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Archaeologists in Pakistan have unearth an highly rare hoard of fuzz coins , intend to be more than 2,000 years old , from the ruining of a Buddhist shrine build up at the even more ancient site of Mohenjo - Daro .
The coins and shrine — known as a stupa — are thought to date from the sentence of theKushan Empire , a mainly Buddhist civil order that rule the region from about the second century B.C. until the third 100 A.D. , and conquered the Greco - Bactrian kingdom established in Central Asia byAlexander the Great .
The hoard of copper coins have fused after centuries of corrosion into a single lump that weighs about 12 pounds (5.5 kg).
The shrine sits among thevast ruins at Mohenjo - Daroin what is now southeast Pakistan , which engagement to around 2600 B.C. and are from the ancientIndus Valley or Harappan civilization — one of theoldest civilizationsin the mankind .
" The tope was built on the top of abandoned ruins of Mohenjo - Daro after its diminution [ around ] 1,600 eld later , " archeologist and guideSheikh Javed Ali Sindhitold Live Science .
Sindhi was part of the team that unearth the coin hoard at Mohenjo - Daroearlier this monthduring a salvage excavation at the situation when a paries founder . The work was led by Syed Shakir Shah , who is the director of archaeology at the Mohenjo Daro site .
The coin hoard was found amid the ruins of a Buddhist shrine built above the remains of the ancient city more than 2,000 years ago.
The coin will now be cautiously cleaned at an archeological science laboratory , Sindhi said .
Kushan coins
The newfound coins are color green becausecopper corrodeswhen exposed to aura . Centuries of erosion have also fused the coins into a individual puffiness that count about 12 pounds ( 5.5 kilograms ) .
But a few coin have been found separately . The fused cache probably consisted of between 1,000 and 1,500 individual coins , Sindhi allege .
Some of the proscribed coins of the fused cache describe a bear pattern , which the researchers think is likely a depiction of a Kushan king , he say .
Archaeologists think the coins date from the period of the Kushan Empire, which ruled the region from about the second century B.C. until about the third century A.D.
The coin are the first artifacts unearth at the stupa ’s ruination since 1931 , when British archeologist Ernest MacKay unearthed more than 1,000 copper coins there , Sindhi said . Other coins were unwrap at the stupa in the 1920s .
These earlier discovery boast standardized word picture of a stand figure on one side , while the other side sometimes depicts the Hindu god Shiva — Buddhism originated in Hindu beliefs — and other symbols , Sindhi say .
Buddhist stupa
Mohenjo - Daro — its name may mean " hummock of the bushed " in the local Sindhi speech — was abandoned by about 1800 B.C. , along with other larger cities of the ancient Indus Valley Civilization .
research worker now thinkthe Harappan cities were established too far from the floodplains of the Indus River to survive in a drying climate , which led people to empty them for humble settlements in the Himalayan foothill .
In about A.D. 150 , the kings of the Kushan Empire are thought to have ordered the construction of the Buddhist stupa at Mohenjo - Daro . By that time the underlying ruins of the ancient metropolis were almost 2,000 years old , but it ’s not known how much of the ancient internet site would have been seeable at that time .
The coin hoard and the remains of a pottery vessel that held it were discovered during a salvage excavation of the site earlier this month.
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Although most of the coins are fused together and must be cleaned before they can be properly examined, some show a standing figure that archaeologists think represents the Kushan king who had them made.
The stupa was desert in about A.D. 500 . , possibly after being damaged in an seism or becauseBuddhismhad declined in influence in that area .
By that sentence , the Kushan Empire had fragmentize into independent kingdoms , which were first appropriate by the Sasanian Persians and afterward by invaders from the north who may have been associated withthe Huns .
Most of the ancient copper coins have fused together from corrosion, but a few of them were found separately.
