Efforts to save Pakistan's rock carvings

Islamabad: An effort has been launched to save nearly 50,000 rock carvings and inscriptions dating back to the Stone Age era in Gilgit-Baltistan region of northern Pakistan, following reports that many of them were facing

defacement.

The inscriptions and carvings have either been defaced or are in danger of fading away because of exposure to nature's vagaries, experts said.

Concerns about saving the priceless carvings and inscriptions will be raised at an international conference on 'Rock art of northern Pakistan' to be held at the University of Heidelberg in collaboration with Islamabad's Quaid-i-Azam

University.

According to Taxila Institute of Ancient Civilisations' director Ashraf Khan, the inscriptions date back to three periods- pre-historic, Buddhist and

post-Buddhist.

"We hope that the conference would be able to grasp the attention of archaeologists around the world and they would take immediate measures for its preservation," Khan told The News daily.

There are about 150 sites across the world where such primordial arts exist in concentrations of more than 10,000 carvings.

The ones discovered in Gilgit-Baltistan - 50,000 rock carvings and 5,000 to 6,000 inscriptions in a dozen scripts - date back to the Stone Age and are among the world's largest epigraphical records.