Kalibangan cross-furrowed ploughed field
Campo arado con surcos cruzados de Kalibangan
- Date
- c. 2800 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Kalibangan, Hanumangarh, Rajasthan, India
- Credited to
- Pre-Harappan culture of Kalibangan
- Field
- Life & health
What it is
Fossilised field beneath a destruction layer with two sets of perpendicular furrows, the oldest excavated ploughed field in Asia. It shows mixed cultivation of two species in the same plot, a practice still used in Rajasthan.
It is not the world's oldest plough, but it is the oldest physical evidence of its use in South Asia; excavated by B. B. Lal in the 1960s.
What it led to
- intercropping (mustard and gram) in Indian agriculture
- agricultural intensification before the Harappan cities