Mehrgarh and Punjab: connections without a simple origin story

A site beyond modern Punjab

Mehrgarh lies in the Kachi plain of Balochistan, close to the Bolan Pass and west of the Bolan River. Pakistan’s 2004 UNESCO Tentative List submission describes a spread of low mounds, mud-brick structures and cemeteries, with much of the evidence buried beneath alluvium. It is relevant to Punjab through the development of the wider Indus region, rather than because its modern location is Punjabi territory. The submission also warns, through its descriptions, against assigning a certain function to every building: compartmental structures have been interpreted as storage, but their use remains uncertain.[1]

A major revision proposed in 2025

Benjamin Mutin and colleagues published new radiocarbon results in 2025, using tooth enamel from 23 Neolithic burials. Their abstract reports a modelled beginning for Mehrgarh’s aceramic cemetery between 5200 and 4900 BCE and a duration of roughly two to five centuries. They contrast this with a previously proposed beginning around 8000 BCE and a much longer sequence. This is a substantial chronological argument, not a small adjustment to an anniversary date.[2]

The authors interpret the younger chronology as evidence for a later spread of farming into the region, with deposits accumulating faster than previously assumed. The claim needs its full scope: the measurements concern a cemetery and its modelled chronology. They do not independently date every early farming site across South Asia. The abstract establishes the reported results and interpretation; a reader assessing laboratory procedures or the model’s assumptions should consult the complete paper and supplementary information.[2]

Follow crafts and subsistence, not ethnic labels

The older nomination links Mehrgarh’s importance to changing subsistence, craft specialisation and exchange before the urban Indus civilisation. Its sequence records occupation shifting between mounds and later towards Naushero. Those connections offer research questions about technologies and settlement. They should not be compressed into a claim that one modern people began at this site, or that every chronological statement in the 2004 account remains the latest finding.[1]