Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c7.73

c7.73

In summary, about 1000 B.C. or a little later, groups of simple farmers, not perhaps originally very numerous, infiltrated into the hill-jungles of north-eastern and eastern India, coming from the direction of Burma if not beyond. They were equipped with stone industries of Neolithic types familiar archaeologically as far afield as northern China; there already, however, the axe-makers may have had some knowledge of bronze, which is recorded historically to have been in use in the North well before 1000 B.C. In south-east Asia, as far as Malaya, the same stone equipment is liable to appear with or without associated metal, which may not be earlier there than the 4th or 3rd century B.C. Meanwhile stone axes, followed, as it seems, by the shouldered hoes, found their way into India via Burma; but to associate their arrival either with Austro-asiatic languages or with megaliths is to exceed the evidence. None of these stone implements has yet in India been associated stratigraphically with a megalith.