In the very first gallery on the ground floor of the National Museum in New Delhi, a small bronze statuette of a naked girl in what appears to be a dancing pose is displayed in a glass showcase. It was cast around 2500 BCE. Over thousands of years, humans living in the Stone Age made improvements to their stone implements and weapons. They may have discovered copper, silver, tin or gold but these metals in their pure state are soft and could not replace stone tools. The mixing of tin and copper to create the alloy, bronze, which is stronger than its individual components and stronger than stone, was the technological breakthrough that distinguished the Bronze Age. Bronze created new possibilities for human society and lifted civilization a notch upwards.

The statuette indicates that a Bronze Age Civilization existed in India 4,500 years ago, possibly the most advanced human civilization in the world of that ancient time. This is a forgotten period of Indian history which was only recently discovered. India in its subsequent history would have periods of achievement but it would not have the distinction of being the most advanced society in the world again.

The remains of the earliest Homo sapiens in South Asia were found in Sri Lanka and they date back to 34,000 years ago. While peninsular India has yielded numerous stone artefacts from the Old Stone Age (Palaeolithic Period), no such artefacts have been found in the Indo-Gangetic Valley possibly because this area was an uninhabitable marshland in those early days. As marshland became fertile riverine valleys, Homo sapiens descended from the Deccan to the Indo-Gangetic Valley. The life of the Palaeolithic Man was barely distinguishable from that of other animals. They lived as packs of hunter food-gatherers. With improvement in their ability to fashion stone, new tools like sharp stone arrowheads and knives were created, heralding the Middle Stone Age (Mesolithic Period).

Around 8000 BCE, in several regions around the world, as the Ice Age receded, human society entered the New Stone Age (Neolithic Period). The hallmark of the Neolithic Man was the domestication of plants. The advent of agriculture marks the origin of civilization.