Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c10.32

c10.32

The invention of the technique of pot-painting, with the attendant necessities of more elaborate kilns for baking the vessels, seems to have taken place in the highlands of North Persia, Northern Mesopotamia, or Syria, and we shall see that its appearance in the south of Mesopotamia, when that region became habitable, owing to the shrinking of the Persian Gulf in prehistoric times, is due to immigration from the mountain regions into the plains. Cultures using painted wares have been traced northwards into Turkestan and south-eastwards through Persia into South Baluchistan; Afghanistan is an archaeological blank at present, but in North Baluchistan again the painted pottery reappears. On the basis of a comparative examination of the great mass of material from sites spread over such a wide area, the American archaeologist Donald McCown has been able to show that it falls into two basic groups, distinguished by a predominantly buff or red background to the painted design. These Buff Wares and Red Wares have, on the whole, a contrasted distribution, with the Buff Ware in the south and Red Ware in the north - a distribution which is repeated in Baluchistan, as we shall see.