7000-2500 BC Neolithic

By 7000 BC communities in western Pakistan were living in permanent settlements and beginning to supplement hunting and gathering with farming. At sites such as Mehrgarh (Baluchistan province, Pakistan), which was continuously inhabited from 7000 BC to around 2500 BC, the main crops and animals (barley, sheep, goat, and cattle) were domesticated from indigenous wild species rather than introduced from elsewhere. The inhabitants also cultivated wheat, collected fruits and hunted game. They lived in multi-roomed mud-brick structures, made ornaments and figurines out of sea shell, stone and copper, and buried their dead in a nearby cemetery.

Farming occurred later elsewhere in South Asia. In southern India, where the Neolithic period is around 2800 BC–around 1200-1000 BC, farming focused on millets and pulses, with limited evidence for wheat, barley, cotton and linseed. Cattle were herded, and a characteristic feature of the Neolithic in this area is vast ash-mounds created by the repeated heaping and burning of dung.

During the 4th and early 3rd millennia, small farming settlements in an area stretching from western Pakistan to northern India began to grow in size. A number of regional styles of material culture appeared and evidence for full-time craft specialisation, including bronze-working, became more common. Around 2600-2500 BC these regional cultures coalesced into a single entity, the Indus Civilisation.