A team of researchers and archaeologists has discovered a series of petroglyphic sites in the Khirthar range during its drive in search of the ancient men's activities in the lower Indus Valley.
The team comprising Mr. Badar Abro, senior archaeologist, Bokhari Hakim Ali Shah and Nawabzado M.K.Chandio discovered various sites in the last week of March 2004, which were found to be the outcome of the specific human pursuit through centuries i.e. from the prehistoric to the recent past.
The team found remains of some cultural sites/mounds, especially Buddhist pottery, stone tools, like blades, cores and lithic waste thereof and above all, numerous petroglyphs.
The figures carved on the rocks included a number of ibexes, wild-sheep, double and single humped camels, bulls, leopards, dogs, dog-like beasts, stick-like men with bows and arrows in attacking posture, horse and camel riders, groups of hunters with muzzle-load guns, stupa markings and ruins, men and women in pairs even in dancing pose, wheels, fencing, lines of dots and some other signs and symbols, some likely to be presumed as Kharoshti script.
The team believes that the area could inter alia be one of the main centres of the historical Budhha region represented at least by seven stupas. The sites are located in the hill torrents called Mazarani, Shahaar and Keharji running down eastwards from Kute-ji-Qabar
(district Larkana) to Shah Godrio and Faridabad through Nai Dilaan in district Dadu.
The finds, however, suggest that the rock carvings synchronic perhaps to the petroglyphic traditions reported so far from elsewhere in Pakistan developed independently in the Khirthar range.