Project

Meandering through gorges of the Indus River valley and across high mountain passes, ancient arteries of the fabled Silk Road cut through the Diamer District of Northern Pakistan. (...)

Meandering through gorges of the Indus River valley and across high mountain passes, ancient arteries of the fabled Silk Road cut through the Diamer District of Northern Pakistan. Along these pathways, thousands of petroglyphs cover cliffs, rock faces, and boulders, standing testament to the ancient cultures that once settled in this region and the merchants, pilgrims, and conquerors who later journeyed through it. Over 50,000 rock carvings and 5,000 inscriptions serve as a timeline from the Epipaleolithic period to the pre-Islamic “golden era” of Buddhism. The earliest petroglyphs, which depict wild animals such as ibex and sheep, were created by groups of hunter-gatherers first drawn to the region in the early Holocene. By the first millennium B.C., Scytho-Saka tribal groups from Central Asia had introduced the Eurasian animal style of drawing. As this region developed into a dynamic Himalayan crossroads in the Silk Road era, more petroglyphs exhibited Buddhist iconography and architectural forms, most importantly associated with the building of stupas. Throughout this cultural landscape are found the archaeological remains of these occupations in a rich context of historical and contemporary vernacular culture.