India. Biggest Democracy

India's ancient culture is not just a cliche. Apart from China, India is the only place in the world where everyday customs and beliefs go back in an unbroken line of history over 5,000 years.

The first of India's many different civilisations the north-west. By about 2800 BC, the Indus Valley people had a system of weights and measures. They made pottery and gold jewellery, built cities and traded abroad. Their civilisation lasted for about a thousand years.

The Aryans, who replaced them, were nomads. They were not as sophisticated as the Indus Valley people, but they laid the foundations of today's Hindu culture, including the caste system. This divides society up into rigid classes, from which people cannot escape. The simple, tribal society of the Aryans gradually evolved into four main kingdoms, spread across the plains of the Indus and Ganges rivers.

In 326 BC Alexander the Great's army invaded Alexander left, Chandragupta Maurya, who had fought the Greek invasion, established the first Indian empire, which extended over most of the north. His successors ruled during the golden age of the Gupta Empire which began in the fourth century AD. This was a high point of Indian art and learning. Gupta scholars invented decimal theory, wrote classical Sanskrit literature and built impressive Hindu temples. Other religions, particularly Buddhism, flourished. There were also Christians and Jains in India, before the arrival of the next major religious and cultural change.

“In the English-speaking World”