page_title: History of Afghanistan
section_title: Prehistory
hierarchical_section_title: History of Afghanistan / Prehistory
caption_attribution_description: English: Tents of Afghan nomads or Kuchis are common in the village of Muqur in Badghis province. Numbering in the millions throughout the country, Kuchi life traditionally depends on the trading of animal products such as meat, dairy and wool from their herds of sheep, goats and camels. (Photo ID: 288568)
context_page_description: The history of Afghanistan as a state began in 1747 with its establishment by Ahmad Shah Durrani. The written recorded history of the land presently constituting Afghanistan can be traced back to around 500 BCE when the area was under the Achaemenid Empire, although evidence indicates that an advanced degree of urbanized culture has existed in the land since between 3000 and 2000 BCE. Bactria dates back to 2500 BC. The Indus Valley Civilisation stretched up to large parts of Afghanistan in the north. Alexander the Great and his Macedonian army arrived at what is now Afghanistan in 330 BCE after the fall of the Achaemenid Empire during the Battle of Gaugamela. Since then, many empires have risen from Afghanistan, including the Greco-Bactrians, Kushans, Hephthalites, Saffarids, Samanids, Ghaznavids, Ghorids, Khaljis, Timurids, Mughals, Hotakis and Durranis.
  Afghanistan has been a strategically important location throughout history. The land served as "a gateway to India, impinging on the ancient Silk Road, which carried trade from the Mediterranean to China".
context_section_description: Excavations of prehistoric sites by Louis Dupree and others at Darra-e Kur in 1966 where 800 stone implements were recovered along with a fragment of Neanderthal right temporal bone, suggest that early humans were living in what is now Afghanistan at least 52,000 years ago. A cave called Kara Kamar contained Upper Paleolithic blades Carbon-14 dated at 34,000 years old. Farming communities in Afghanistan were among the earliest in the world. Artifacts indicate that the indigenous people were small farmers and herdsmen, very probably grouped into tribes, with small local kingdoms rising and falling through the ages. Urbanization may have begun as early as 3000 BCE. Zoroastrianism predominated as the religion in the area; even the modern Afghan solar calendar shows the influence of Zoroastrianism in the names of the months. Other religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism flourished later, leaving a major mark in the region. Gandhara is the name of an ancient kingdom from the Vedic period and its capital city located between the Hindukush and Sulaiman Mountains (mountains of Solomon), although Kandahar in modern times and the ancient Gandhara are not geographically identical.
  Early inhabitants, around 3000 BCE were likely to have been connected through culture and trade to neighboring civilizations like Jiroft and Tappeh Sialk and the Indus Valley Civilization. Urban civilization may have begun as early as 3000 BCE and it is possible that the early city of Mundigak (near Kandahar) was a colony of the nearby Indus Valley Civilization. The first known people were Indo-Iranians, but their date of arrival has been estimated widely from as early as about 3000 BCE to 1500 BCE. (For further detail see Indo-Aryan migration.)
caption: Tents of Afghan nomads in the northern Badghis province of Afghanistan. Early peasant farming villages came into existence in Afghanistan about 7,000 years ago.
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "BADGHIS PROVINCE, Afghanistan (June 03, 2010) \u2013 Tents of Afghan nomads or Kuchis are common in the village of Muqur in Badghis Province. Numbering in the millions throughout the country, Kuchi life traditionally depends on the trading of animal products such as meat, dairy and wool from their herds of sheep, goats and camels. (Photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Mark O\u2019Donald/Released)", "Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D300", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS4 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2010:06:10 15:16:51", "Image Artist": "Mark O'Donald", "Image ExifOffset": "656", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1322", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4928", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/640", "EXIF FNumber": "28/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Manual", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "250", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2010:06:03 14:19:14", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2010:06:03 14:19:14", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "1165241/125000", "EXIF ApertureValue": "2485427/500000", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF SubjectDistance": "67/20", "EXIF MeteringMode": "CenterWeightedAverage", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "24", "EXIF SubSecTime": "08", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "08", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "08", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3059", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2007", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CVAPattern": "[2, 0, 2, 0, 0, 1, 1, 2]", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Manual Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "36", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0"}