A team of researchers and archaeologists has discovered a series of petroglyphic sites in the Khirthar mountain range (Pakistan) during their research regarding the activities of the ancient people of the lower Indus Valley. The team comprised Mr Badar Abro, senior archaeologist Hakim Ali Shah Bokhari and Nawabzado M K Chandio, and found remains of some cultural sites, containing Buddhist pottery, stone tools like blades, lithic waste and above all numerous petroglyphs (stone carvings).
     The rock carvings show a number of ibexes, wild-sheep, double and single humped camels, bulls, leopards, dogs, dog-like beasts, stick-like men with bows and arrows in attacking posture, besides horse and camel riders, groups of hunters with muzzle-load guns, stupa markings and ruins, men and women in pairs, even in dancing poses, wheels, fencing, lines of dots and some other signs and symbols, some of which presumed to be of Kharoshti script.
     The sites are located in the hill torrents called Mazarani, Shahaar and Keharji, running down eastwards from Kute ji Qabar, Larkana district, to Shah Godrio and Faridabad, through Nai Dilaan in Dadu district. The discovery, suggests that the rock carvings synchronic perhaps to the petroglyphic traditions reported so far from elsewhere, in Pakistan, developed independently in the Khirthar range.
     The team believes that many more sites of the same cultural traditions can be found in Salaari, Khenji and other torrents in the eastern folds of the range.

Source: Dawn (10 May 2004)