The Indus cities were planned, drained and standardised more than four thousand years ago, and the subcontinent's later empires, faiths and sciences shaped half of Asia. These articles begin with the Indus Valley and follow the region's cities and rulers.
Nature, February 1, 2018: luminescence dated the end of the Acheulian at Attirampakkam, near Chennai, to 385 ± 64 ka; a Middle Paleolithic ran to 172 ka.
· 385,000 BCA calvaria found at Hathnora on the Narmada in 1982 was named Homo erectus narmadensis, called Homo sapiens in 1991 and dated by ESR in 2009.
· 160,000 BCAt Jwalapuram in Andhra Pradesh, Middle Paleolithic tools lie under and over the 74,000-year Toba ash. Papers from 2007 to 2025 argue what the eruption did
· 72,000 BCScience Advances, June 12, 2020: 130 bone points at Fa-Hien Lena cave, Sri Lanka, are sized and hafted like arrows, dated to 48,000 to 34,000 years ago.
· 46,000 BCSandstone shelters near Bhopal hold paintings from the Mesolithic to historic times, ordered by overlap, style and weathering; the paint itself is undated.
· 8000 BCMehrgarh, Pakistan: the oldest known lost-wax casting, molars drilled 7,500 to 9,000 years ago and cotton thread in a copper bead, before the Indus cities.
· 7000 BCAt Mohenjo-daro almost every house had a bathing area draining to covered street drains big enough for workmen to enter; only two brick toilets are known.
· 2500 BCPowder from 61 skeletal samples at the Rakhigarhi cemetery gave one usable ancient genome. Cell published it on September 5, 2019, with no Steppe ancestry.
· 2500 BCA 2026 Ministry of Culture post calls Dholavira's ten-sign gypsum inscription the world's oldest-known signboard, at a city ASI excavated under R.S. Bisht.
· 2500 BCThe Indus cities of 2600–1900 BC left no identified palace or royal tomb. J. M. Kenoyer proposes rule by competing elites and calls 'Great Bath' a guess.
· 2500 BCAbout 4,000 Indus texts survive, averaging five signs, with no bilingual text and no agreed language, so no decipherment has been accepted since the 1870s.
· 2500 BCS. R. Rao called the brick basin at Lothal the earliest dock in the world. Lawrence Leshnik measured its sill, channel and stones in 1968 and saw a tank.
· 2400 BCAfter the Kalinga war of about 261 BC, Ashoka had edicts cut on rocks and pillars from Kandahar to Karnataka. No one could read them again until 1837.
· 260 BCMarshall's 1918 Guide to Taxila describes three cities in one valley, Bhir Mound, Sirkap and Sirsukh, each dated by walls, coin finds and dig layers.
· 170 BCOne panel of Sanchi's south gateway names its makers, ivory-carvers from Vidisha. Some 800 other inscriptions name the monks, nuns and bankers who paid.
· 50 BCWheeler dug Arikamedu, near Pondicherry, in 1945, found Italian Arretine ware and dated it AD 20-50; later digs argued it began near the 2nd century BC.
· AD 50The East India Company ordered Ajanta's paintings copied in 1844. Gill's canvases burned at the Crystal Palace in 1866; Griffiths recopied them, 1873-1885.
· AD 470The Culavamsa says Kassapa fled to Sihagiri, walled it and built a lion staircase. The Central Cultural Fund dates his reign 477 to 495.
· AD 477Xuanzang recorded Nalanda's gatekeeper and debates; the ASI dug the site in 1915–37 and 1974–82; an Act of September 21, 2010 revived the name.
· AD 629Rajendra I's inscriptions list the ports his ships took, from Srivijaya to Kadaram, but give no reason for the war. Historians read the gap differently.
· 1025Angkor Wat was built in the reign of Suryavarman II (anointed 1113). A Chinese envoy of 1296 called it only the tomb of Lu Ban; later books credited Rome.
· 1113The Archaeological Survey of India dates the Qutb Minar to 1199; a metallurgist traces its courtyard iron pillar to Udayagiri, centuries earlier.
· 1199Minhaj's Tabaqat-i Nasiri records Iltutmish naming his daughter Raziyya heir over his sons. She ruled Delhi 1236-1240 and died near Kaithal in 1240.
· 1236The Archaeological Survey of India calls Konark's Sun Temple a stone chariot with twelve pairs of wheels and seven horses; its hall held sand until 2022.
· 1250
