"The story of Ancient India, the vast land that stretches from the Himalayas in the North to the Oceans far south, can be traced back to the 8th millennium BCE. Later, in the mid-3000s, the first cities of the great Indus or Harappan Civilization rose around the basin of the Indus river system, a little earlier than the Ancient Egyptians around their Nile, or the Sumerians between the Tigris and the Euphrates."--