The Mesopotamians identified ancient Pakistan as Meluhha. The ancient Persians called it Hind, which essentially emanated from the name of Sindh River. As the ancient Persian language (Avestan) did not have the word “S” in its alphabets, it was replaced with “H” and thus Hind was used instead of Sindh. The Arabs later called it Al-Hind. The Ionian Greeks identified it as Indoi/Indos (the land and people of Sindh/Indus River) and much later, in Latin, it became India. And in 1947, the people of Indus decided to name it Pakistan.
The rich history and heritage of Pakistan can be traced back to millions of years. One of the oldest stone tools in the world, going back to 2.2 million years old, has been found at Rawat, about fifteen miles from Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. One of the largest hand axes has also been found in the nearby Soan River Valley. Later, about fifty thousand BC at Sanghao Cave in Mardan District, the ancient people improved their technology for working on Quartz in order to chase the animals in closed valleys. Still later, they worked on micro quartz and chert or flint and produced arrows, knives, scrapers and blades and hunted the fleeing deer and ibexes with bows and arrows. Such hunting scenes are well illustrated on thousands of rock carvings, inscriptions and many other sources ranging from the Neolithic period in Gilgit-Baltistan. 

However, the first settled life in Pakistan began in 7000 BC when the first ancient village was found at Mehrgarh in the Sibi District of Balochistan. Mehrgarh is comparable with the earliest villages of Jericho in Palestine and Jarmo in Iraq. The excavations that began at Mehrgarh in 1974 revealed various aspects of settled social life of the locals. It was here that they first learned to use the land for agriculture and sowed wheat and barley, made painted pots, pans, jars, bowls, drinking glasses, dishes, and plates. They also also started wearing beads and other ornaments as a fashion. Later, in 6000 BC, they learned to use bronze which brought in the first revolution in their social, cultural and economic life. 
This early Bronze Age Indus Valley culture gradually spread out in the provinces of Sindh, Balochistan, Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Gilgit-Baltistan, and Kashmir. This early beginning led to the concentration of population into small towns, such as Kot Diji (3300 BC) in Sindh and Rehman Dheri (4000 BC) in Dera Ismail Khan District, etc. It is this social and cultural change that led to the rise of famous cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, having the largest concentration of population including artisans, craftsmen and businessmen and was later identified as the Indus Valley Civilization.
The people of the geographical region that now denotes Pakistan, built dams for storing river water, land was cultivated by means of bullock-harnessed plough, a system that still prevails in some parts of Pakistan and granaries were built for food storage. As gradual industrialization set in, they built furnaces for controlling temperature for bulk production of red pottery and various kinds of ornaments, beads of carnelian, agate and terracotta were pierced through. This transcended into the peak period of Indus Valley Civilization by 2500 BC, which was primarily based on vast amounts of agricultural produce, industrial production of various products and overseas trade via land and sea with Persian Empire (Iran), Gulf States, Mesopotamia (Iraq), Egypt, Afghanistan and Central Asia.
The Indus Valley Civilization’s cultural moorings covered an area many times larger than either Middle Kingdom of Egypt or Third Mesopotamian Dynasty of Ur, yet the archaeological finds show it to have been remarkably homogeneous. City layouts, building construction, city sewerage system, weights and measures, seal inscriptions, patterned pottery and figurines and even the burnt bricks used for buildings and flood walls are unusually uniform in all Indus Valley cities and towns, suggesting an integrated economic system and good internal communications. 

The culture representing the Indus Valley Civilization was also remarkably constant over time. Because the main cities and towns lay in river lowlands subject to flooding, they were rebuilt often, with each reconstruction closely following the previous pattern. Similarly, the Indus script, known from thousands of stamp seals, using both pictographic and phonetic symbols, shows no evidence of change over time. This evidence of stability, regularity and traditionalism has led scholars to speculate that a centralized and stable government controlled this vast societal entity. 
Unfortunately, the language of the Indus Valley Civilization has not yet been deciphered. Nothing is known about the religion people followed in that era. No temples and idols have been recovered from any of the Indus Valley Civilization’s archeological sites. For reasons not yet fully understood, the civilization gradually faded out after 1900 BC. After fading out of the Indus Valley Civilization, the people of different regions gradually reverted to their old cultures and religious practices. Later, however, after the advent of Buddhism, it became the first populist majority religion of Indus Valley. After the introduction of Islam in 712 AD, it gradually became the majority accepted faith and is now followed by over 90 percent of Pakistanis. 
