Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c8.106

c8.106

Towards the south of that area, the microlithic culture lasted perhaps until the 3rd century B.C. Towards the north, but occasionally as far south as Amarāvatī on the Kistna river, it was replaced in the 5th or 4th century B.C. by a vigorous iron-using culture which seems, in the main, to have come from the Jumna-Ganges doāb. With the arrival of iron, the microliths went suddenly and almost completely out of use. (Rangpur may provide an exception, but much further work is needed at this site.) Shortly afterwards that typical Ganges product, the steel-like N.B.P. Ware, came in, preceded or accompanied here and there by the more local 'megalithic' Black-and-red Ware of which more will be said in the next chapter. These features, supplemented by native industries, mark the real beginning of civic life in central India. Houses were sometimes still of timber, but mud, mud-brick and baked brick now appear, and pottery-lined soakpits represent a new measure of urban sanitation. Fortifications are not normal, or at any rate have not been widely recognized. It would appear that an undisputed *Lebensraum* was still available for most of the overflow from the northern plains and for the newly-enlarged and elaborated communities of the Deccan.