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History All Around the World [1st part] : India Cheat Sheet (DRAFT) by

I am a curious learner and learning about the history of all the world.. Thank you !

This is a draft cheat sheet. It is a work in progress and is not finished yet.

How India got its name ?

The name 'Bharata' is used as a design­ation for the country in their consti­tution refere­ncing the ancient mythol­ogical emperor, Bharata, whose story is told, in part, in the Indian epic Mahabh­arata. According to the writings known as the Puranas (relig­iou­s/h­ist­orical texts written down in the 5th century CE), Bharata conquered the whole subcon­tinent of India and ruled the land in peace and harmony.
The land was, therefore, known as Bharat­avarsha (`the subcon­tinent of Bharata'). Hominid activity in the Indian subcon­tinent stretches back over 250,000 years, and it is, therefore, one of the oldest inhabited regions on the planet.
Archae­olo­gical excava­tions have discovered artifacts used by early humans, including stone tools, which suggest an extremely early date for human habitation and technology in the area.
While the civili­zations of Mesopo­tamia and Egypt have long been recognized for their celebrated contri­butions to civili­zation, India has often been overlo­oked, especially in the West, though its history and culture is just as rich
The Indus Valley Civili­zation (c. 7000-c. 600 BCE) was among the greatest of the ancient world, covering more territory than either Egypt or Mesopo­tamia and producing an equally vibrant and progre­ssive culture.
It is the birthplace of four great world religions - Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism - as well as the philos­ophical school of Charvaka which influenced the develo­pment of scientific thought and inquiry
The inventions and innova­tions of the people of ancient India include many aspects of modern life taken for granted today including the flush toilet, drainage and sewer systems, public pools, mathem­atics, veterinary science, plastic surgery, board games, yoga and medita­tion, as well as many more.

Preh­istory Of India

The areas of presen­t-day India, Pakistan, and Nepal have provided archae­olo­gists and scholars with the richest sites of the most ancient pedigree.
The species Homo heidel­ber­gensis (a proto-­human who was an ancestor of modern Homo sapiens) inhabited the subcon­tinent of India centuries before humans migrated into the region known as Europe
Evidence of the existence of Homo heidel­ber­gensis was first discovered in Germany in 1907 and, since, further discov­eries have establ­ished fairly clear migration patterns of this species out of Africa.
Recogn­ition of the antiquity of their presence in India has been largely due to the fairly late archae­olo­gical interest in the area as, unlike work in Mesopo­tamia and Egypt, western excava­tions in India did not begin in earnest until the 1920s. Though the ancient city of Harappa was known to exist as early as 1829, its archae­olo­gical signif­icance was ignored and the later excava­tions corres­ponded to an interest in locating the probable sites referred to in the great Indian epics Mahabh­arata and Ramayana (both of the 5th or 4th centuries BCE) while ignoring the possib­ility of a much more ancient past for the region.
The village of Balathal (near Udaipur in Rajast­han), to cite only one example, illust­rates the antiquity of India's history as it dates to 4000 BCE. Balathal was not discovered until 1962 and excava­tions were not begun there until the 1990s CE. Even older is the Neolithic site of Mehrgarh, dated at c. 7000 BCE but showing evidence of even earlier habita­tion, which was not discovered until 1974.
Archae­olo­gical excava­tions in the past 50 years have dramat­ically changed the unders­tanding of India's past and, by extension, world history. A 4000-y­ear-old skeleton discovered at Balathal in 2009 provides the oldest evidence of leprosy in India. Prior to this find, leprosy was considered a much younger disease thought to have been carried from Africa to India at some point and then from India to Europe by the army of Alexander the Great following his death in 323 BCE.
It is now understood that signif­icant human activity was underway in India by the Holocene Period (10,000 years ago) and that many historical assump­tions, based upon earlier work in Egypt and Mesopo­tamia, need to be reviewed and revised.
The beginnings of the Vedic tradition in India, still practiced today, can now be dated, at least in part, to the indigenous people of ancient sites such as Balathal and their intera­ction and blending with the culture of Aryan migrants who arrived in the region between c. 2000-c. 1500 BCE, initiating the so-called Vedic Period (c. 1500-c.500 BCE) during which the Hindu scriptures known as the Vedas were committed to written form.