5000-2000 BC Neolithic

During the early part of this period people across Asia began to live in permanent settlements and cultivate crops and animals. This began around 8500 BC in western Asia, 7000 BC in western Pakistan and China, 3000 BC in southeast Asia and 2800 BC in southern India. In Korea however, people continued to live by hunting and gathering until around 2000-1000 BC, and in Japan until 300 BC.

Although pottery was first made in China and Japan during the Palaeolithic period around 10,000 years ago, by 5000 BC it had developed across most of Asia, arriving in southeast Asia around 2000 BC.

The knowledge of how to work copper and later bronze (an alloy of bronze and tin) first developed in western Asia in around 4000 BC, spreading to southern Asia by around 3000 BC.

Towards the end of the period new material and agricultural technologies led to the development of larger and more distinctive civilisations in some areas of the region. Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) was unified under the Akkadian empire in around 2300 BC. In southern Asia around 2600-2500 BC smaller regional cultures merged into the Indus Civilisation. By about 2205 BC, according to tradition, the first ruling dynasty of China, the Xia, was founded.