The previous concept of a Dark Age in South Asian archaeology is no longer valid.... [we have a] cultural continuum stretching from perhaps 7000 BC into the early centuries AD...

Shaffer, Jim G., ‘The Indus Valley, Baluchistan, and Helmand Traditions : Neolithic through Bronze Age’, in Ehrich, Robert W., (ed.), Chronologies in Old World Archaeology, third edn, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago & London, vol. I, p. 459.in Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.