India's second urbanisation
Cities return to the Ganges plain a thousand years after the Indus was abandoned.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 100 years
- Known to
- ± 50 years
- Era
- Iron Age, Holocene
From around 600 BCE fortified cities reappear across northern India — Kaushambi, Rajagriha, Varanasi, Pataliputra — supported by iron tools that make clearing the Gangetic forest practical, and by rice surpluses. Sixteen mahajanapadas, roughly translatable as great realms, compete across the plain, some monarchies and several republics governed by assemblies. Magadha eventually swallows the rest.