Unlike the presence of warfare in the other contemporary civilizations like Egypt and Mesopotamia, archaeologists have not been able to find any warlike material from any of the Indus Valley Civilization’s sites. The people of Indus Valley Civilization were remarkably peaceful and sanguine in nature, yet they possessed the strength to bravely resist foreign interventions, even during the decline period of their civilization, when foreign powers invaded a presumably weak entity. 
Historically, the landmass of Pakistan has been invaded both from the east as well as from the west. However, in the entire over 9000 years of Pakistan’s known history, Pakistan and India have been forced into a political unification for only about 200 years; around one hundred years under the Mauryan Empire and for a similar timeframe under the British colonial rule. For 500 odd years, sub-continent was ruled by the Muslims. For the remaining over 8000 years, Pakistan remained a separate entity. The people and landmass of Pakistan have an identity embedded in their Islamic ethos and glorious settled history and heritage.
9000 Years of History through Maps and Digital Paintings
In order to apprise and educate the people of Pakistan regarding the civilizational history, Army Museum Lahore was redesigned, creating more space for the civilizational history to be displayed. Along with civilization history, which includes ‘Continuously Lived Cities’ of Pakistan, Army Museum Lahore also created space for the warfare history of Pakistan in the historical context, This gallery includes famous battles between the civilizational settlements and the raiders and invaders from all sides. Both galleries house maps and digital paintings to showcase the civilizational history and battlefields. Initially, the galleries were not a part of the design; however, in due course, its importance was highlighted. For research work, Brigadier Khan Ahmed Sufyan and Ms. Aamna Nadeem carried out multiple activities including writing to the archeological departments and reviewing the existing literature. After months of hard work, the necessary data was later shared with the artists and designers to generate maps showcasing ‘Continuously Lived Cities’ of the Indus Valley Civilization and digitals paintings of how life was in these settlements.  

The first task was to prepare a map of archaeological sites of ‘Continuously Lived Cities’ in Pakistan. Ms. Aamna and Brigadier Sufyan researched for ‘Continuously Lived Cities’ for this map. Letters were written to the archaeology departments of all the four provinces, Gilgit-Baltistan, and Azad Jammu and Kashmir. We were successful in getting the data of Punjab and Sindh province only. The data of the rest of the provinces was researched by Ms. Aamna from different research articles, books, and journals, etc. After the procurement of data, Brigadier Sufyan marked all these sites on the map by looking at their coordinates. Later the map was sent to the designers for display. In this map, the red dots depict the ancient archaeological sites which consolidate its ancient existence while the blue dots depict the ‘Continuously Lived Cities’ during different times between 700 BC till 1700 BC, which further ascertain the ancient existence of humans in the geographical area that now represents Pakistan. Such facts confirm that Pakistan is a 9000 years old civilizational state. This map is one of its kind as it has information which has never been displayed anywhere before. Even a layman can understand the historic importance of our land just by looking at this map.
Another map was commissioned about the battles fought in the geographical boundaries of Pakistan between 800 BC and 1900s AD. Ms. Aamna and Brigadier Sufyan prepared a map of 200 plus major and minor battles fought in Pakistan. There is only one book written on this subject named, Historic Battlefields of Pakistan by Johnny Torrens-Spence, which contains hardly 18 battles while we have displayed more than 200 battles. One can clearly imagine the amount of research which has gone into making this map. This map clearly shows that Pakistanis fought with invaders from the west as well as from the east. 
Most of the historical events are depicted through digital paintings. A lot of research was carried out for each and every painting and its text. It was decided that text with the paintings will be displayed at three levels: a caption, brief text, and a detailed text in the shape of a booklet. The purpose was to cater for the needs of all sorts of visitors. Every minor detail was researched before making the paintings.
