Humans lived in the region that is now Burma as early as 11,000 years ago, but archeological evidence dates the first settlements at about 2500 BCE with cattle rearing and the production of bronze. By about 1500 BCE, ironworks were in existence in the Irrawaddy Valley but cities, and the emergence of city-states, probably did not occur until the early years of the Common era when advances in irrigation systems and the building of canals allowed for year-long agriculture and the consolidation of settlements, although local mythology dates back to c. 1000-600 BC with the immigration of some people from janapadas, ancient countries in modern-day India.

The first identifiable civilisation which inhabited modern-day Burma is that of the Mon. They settled in the Ayeyarwady River delta area and along the Taninthayi coast. The proto-Burmans, the Pyu, settled in and around Pyay, and in the northwestern Ayeyarwady valley. Traces of their presence can be found in Sri Ksetra near Pyay, and in Beikthano in central Burma. The Mon are believed to have begun migrating into the area in about 3000 BC, and their first kingdom Suvarṇabhūmi (pronounced Thu-wenna-bhu-mi by Myanmar people) was centred on the port city of Thaton, which itself was established around 300 BC.

Artifacts from the excavated site of Nyaung-gan help to reconstruct Bronze Age life in Burma and the more recent archaeological evidence at Samon Valley south of Mandalay suggests rice growing settlements between about 500 BC and 200 AD which traded with Qin and Han dynasty China.Dr Than Tun (History Professor, Mandalay University) The Story of Myanmar told in pictures

Timeline

750,000–275,000 years B.P. Lower Palaeolithic men (early Anyathian) live alone; the bank of the Ayeyawaddy river. 275,000–25,000 years B.P. Lower Palaeolithic men (late Anyathian) live along the bank of the Ayeyarwady river and central Burma 11,000 years B.P. Upper Palaeolithic men live in Badahlin caves which situated in Ywagan township in southern Shan States. 7000–2000 BCE. Neolithic men live in central Burma Kachin State, Shan States, Mon State, Taninthayi Division, and along the bank of the Chindwin and Ayeyarwady rivers. 1000–800 BCE. Bronze Age Culture 600–500 BCE. Iron Age Culture

Out of Africa Between 60,000 and 100,000 years ago, Homo sapiens came to Southeast Asia by migrating from Africa, known as the "Out of Africa" model.Peking Man . The History of Human Evolution. American Museum of Natural History. 23 April 2014.Keat Gin Ooi. Southeast Asia: A Historical Encyclopedia, from Angkor Wat to East Timor. ABC-CLIO; 1 January 2004. . p. 173–174. Homo sapiens are believed to have migrated through the Middle East on their way out of Africa about 100,000 years ago.The Arrival of Homo Sapiens. American Museum of Natural History. Retrieved 23 April 2014.Expansion of Homo Sapiens American Museum of Natural History. Retrieved 23 April 2014. Homo sapiens migration map, based upon DNA markers

Historical migration of human populations begins with the movement of Homo erectus out of Africa across Eurasia about a million years ago. Homo sapiens appear to have occupied all of Africa about 150,000 years ago, moved out of Africa 70,000 years ago, and had spread across Australia, Asia and Europe by 40,000 years. Early members of the genus Homo, i.e. Homo ergaster, Homo erectus and Homo heidelbergensis, migrated from Africa during the Early Pleistocene, possibly as a result of the operation of the Saharan pump, around 1.9 million years ago, and dispersed throughout most of the Old World, reaching as far as Southeast Asia. Modern humans, Homo sapiens, evolved in Africa up to 200,000 years ago and reached the Near East around 70 millennia ago. From the Near East, these populations spread east to South Asia by 50 millennia ago.

The Indo-European migration had variously been dated to the end of the Neolithic (Marija Gimbutas: Corded ware, Yamna, Kurgan), the early Neolithic (Colin Renfrew: Starčevo-Körös, Linearbandkeramic) and the late Palaeolithic (Marcel Otte, Paleolithic continuity theory).

The speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language are usually believed to have originated to the north of the Black Sea (today Eastern Ukraine and Southern Russia), and from there they gradually migrated into, and spread their language by cultural diffusion to, Anatolia, Europe, and Central Asia, Iran and South Asia starting from around the end of the Neolithic period (see Kurgan hypothesis).

Through China

Taiwan is the urheimat of the Austronesian languages. Archaeological evidencee.g., suggests that speakers of pre-Proto-Austronesian spread from the South Chinese mainland to Taiwan at some time around 8,000 years ago. Evidence from historical linguistics suggests that it is from this island that seafaring peoples migrated, perhaps in distinct waves separated by millennia, to the entire region encompassed by the Austronesian languages. It is believed that this migration began around 6,000 years ago."Language trees support the express-train sequence of Austronesian expansion" , Nature

The prehistory of Taiwan includes the late Paleolithic era. During that time, roughly 50,000 BC to 10,000 BC, people were already living in Taiwan."Archaeological Theory; Taiwan Seen As Ancient Pacific Rim" , Taiwan Journal published 19 November 1990, URL retrieved 3 June 2007Tainan County Government Information division website (autotranslated from Chinese) last updated 1 September 2006, URL retrieved 3 June 2007 The Pacific islands of Polynesia began to be colonized around 1300 BC, and completely colonized by around 900 AD. The descendants of Polynesians left Taiwan around 5200 years ago. Salones and Pashu (Malays of Burma) arrived southern Burma through this sea route.

