming, to the first copper, to the age just before the Harappan cities. This is why it is a favourite site for both Prelims and Mains.

Explanation

Background: why Mehrgarh is special

• Neolithic means "New Stone Age". In this stage people ground and polished their stone tools, grew crops, kept animals and settled in one place instead of only hunting and moving.
• Farming did not begin everywhere in the subcontinent at the same time.
• The north-west (Baluchistan) started first, around 7000 BCE, and Mehrgarh is the key site here.

• The south (Karnataka) started much later, around 2000 BCE.

• The buried layers at Mehrgarh are over 11 metres deep. They run from the 7th to the 3rd millennium BCE, so one site records about 4,000 years of change. [2]

How the people lived

• Houses: They built houses of sun-dried brick. These were mud bricks dried in the sun, not baked in a kiln.
• Granaries: They built rooms to store grain.
• Storing grain shows they grew more food than they needed at once.

• This surplus is the mark of settled farming.

• Crops: Wheat and barley.

• Animals: They kept sheep, goats and Indian cattle, especially the zebu humped bull (the Indian cattle breed with a hump on its shoulders).
• Old ways continued: The early Neolithic people still hunted, fished and gathered wild fruits. Farming did not replace these at once. [2]
• Burials: They buried their dead in graves. The objects placed with the dead (grave goods) tell us about their beliefs and about who owned what.
• Ornaments: They made ornaments of lapis lazuli (a deep blue stone), carnelian (a red-orange stone) and shell.
• None of these is found at Mehrgarh itself. Shell comes from the sea coast.
• So the people of Mehrgarh were already taking part in long-distance exchange.

Change over time: from stone to copper

• Chalcolithic means "copper-stone". People still used stone tools but also made objects of copper.
• The people of Mehrgarh were the first in the subcontinent to make copper objects. This took the region into the metal age.
• The sequence:
• c. 7000 BCE: Neolithic farming village
• c. 4000 BCE: Mehrgarh becomes Chalcolithic

• c. 3500 BCE: the Bronze Age Sindhu–Sarasvatī civilisation (the NCERT chapter's preferred name for the Harappan civilisation)

• Result: Mehrgarh's farming and copper-working laid the base for the Harappan civilisation. It shows one unbroken local line of growth, not a sudden arrival from outside.

Time, place and evidence

• Period: Neolithic from c. 7000 BCE, Chalcolithic by c. 4000 BCE. The layers run to the 3rd millennium BCE. [2]
• Location:
• On the Bolan River, in Baluchistan, Pakistan.
• On the Kachi plain, near the mouth of the Bolan Pass. The pass is the route from the Indus plain up to the highlands of Baluchistan.

• About 30 km from the town of Sibi. [2]

• Size: The site is several low mounds, not one, covering about 250 hectares. Much of the old material lies buried deep under river silt. [2]

• Excavation: 1974–1986 and again 1997–2000, by a French–Pakistani team led by Jean-François Jarrige. [2]
• Evidence: All of it is archaeological, because there are no written records from this period. It includes the 11-metre-deep layers, mud-brick houses, granaries, graves with grave goods, ornaments of traded stones and shell, remains of crops and animals, and copper objects.
• Heritage status: On UNESCO's Tentative List of World Heritage Sites. [2]
• Dating debate: A 2025 radiocarbon study of human tooth enamel argues that farming life in the Indus Valley appeared later than earlier estimates. [4] For the exam, keep the NCERT date of c. 7000 BCE. This is an open research debate.

Don't confuse with

• Sanganakallu (Karnataka): This is also a Neolithic site, but it is in the south, sits on top of a granite hill, and dates to about 2000 BCE. Mehrgarh is on a river plain in the north-west and dates to about 7000 BCE.
• Kodekal and Utnur: These are southern Neolithic ash-mound sites of c. 2900 BCE. The ash mounds formed when cow dung was burnt in cattle pens, and they were left by semi-nomadic zebu herders. [3] Mehrgarh was a settled village where farming came first.
• Harappa / Sindhu–Sarasvatī civilisation: This is a Bronze Age urban civilisation of around 3500 BCE. Mehrgarh is the earlier Neolithic-to-Chalcolithic village that led up to it, not one of its cities.
• Inamgaon and Daimabad (Maharashtra): These are Chalcolithic sites. Inamgaon's three periods run from 1600 to 700 BC. [5] Daimabad is known for its copper objects. [6] Both are much later than Mehrgarh, and neither is the subcontinent's first farming village.

Prelims Hooks

• Mehrgarh: Bolan River, Baluchistan, Pakistan. It is the subcontinent's oldest Neolithic site, c. 7000 BCE.
• It lies on the Kachi plain near the Bolan Pass, about 30 km from Sibi, and covers about 250 hectares. [2]
• Excavator: Jean-François Jarrige, leading a French–Pakistani team (1974–1986, 1997–2000). [2]
• Crops were wheat and barley. Animals were sheep, goats and zebu cattle. Ornaments were of lapis lazuli, carnelian and shell.
• First copper objects in the subcontinent. Chronological order: Neolithic (7000 BCE) → Chalcolithic (4000 BCE) → Sindhu–Sarasvatī civilisation (3500 BCE).
• Trap: Mehrgarh is on UNESCO's Tentative List, not the final World Heritage List. [2]

Mains Points

• Local roots of the Harappan civilisation: Mehrgarh's 11-metre-deep sequence [2] runs from village farming (7000 BCE) to copper (4000 BCE) to the Bronze Age civilisation (3500 BCE).
• This shows the cities grew out of a long local base.

• It weakens the claim that urban life was imported ready-made from West Asia.

• The Neolithic came at different times in different regions:

• Mehrgarh farmed wheat and barley by 7000 BCE.
• The south began only around 2000–2900 BCE, with herding first and millets later. [3]

• So the "Neolithic Revolution" in India was many local beginnings, shaped by rainfall, soil and the wild plants available. This is useful for a compare-and-contrast GS-I answer.

• Change was gradual, not sudden:

• Hunting and gathering continued alongside farming. [2]
• Stone tools stayed in use after copper arrived.
• Long-distance trade in lapis lazuli, carnelian and shell existed even in the Neolithic.
• These points show the Stone–Copper–Bronze scheme is a teaching tool, not a strict timetable.

Related concepts

• Burzahom
• Gufkral
• Chirand
• Koldihwa
• Mahagara
• Lahuradewa
• Daojali Hading
• Sarutaru
• Brahmagiri
• Piklihal

Read more

• Neolithic and Chalcolithic in the subcontinent