Further east in the Ganges valley there is evidence of small settlements of people in the transition stage between hunting and agriculture, using a variety of stone and copper implements and an inferior quality of ochre-colored pottery. These were presumably the people whom the Indo-Aryans met when they moved into the Ganges valley, since the Painted-Grey Ware associated (tentatively) with the Indo-Aryans has been found at some sites superimposed on levels containing the earlier ochre-colored ware.

The Deccan shows evidence of a microlithic industry - the making of tiny flint tools - in association later with chalcolithic culture where bronze and copper were used together with stone. This gave way in the first half of the first millennium B.C. to the superior technology of the Ganges Valley, as is apparent from the introduction of iron and a special type of pottery.- the north black polished ware - both of which are associated with the Aryan culture of the Ganges valley.

Megalithic culture prevailed in extreme south of India (Madras, Kerala and Mysore). This culture has close similarities with the Megalithic cultures of the Mediterranean and may have arrived in south India from western Asia, the earliest contact in what was to become a close relationship between the two areas which lasted till well into recent times.

The ethnic composition of the people involved in these various cultures was not identical. Their were six main races in the Indian sub-continent. The earliest was apparently the Negrito and this was followed by the Proto-Australoid, the Mogoloid, the Mediterranean, and later those associated with Aryan culture. There is evidence of Proto-Australoid, the Mediterranean, Alpine and Mongoloid in the skeletal remains at Harappan sites.