The Story of India

Episode 1

Beginnings

55 mins

At the 60th independence anniversary of the largest democracy, Michael tells how it entered the world stage. Some 75,000 years ago, curious men from Africa followed the shore to southern Indian, thriving as it was fertile. Some of its prehistorical 'cultural' heritage remains, e.g. in some of the Brahmin caste's Hindu traditions, as in some genes. 10,000 years later, agriculture started sedentarisation and cities, perhaps the oldest being present Pakistan's Harappa, which civilization peaked in the third millennium BC. Also Mohenjo-Dara, capital of a vast, 5,000,000 people empire until trade collapsed mysteriously. Circa 1,500 BC arose the Sanskrit language and script. Its Vedic scriptures support cultural import, including domesticated horses, from the West by Aryan immigration circa 1,750 BC to the Indus valley, via Central Asia, from (or as) Mazdeist Iran. The Mahabharata epic mythologizes their epic tribal and princely warfare and their new religion, Hindu polytheism.