User:Fowler&fowler/History of Pakistan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The history of Pakistan — which for the period preceding the nation's founding in 1947,[1] is a part of the histories of Afghanistan, India, and Iran — traces back to the earliest known human settlements in South Asia.[2] Spanning the western expanse of the Indian subcontinent and the eastern borderlands of the Iranian plateau, the region of present-day Pakistan served both as the fertile ground of some of South Asia's major civilizations and as the subcontinent's gateway to the Middle East and Central Asia.[3]
Pakistan is home to some of the most important sites of archaeology, including the earliest palaeolithic hominid site in South Asia in the Soan River valley.[4] Situated on the first coastal migration route of anatomically modern Homo sapiens out of Africa, the region was inhabited early by modern humans.[5] The 9,000-year history of village life in South Asia goes back to the Neolithic (7000 — 4300 BCE) site of Mehrgarh in Pakistan,[6] and the 5,000-year history of urban civilization in South Asia to the various sites of the Indus Valley Civilization, including Mohenjo Daro and Harappa.[7]
The ensuing millennia saw the region of present-day Pakistan absorb many influences — represented among others in the Vedic-Buddhist site of Taxila, the Greco-Buddhist site of Takht-i-Bahi, the 14th-century Islamic-Sindhi monuments of Thatta, and the 17th-century Mughal monuments of Lahore. From the late 18th century, the region was gradually appropriated by the British East India Company — resulting in 90 years of direct British rule, and ending with the creation of Pakistan in 1947, through the efforts, among others, of its future national poet Allama Iqbal and its founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Since then, the country has experienced both civilian-democratic and military rule, resulting in periods of significant economic and military growth as well those of instability; significant during the latter, was the secession, in 1971, of East Pakistan as the new nation of Bangladesh.