3000 BC to 600 BC

Towns and lapis lazuli

Long before any empire, farming villages and towns grow in the river valleys. Mundigak, near Kandahar, is a sizeable town in the third millennium BC, and lapis lazuli mined in the mountains of Badakhshan is traded as far as Mesopotamia and Egypt. Around 2000 BC the Oxus civilization, known for its fortified sites, flourishes along the Amu Darya in the north.