DailyIndia reports that the proposed sight of the Basha-Diamer Dam in Pakistan, holds thousands of ancient rock carvings and inscriptions. If the construction of the dam goes ahead around 30,000 carvings on 5,000 rocks would be affected. Some would be totally submerged and some would be seasonably visible when water levels were low.

Professor Harald Hauptmann, head of a research project entitled “Rock Carvings and Inscriptions along the Karakorum Highway”, told Dawn.com that a total of 37,051 carvings on 5,928 boulders or rock faces would be inundated after the construction of the Diamer-Basha Dam.

The site hosts hundreds of inscriptions in Brahmi, Sogdian, middle Persian, Chinese, Tibetan and Hebrew languages. Some 80 per cent of the writings are in Brahmi language.

These writings not only provide insights into the religious and political situation but also show the name of the rulers and a rough date of the time. The earliest rock carvings in northern Pakistan dates back to the ninth millennium BC (roughly late Stone Age).

When asked about the importance of the rock carvings in one hand and the need of the dam on the other, Hauptmann said: “We (as an archaeologist) have to respect the decision (to build the dam), but it is very sad for us to lose one of the most rich and diverse rock art provinces of the world.”

According to Hauptmann, the Basha Dam will drown 32 villages and displace more than 25,000 people, and some 3,000 very important stupas and a similar number of drawings will be submerged after the construction of the dam.

The World Monuments Fund gives further background on the petroglyphs:

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-gathers 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.

The full DailyIndia article can be viewed here and more information on the World Monuments Fund action plan can be found here.

Photos from the World Monuments Fund website.