Ashmolean Eastern Art Online, Yousef Jameel Centre for Islamic and Asian Art

Widespread finds of stone artefacts suggest that humans have occupied the Indian subcontinent for at least a million years, first as hunter-gatherers and later as farmers. India’s first great urban civilization, contemporary with those of Mesopotamia and Egypt, flourished for several centuries around the Indus Valley region. This ancient civilization was first systematically explored by archaeologists in the 1920s. Its best known excavated sites are Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, extensive and well-planned cities built of brick. Many aspects of the Indus culture remain mysterious. Its written documents, often in the form of small stone seals, are few and brief. The Indus script still remains undeciphered today.

Indian archaeological finds of later periods