South Asia milestones | Good News for Humankind

image for article on Mehrgarh settlement

Mehrgarh settlement establishes one of South Asia’s earliest farming cultures

By Peter Schulte / January 12, 0001 / Archive of Human Genius

Mehrgarh, a Neolithic village in the foothills of today’s Balochistan, Pakistan, was home to farmers growing wheat and herding cattle as early as the seventh millennium B.C.E. Its graves held turquoise beads and lapis lazuli sourced hundreds of miles away, and eleven drilled molars from nine adults — the oldest known dentistry on living people. A quiet reminder that South Asia shaped the Neolithic story from its earliest chapters.

Meditation silhouette, for article on Indus Valley meditation

Indus Valley wall art shows earliest known evidence of meditation

By Peter Schulte / January 9, 0001 / Archive of Human Genius

Meditation may reach back nearly 7,000 years, to figures painted on walls in the ancient Indus Valley sitting cross-legged, hands on knees, eyes half-closed. Written descriptions appear in Indian texts roughly 3,000 years old, a second thread of evidence. Scholars urge caution, but the posture remains strikingly familiar to practitioners today.

chandan chaurasia g aIBDpbsLA unsplash, for article on himalayan settlement

Early peoples settle the Bhutan Himalayas, leaving traces across fertile valleys

By Peter Schulte / January 9, 0001 / Archive of Human Genius

Bhutan’s earliest settlers made a home in the eastern Himalayas as far back as 2000 B.C.E., long before the kingdom had a name. Archaeological traces and later chronicles point to the Monpa, a Tibeto-Burman people whose nature-based spiritual practices were eventually woven into Himalayan Buddhism — a quiet reminder that mountain civilizations run deeper than written history.

Bhimbetka Cave Paintings, for article on Bhimbetka rock shelters

India’s oldest rock painting tradition takes shape at Bhimbetka

By Peter Schulte / January 5, 0001 / Archive of Human Genius

Bhimbetka’s rock shelters, deep in central India’s sandstone hills, hold paintings made across tens of thousands of years, with the earliest dating back at least 30,000. Inside more than 400 shelters, generation after generation painted dancers, hunters, animals, and rituals onto the same walls — a rare, continuous record of how early humans saw their world.

Sigiriya Rock, for article on early human settlement Sri Lanka

Early humans settle Sri Lanka in one of Asia’s oldest known occupations

By Peter Schulte / January 4, 0001 / Archive of Human Genius

Around 35,000 years ago, early humans crossed into what is now Sri Lanka, establishing one of Asia’s oldest confirmed human settlements. Lower sea levels made the passage from the Indian subcontinent far easier, and the island they found was lush with forests, rivers, and wildlife. Their descendants, the Vedda people, still live there today.