Lahuradewa

Lahuradewa (Lat. 26°46'12" N; Long. 82°56'59" E) is located in Sant Kabir Nagar District, in Sarayupar (Trans-Sarayu) region of the Upper Gangetic Plain in Uttar Pradesh state of India. The Sarayupar Plain is bounded by the Sarayu river in the west and south, Nepalese Terai in the north, and the Gandak River in the east. The site is noted to have been occupied as early as 9,000 BCE, it provides the oldest evidence of ceramics in Indian Subcontinent. This pottery belong to 'Mesolithic' ceramic tradition that developed among Vindhya hunter-gatherers during the Mesolithic period. Excavations reported earliest archaeological sites in the world for cultivation of rice, with Lahuradewa Period IA giving samples that were dated by AMS radiocarbon to the 7th millennium BCE. However, it is still debated whether the early rice grains were cultivated/domesticated or in fact simply gathered from wild rice. In addition, the claims of such early dating of rice cultivation at Lahuradewa have been questioned by historian Irfan Habib, who writes: "both the cultivated rice grain and its early date remain dubious, given the other evidence from the site". Habib has noted that four other carbon dates (out of five) from the earliest period of occupation at Lahuradewa were in the range of 4220 to 2879 BCE, and that the same archaeological levels also contained "steatite beads of the Harappan type!", i

Archaeological site data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).