Balathal

Balathal is an archaeological site in Vallabhnagar tehsil, Udaipur district, 42 km from Udaipur city and 6 km from Vallabhnagar town. One of some ninety Ahar-Banas culture sites in the Banas basin, it was found by V. N. Misra in a 1962–63 survey and dug between 1994 and 2000 by Deccan College, Pune, and Rajasthan Vidyapeeth, Udaipur.

People lived here in two periods. In the Chalcolithic phase (3000–1500 B.C.) it was a fortified settlement with planned, many-roomed buildings, and its pottery points to exchange with other communities. After a gap of five to six centuries came an Early Historic settlement (500–200 B.C.) that used iron tools such as ploughs and sickles and grew two crops a year. Burials added two notable finds: an adult male with what is described as the earliest evidence of leprosy in the subcontinent, and a 2700-year-old skeleton seated cross-legged in jñāna mudrā, called the oldest skeletal evidence of yoga.