The Indus Civilization (Cambridge History of India, Supplementary Volume) c8.19

c8.19

Recent cuttings at Kile Gul Mohammed, a mound 3½ miles north-west of Quetta, have revealed traces of what may be the earliest village-culture yet identified in Baluchistan.¹ The lowest levels of the mound were marked by chert tools and mud-brick houses but were devoid of pottery. Bones of sheep or goat were present, and some sort of crop-production is a likely postulate. Comparable pre-pottery (or non-pottery) village-cultures have been identified recently further west, notably at Jarmo in the foothills of northern Iraq and at Jericho in Jordan, where the early village lay beneath a deep pottery-bearing neolithic and was fortified. Radio-carbon datings have given 5000 B.C. or a little later as an approximate date for Jarmo, but much further work is required before a western Asiatic pre-pottery phase of village-life can be defined.