page_title: History of Tibet
section_title: Prehistory
hierarchical_section_title: History of Tibet / Prehistory
caption_attribution_description: Madhya pradesh, epoca candella, tirthankara rishabhanatha, x-xi sec
context_page_description: Tibetan history, as it has been recorded, is particularly focused on the history of Buddhism in Tibet. This is partly due to the pivotal role this religion has played in the development of Tibetan and Mongol cultures and partly because almost all native historians of the country were Buddhist monks.
context_section_description: Some archaeological data suggests archaic humans passed through Tibet at the time India was first inhabited, half a million years ago. Modern humans first inhabited the Tibetan Plateau at least twenty-one thousand years ago. This population was largely replaced around 3000 BC by Neolithic immigrants from northern China. However, there is a "partial genetic continuity between the Paleolithic inhabitants and the contemporary Tibetan populations". The vast majority of Tibetan maternal mtDNA components can trace their ancestry to both paleolithic and Neolithic during the mid-Holocene.
  Megalithic monuments dot the Tibetan Plateau and may have been used in ancestor worship. Prehistoric Iron Age hill forts and burial complexes have recently been found on the Tibetan Plateau, but the remote high altitude location makes archaeological research difficult.
caption: Rishabhanatha, the founder of Jainism attained  nirvana near Mount Kailash in Tibet.
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