When Han Chinese invaded Taiwan, the ethnic minorities (including Tibeto-Burmans, Shans and Mons of future Burma) shifted to the mainland. Some historians believe that those ethnic minorities first came to settle north of the Yellow river (Huang He) round about 2515 BC. The Chinese annals also mentioned about their presence in the middle basin of the Yellow River in 850 BC. But new emigrants coming from Central Asia later impelled those ethnic groups to move southwards to new fertile areas between the Yellow and Yangtze (Chang Jiang) rivers and then migrated down through the present day Yunnan and descended further down into Burma.

Sixteen kingdoms were a plethora of short-lived non-Chinese dynasties that came to rule the whole or parts of northern China in the 4th and 5th centuries. Many ethnic groups were involved, including ancestors of the Turks, Mongolians, and Tibetans.

Chinese history is that of a dynasty alternating between periods of political unity and disunity and occasionally becoming dominated by foreign Asian peoples, most of whom were assimilated into the Han Chinese population. Cultural and political influences from many parts of Asia, carried by successive waves of immigration, expansion, and assimilation, merged to create modern Chinese culture.

The History of Yunnan is related to Burma, can date back to Yuanmou Man, a Homo erectus fossil, the oldest known hominid fossil in China. By the Neolithic period, there were human settlements in the area of Lake Dian. These people used stone tools and constructed simple wooden structures. Yunnan's location in the southwesternmost corner of China and its peoples have the strong ethnic identities are due to cultural and political influences from Burma. In 109 BC, Emperor Wu sent General Guo Chang (郭昌) south to Yunnan, establishing Yizhou commandery and 24 subordinate counties. The commandery seat was at Dianchi county (present day Jinning 晋宁). Another county was called "Yunnan", probably the first use of the name. To expand the burgeoning trade with Burma and India. Anthropologists have determined that these people were related to the people now known as the Tai. They lived in tribal congregations, sometimes led by exile Chinese. In the Records of the Grand Historian, Zhang Qian (died 113 BC) and Sima Qian (145–90 BC) make references to "Shendu", which may have been referring to the Indus Valley (the Sindh province in modern Pakistan), originally known as "Sindhu" in Sanskrit. When Yunnan was annexed by the Han Dynasty, Chinese authorities also reported a Shendu" (Indian) community living in the area.Tan Chung (1998). A Sino-Indian Perspective for India-China Understanding The Mongols established regular and tight administrative control over Yunnan. In 1253 Möngke Khan of the Mongol Empire dispatched the prince Kublai to take Yunnan. The Mongols swept away numerous native regimes, including the leading Dali kingdom. Later Yunnan became one of the ten provinces set up by Kubilai Khan. Kublai Khan appointed Turkmen Sayyid Ajjal Shams al-Din Omar governor in Yunnan in 1273.John Man Kublai Khan, p.80

History of Tibet is also related to prehistoric Burma. It is situated between the two ancient civilizations of China and India, separated from the former by the mountain ranges to the east of the Tibetan Plateau and from the latter by the towering Himalayas. Tibet is nicknamed "the roof of the world" or "the land of snows". The Tibetan language and its dialects are classified as members of the Tibeto-Burman language family. Humans inhabited the Tibetan Plateau at least twenty one thousand years ago. This population was largely replaced around 3,000 BP by Neolithic immigrants from northern China. However, there is a "partial genetic continuity between the Paleolithic inhabitants and the contemporary Tibetan populations". Some archaeological data suggests humans may have passed through Tibet at the time India was first inhabited, half a million years ago.Laird 2006, pp. 114–117 The first documented contact between the Tibetans and the Mongols occurred when Genghis Khan met Tsangpa Dunkhurwa (Gtsang pa Dung khur ba) and six of his disciples, probably in the Tangut empire, in 1215.Petech, L. Central Tibet and The Mongols. (Serie Orientale Roma 65). Rome: Instituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente 1990: 6. Shakabpa, 61.

Through India

Paleolithic sites have been discovered in Pothohar near Pakistan's capital Islamabad, with the stone tools of the Soan Culture. In ancient Gandhara, near Islamabad, evidence of cave dwellers dated 15,000 years ago has been discovered at Mardan.

The major cities of the Indus Valley civilization, such as Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, date back to around 3300 BC, and represent some of the largest human habitations of the ancient world. It is believed that the migration in and out of India began around 6,000 years ago. Indo-Aryan migration to and within Northern India is consequently presumed to have taken place in the Middle to Late Bronze Age, contemporary to the Late Harappan phase in India (c. 1700 to 1300 BC). From 180 BC, a series of invasions from Central Asia followed, including those led by the Indo-Greeks, Indo-Scythians, Indo-Parthians and Kushans in the north-western Indian subcontinent.The appearance of Indo-Aryan speakers , Encyclopædia BritannicaGenetic Evidence on the Origins of Indian Caste Populations – Bamshad et al. 11 (6): 994 , Genome Research The word "India" is derived from the Indus River. In ancient times, "India" initially referred to the region of modern-day Pakistan along the Indus river, but by 300 BC, Greek writers like Megasthenes applied the term to the entire subcontinent.:Henry Yule: . In Hobson-Jobson: A glossary of colloquial Anglo-Indian words and phrases, and of kindred terms, etymological, historical, geographical and discursive. New ed. edited by William Crooke, B.A. London: J. Murray, 1903)