The 8500 years old Neolithic site at Mehrgarh, sheds light on the presence of hunting groups, recorded early as a settled culture existing in the riverine valleys. In around 2000 BC the Aryans started rushing through the various passes and steppes as far as Indo-Gangetic plains. This displaced the rich Dravidian culture pushing the aboriginals to the south of the Indian subcontinent. This was South India and the beginning of Hindu culture and a society that lasts till today.

Rig Veda the official text of the Indo Aryans, around 1500 BC, mentions Gandharan society. It is also mentioned in Avesta, the book of Zoroaster, as a rich province in the northwest of Pakistan that once touched Jalalabad in Afghanistan. Gandharan was rich culture. It came to its prominence with the acceptance of Buddhism as a predominant way of religious life. The richness of Gandharan culture is seen in the presence of a huge number of Buddhist monasteries. The first anthropomorphic creation of Buddha happened in Gandhara. It started a wave of the construction of monasteries. It also created a large number of rock arts with the abundantly available micaceous rock as the right medium for carving and depicting life of Buddha. The patronage of the state played an important role in the development of this art. Gandharan Art was highly influenced by Hellenic and Indian culture. The hellenic influence was introduced from the north of Afghanistan from the province of Bactria (Balkh) ruled by Indo-Greek dynasties who had greatly adopted local cultures but kept their Greek origin alive till they were overwhelmed by successive invaders.

Pakistan occupies an area of 881,913 square km. It is the 33rd largest nation by area in the world. It neighbours Afghanistan in the west and its tiny northern finger of the Wakhan corridor separates it by a few km across from Tajikistan. In the northeast, it borders with China, Iran in the southwest, and has a long border with India in the east.

Pakistan is an ethnic nation with diverse population of multilingual and multicultural racial groups and communities that developed with various invading armies down what it is today. Pakistan was part of Great Achaemenian Empire 6th century BC. After the removal of the Persian Empire, came the invasion of Macedonian army in 325 BC, under, Alexander the Great. He marched to assert his claim over the lost provinces of the Persian Empire. Soon after the death of Alexander, his successors succumbed to the ever-rising power of Mauryan rulers and in 305 BC, its ruler Chandragupta forced Seleucus Nicator to relinquish his vast territories of the eastern satraps.

Maurya rule is famous for when King Ashoka, the grandson of Chandragupta adopted the Buddhist way of life. He prompted work for the public welfare by promoting an era of peace in the region. This was the time when Buddhist sages came to Gandhara for the introduction of a new and simple way of life.

Bactrian Greeks were the next rulers dominating Hellenic culture and art. They were followed by the nomadic Scythians, and then Parathions and the emergence of many tutelary states.

The arrival of nomadic Kushanas from the northwest of China at the end of 1st century BC into northern Afghanistan saw a well-settled land that accepted them as a part of the population. Kushanas were converted to Buddhism which helped them develop a well-established rule by the 1st AD. Their adoption of Buddhism helped them rule in large parts of today’s Pakistan.

After the fall of the last of the Kushanas, the land was overrun by the ferocious, nomadic Huns who destroyed and depopulated the existing states. There was a revival of local Hindu dynasties but this came to an ultimate end with the arrival of Arab invaders in the 8th century who laid the foundation of Islam in the region.

In Persia, the Rashidoon caliphate swiftly took control of large territories from the waning power of the Sassanid dynasty. This resulted in the large-scale conversion to Islam in the region prompting the rise of local dynasties paying tribute to the caliph in Baghdad. This was the era of a power struggle between the ruling classes who now acted as independent Muslim rulers. These were mostly indigenous Turkic-Afghan ruling classes.

This was checked by the ransacking Mongols, who devastated and depopulated the land. But we see the rise of his great-grandson, Tamerlane whose invasion in the 13th century, laid the foundation of another powerful era. Then, under his successors and with the rise to power of his great-grandson, Babur, in 1525 marched out of Kabul to invade India.

His successful campaign in India laid the foundation of a powerful dynasty known in history as The Great Mughals who continued to rule India for the next two hundred years. The fracturing of Mughal rule started with infighting allowing the rise of Sikh power. They finally gave in to the English establishing them as masters of a rich colony.

The creation of Pakistan had already started during the World War period when efforts for creating an independent India were foreseen by a large section of India but the Muslims of India had set their own goal for an independent country of their own where they could live their lives according to the principles of Islam. These efforts bore fruits when the division of India was agreed and on 14th August 1947, the independent nation of Pakistan came into existence.