ISLAMABAD              -           An old Buddhist temple discovered last year in Pakistan’s Barikot town has been featured in the Top 10 Discoveries of 2022 by the renowned Archaeology Magazine. Barikot is a town located in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province. It serves as an entrance town to the picturesque Swat Valley in KP province, where thousands of tourists flock to each year to vacation in the mountains. The Gandhara region makes up part of present-day northern Pakistan and northeast Afghanistan. The area is famous for its Gandhara style of art which is heavily influenced by classical Greek and Hellenistic traditions. This region in north-western Pakistan was a crossroads for the exchange of goods and culture among the civilizations of the Middle East, and Central Asia since the sixth century B.C. In its Top 10 Discoveries of 2022 section, Archaeology Magazine featured the old temple, discovered by archaeologist Luca Maria Olivieri of Ca’ Foscari University, Italy and his team in collaboration with the provincial department of archaeology and museums in December last year, saying that the monument dated back to at least as early as the end of the second century B.C., Arab News reported.