rekordy: History of India

Evidence: 100 • authority: 72

Anatomically modern humans are estimated to have first arrived on the Indian subcontinent between 73,000 and 55,000 years ago. The earliest known human remains in South Asia date to 30,000 years ago. Sedentariness began in South Asia around 7000 BCE; by 4500 BCE, settled life had spread, and gradually evolved into the Indus Valley Civilisation, one of three early cradles of civilisation in the Old World, which flourished between 2500 BCE and 1900 BCE in present-day Pakistan and northwestern India. Early in the second millennium BCE, persistent drought caused the population of the Indus Valley to scatter from large urban centres to villages. Around 1800 - 1500 BCE the Indo-Aryan tribes moved…

Evidence: 45 • authority: 72

The peopling of India refers to the migration of Homo sapiens into the Indian subcontinent. Anatomically modern humans settled India in multiple waves of early migrations, over tens of millennia. The first migrants came with the Coastal Migration/Southern Dispersal 65,000 years ago, whereafter complex migrations within South and Southeast Asia took place. West Asian Iranian hunter-gatherers migrated to South Asia after the Last Glacial Period but before the onset of farming. Together with ancient South Asian hunter-gatherers they formed the population of the Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC). The population of the IVC was the result of mixing between Iranian hunter gatherers and Ancient Ances…

Evidence: 40 • authority: 72

The Stone Age was a broad prehistoric period during which stone was widely used to make stone tools with an edge, a point, or a percussion surface. The period lasted for roughly 3.4 million years and ended between 4000 BC and 2000 BC, with the advent of metalworking. Because of its enormous timescale, it encompasses 99% of human history. Though some simple metalworking of malleable metals, particularly the use of gold and copper for purposes of ornamentation, was known in the Stone Age, it is the melting and smelting of copper that marks the end of the Stone Age. In Western Asia, this occurred by about 3000 BC, when bronze became widespread. The term Bronze Age is used to describe the perio…

Evidence: 32 • authority: 72

The Lower Paleolithic (or Lower Palaeolithic) is the earliest subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. It spans the time from around 3.3 million years ago when the first evidence for stone tool production and use by hominins appears in the current archaeological record, until around 300,000 years ago, spanning the Oldowan (Mode 1) and Acheulean (Mode 2) lithics industries. In African archaeology, the time period roughly corresponds to the Early Stone Age, the earliest finds dating back to 3.3 million years ago, with Lomekwian stone tool technology, spanning Mode 1/Oldowan stone tool technology, which begins roughly 2.6 million years ago and ends between 400,000 and 250,000 years ago…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

India is the most populous country in the world, comprising approximately one-sixth of the world population. According to the United Nations' World Population Dashboard, India's population reached slightly over 1.428 billion on 1 July 2023, surpassing that of China. India remains a relatively young country, though it is undergoing a gradual demographic transition. As of 2024, the median age was approximately 29.8 years, compared to 40.2 in China. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) estimates that 68% of the population is between 15 and 64 years old, creating a potential "demographic dividend" where a large working-age population can drive economic growth. However, the number of child…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

The recent African origin of modern humans or the "Out of Africa" theory (OOA) holds that present-day humans outside Africa descend mainly from a single expansion of anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) from Africa about 70,000–50,000 years ago. It is the most widely accepted paleo-anthropological model of the geographic origin and early migration of the human species. This expansion follows the earlier expansions of hominins out of Africa, accomplished by Homo erectus and then Homo neanderthalensis. The model proposes a "single origin" of Homo sapiens in the taxonomic sense, precluding parallel evolution in other regions of traits considered anatomically modern, but not precluding mul…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

The history of Sri Lanka covers Sri Lanka and its surrounding regions of South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean. Prehistoric Sri Lanka goes back 125,000 years and possibly even as far back as 500,000 years. The earliest humans found in Sri Lanka date to Prehistoric times about 35,000 years ago. Little is known about the history before the Indo-Aryan Settlement in the 6th century BC. The earliest documents of the settlement on the Island and its early history are found in the national chronicles of the Mahāvamsa, Dipavamsa, and the Culavamsa. According to the Mahāvamsa, a chronicle written in Pāḷi, the preceding inhabitants of Sri Lanka were said to be Yakkhas and Nagas. Sinhalese h…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

The history of the Philippines dates from the earliest hominin activity in the archipelago at least by 709,000 years ago. Homo luzonensis, a species of archaic humans, was present on the island of Luzon at least by 134,000 years ago. The earliest known anatomically modern human was from Tabon Caves in Palawan dating about 47,000 years. Negrito groups were the first inhabitants to settle in the prehistoric Philippines. These were followed by Austroasiatics, Papuans, and Austronesians. By around 3000 BCE, seafaring Austronesians, who form the majority of the current population, migrated southward from Taiwan. Scholars generally believe that these ethnic and social groups eventually developed…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the world's seventh-largest country by area and its most populous. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast, it shares land borders with Pakistan to the west, China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the north, and Bangladesh and Myanmar to the east. In the Indian Ocean, India is near Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Modern humans arrived on the Indian subcontinent from Africa by 55,000 years ago. Settled life emerged in the western margins of the Indus river basin 9,000 years ago, evolving into the Indus Valley Civilisation of the third millennium BCE. By 1200…

Evidence: — • authority: 80

Earliest Dates of Microlithic Industries (42–25 ka) from West Bengal, Eastern India: New Light on Modern Human Occupation in the Indian Subcontinent

Evidence: — • authority: 92

Zooarchaeology of Managed, Captive, Tame, and Domestic Birds: Shifts in Human-Avian Relationships.. In this paper, I review archaeological evidence for shifting human-avian interactions. Many species of birds, altering their behavior in response to anthropogenic niche construction, experienced an increased encounter rate with humans. Intensification of this relationship led to management and domestication of some taxa. An examination of the methods zooarchaeologists employ to study this changing interaction illustrates the limitations of evidence. Art history, architecture, historical sources, evidence based on modern distributions, and DNA analysis fill in some gaps in our knowledge. It is…

Evidence: — • authority: 92

Nasal Gracilization in Sri Lankan Indigenous Vedda: Phenotypic Plasticity and Evolutionary Continuity.. Objectives The nasal complex, a climatically sensitive trait, offers insight into both long-term adaptation and short-term phenotypic plasticity. We test whether nasal morphology exhibits plasticity parallel to postcranial gracilization in response to subsistence shifts, using Sri Lanka's Indigenous Vedda as a model population. They represent a unique lineage with deep evolutionary continuity to the island's prehistoric inhabitants. While genetic studies affirm their deep ancestry, no systematic data exist on their nasal morphology-making this the first study of its kind in Sri Lanka. Mat…