Exhibit · custody
The two largest Indus cities are in Pakistan. So is the oldest farming village. Nobody there is sequencing them.
The argument over who the Indus people were is conducted almost entirely in India, over Indian material, by Indian institutions with a stated position. Meanwhile Mohenjo-daro, Harappa and Mehrgarh sit across the border — and Pakistani material has already produced the single most decisive comparison in the debate.Material, analysis and credit are three different thingsThe Swat Valley samples were excavated by Pakistani and Italian teams — the page says so, and it is the point. But the sequencing and the analysis were done abroad, and published as part of Narasimhan et al. 2019 — the Reich laboratory, which this platform elsewhere flags for evidence concentration. So Pakistan supplied the material and the excavation; it did not produce the dataset. That distinction is the page’s own argument in miniature and it is stronger for being exact: the material is Pakistani, the capacity is not, and the credit followed the capacity. Pakistan is the only party positioned to check India's answer. It has not noticed, and it has no laboratory to do it with.
What Pakistan already did.
and it settled the question
The finding that steppe ancestry entered South Asia after the Indus cities does not rest on Rakhigarhi alone. It rests on the contrast: Rakhigarhi at 2500 BCE has none, and Iron Age individuals from the Gandhara Grave Culture of the Swat Valley — Timargarha, Loebanr, Katelai — have it.A count without a source“Over a hundred” is a specific figure with no citation. Narasimhan et al. 2019 reports 523 ancient individuals in total across South and Central Asia, of which the Swat time transect is one component; how many individuals that component contains is not stated here, and this museum has not established it.
Those are Pakistani sites, excavated by Pakistani and Italian teams. Without them there is one genome and no timeline. Pakistan supplied the comparison that makes the Indian sample mean anything — and there was no press conference, no inversion, and no textbook revision.
What it holds and does not study.
the inventory
sort by holding or by activity
| Site | Significance | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Mohenjo-daro, Sindh | Largest Indus city | UNESCO World Heritage. Under sustained physical threat from salinity, flooding and funding shortfalls. No genome published. |
| Harappa, Punjab | The type site | Excavated from the 1920s and again by the Harappa Archaeological Research Project. No genome published. Part of the 1940s Wheeler-era skeletal material is held abroad. |
| Mehrgarh, Balochistan | Farming from c. 7000 BCE — the oldest in South Asia; independent zebu domestication | Excavated by the French mission 1974–2000. Nothing sequenced. Fieldwork effectively impossible: insurgency. |
| Swat Valley, KP | The steppe-timing comparison | Sequenced — abroad. Small mitochondrial work since by the provincial Directorate of Archaeology. |
A custody argument needs the holdings and the research output in one view.
Pakistan has no ancient-DNA clean room. India built one — the page gives 2018, and that date carries no source here. The gap is not expertise — the Swat excavations are competent, long-running, internationally partnered work. The gap is sequencing capacity, and the will to point it at the Indus.
Why the incentive doesn't run the way it should.
the honest answer
Pakistan's national narrative begins in 711 CE with Muhammad bin Qasim. A Bronze Age civilisation that predates Islam by three thousand years, has no Muslim content, and is loudly claimed by the neighbour it has fought four wars with, fits nowhere in that story. Mohenjo-daro is a heritage obligation, not a founding myth.
So Pakistan does not need to disprove anything. It has no thesis about Aryan indigeneity to defend or attack. That is precisely what makes it the credible party — and precisely why it has not acted.
What could be done.
four routes, none requiring a new institution
| Route | What it needs |
|---|---|
| Export to a neutral laboratory | Petrous bone from Harappa or Mohenjo-daro sent to Copenhagen, Jena or Tartu — labs independent of both the Reich cluster and the Indian ministry. The precedent exists: the Swat samples went abroad and came back as published science. |
| A joint clean room | Sequencing capacity at a Pakistani university, internationally partnered. The excavation side already functions; only the laboratory is missing. |
| Mehrgarh via the French archive | The 1974–2000 mission removed material. Some is held in France. Sequenceable without setting foot in Balochistan — which is the only way Mehrgarh gets read at all. |
| Diaspora collections | 1940s Wheeler-era Harappa material held outside South Asia. Requires no permission from either government. |
A sample split. When the Indian ministry sequences the 1922–58 collections, half of each viable sample goes to an independent laboratory. Cost: near zero. Effect: any finding becomes checkable, and any inversion becomes refutable within weeks rather than never. That it is not in the AnSI memorandum is the finding — and the same offer could be made from Islamabad, where refusing it would be conspicuous.
What the other half would settle.
the questions only Pakistani material can answer
- Mehrgarh, 7000 BCE. Who farmed first in South Asia. Every claim about Iranian-related versus indigenous origins is currently extrapolated backwards from Indus-era genomes four thousand years later. Mehrgarh is the only site that could test it directly.
- The Indus at scale. One genome from Rakhigarhi anchors an entire population. Harappa and Mohenjo-daro could turn a point into a distribution — and show whether the Indus was one people or many.
- The western gradient. Balochistan and Sindh carry the highest L1-M22 anywhere. Ancient samples there would test whether that is Indus continuity or later movement.
- Independent replication. The most important function, and the one nobody is performing: a second laboratory, in a second country, with no position to defend.
The honest limits.
- Cited: the Swat Valley Iron Age samples and their role in dating the steppe arrival (Narasimhan et al. 2019); Mehrgarh's 7000 BCE dates and independent zebu domestication from the excavation literature; Mohenjo-daro's UNESCO status and documented preservation difficulties; the AnSI study scope and its pre-announced conclusion.
- NOT claimed: that Pakistan is suppressing anything. The absence documented here is institutional capacity and interest, not concealment — a materially different charge from the one made about Indian institutions elsewhere on this platform.
- NOT claimed: that Pakistani archaeology is inactive. The Swat work is long-running and internationally respected. What is absent is ancient-DNA sequencing capacity.
- NOT claimed: that any specific Harappa material is held at any named institution abroad. That the 1940s excavations dispersed material is documented; the current location of specific collections has not been verified here and would need checking before anyone acts on it.
- NOT claimed: that a neutral laboratory would produce a different answer. It would produce a checkable one, which is the entire point.
What this page has not read
The page argues about access to material. Its own access to sources is the same kind of fact.