The brief details of each and every painting are as follows:
Digital paintings of Mehrgarh, Harrapa, and Mohenjo-daro displayed in AML
Mehrgarh (7000 BC-2000 BC) is the oldest Neolithic human settlement in Pakistan and also the region with evidence of farming (wheat and barley) and herding (cattle, sheep and goats). It is located near Sibi in Balochistan. The site was discovered in 1974 by an archaeological team directed by French archaeologist Jean-François Jarrige, and was excavated continuously between 1974 and 1986, and again from 1997 to 2000. The site covers an area of 495 acres and highlights its gradual development from an early village society to a regional industrial and trading center of that era. The people lived in mud-brick houses having internal sub-divisions and also constructed granaries for the storage of their agricultural produce. 
During its early period, the people of Mehrgarh used polished stone-axes, flint blades and bone-pointer tools. Around 6000 BC, they started making handmade pottery. During the 5th millennium BC, they learnt the use of metallurgy and potter-wheel and started producing fine terracotta figurines and pottery with exotic designs. Later, they also produced and wore ornaments of beads, seashells, semi-precious stones like Lapis Lazuli and polished copper. The evidence of manufacturing activity indicated that they used advanced techniques. The production technology included stone and copper drills, updraft kilns, large pit kilns and copper melting crucibles. They also knew the art of making fabric and male figurines wore turbans as is worn even these days in various parts of Pakistan. 
Numerous burials have been found, many with elaborate goods such as baskets, stone and bone tools, beads, bangles, and pendants with the occasional presence of animal sacrifices. In April 2006, while studying the burials, the oldest evidence in human history for the drilling of teeth in a living person was found in Mehrgarh. All nine of the Mehrgarh dental patients were male and female adults and ranged in age from about 20 to over 40 and all of them survived the dental procedure. The oldest known practice of dentistry at Mehrgarh has known to have continued for over 1500 years. 
At its height, it is assessed that the population of Mehrgarh city peaked at around 25000 inhabitants. The site was occupied continuously from 7000 BC and was abandoned between 2600 BC and 2000 BC, by the time literate urbanized phase of the Indus Valley Civilization emerged at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro etc, and its inhabitants may have migrated to the fertile Indus Valley as Balochistan became more arid due to climatic changes. The exploration of Mehrgarh and it being the precursor clearly illustrates a continuous sequence of Indus Valley Civilization’s dwelling-sites established from 7000 BC to 500 BC highlighting its subsistence patterns, as well as its craft and trade.
Harappa City
The ancient city of Harappa (3500 BC-1900 BC) is one of the largest archaeological sites of Pakistan. Harappa, since its inception, has remained almost continuously occupied as a settlement for over 5500 years. It was first identified as ruins of an ancient city in 1826 by a British Army deserter, James Lewis, posing as an American engineer named Charles Masson. Later in 1831, an emissary from King William IV, namely Alexander Burnes, recorded the extensive remains at Harappa while travelling from Multan to Lahore to deliver gifts of horses from the King of England to Raja Ranjit Singh. In 1856, William Brunton, a British railway engineer, destroyed part of this heritage site by using 5000-year-old Harappan bricks as ballast (crushed rock placed around railroad tracks) for laying 195 kilometers of railway track between Sahiwal (Montgomery) and Multan. Alexander Cunningham carried out the first series of excavations at Harappa between 1856 and 1872. However, the first extensive excavations at Harappa were started by John Marshall in 1920. At its peak (2500 BC), Harappa had a population of 50,000 to 75,000 inhabitants. 
Mohenjo-daro
Built around 2500 BC, the city of Mohenjo-daro is also one of the largest archaeological sites of Pakistan. The city was gradually abandoned after 1900 BC. Mohenjo-daro was first visited by an archaeologist in 1911-1912 and it was presumed that the site was not old as the bricks looked modern. In 1919-1920, the antiquity of the site was identified and large-scale excavations commenced in 1924-1926. Further excavations were carried out in the 1930s and 1945. The last series of major excavations were conducted in 1964 and 1965, after which intrusive excavations were banned, fearing damage to the site. However, less intrusive archaeological techniques have since been used to acquire further information about the site. At its peak, the city had a population of over 40,000 people.
(To be continued....)

The writer holds a Master’s degree in English Literature and a Ph.D. in Education Administration.
E-mail: [email protected]