Digital Bangladesh

Islam arrived on the shores of Bengal in the late first millennium, brought largely by missionaries, Sufis and merchants from Middle East. Some experts have suggested that early Muslims, including Sa`d ibn Abi Waqqas (an uncle of the Prophet Muhammad), used Bengal as a transit point to travel to China on the Southern Silk Road.[45] The excavation of Abbasid Caliphate coins in Bangladesh indicate a strong trade network during the House of Wisdom Era in Baghdad, when Arab scientists absorbed pre-Islamic Indian and Greek discoveries. This gave rise to the Indo Arabic numerals. Writing in 1154, Al-Idrisi noted a busy shipping route between Chittagong and Basra. A Bengali diplomat presenting a giraffe at the Chinese imperial court in 1414 Subsequent Muslim conquest absorbed the culture and achievements of pre-Islamic Bengali civilization in the new Islamic polity. Muslims adopted indigenous customs and traditions, including in dress, food and way of life. This included the w...

Stone age tools found in the Greater Bengal region indicate human habitation for over 20,000 years. Remnants of Copper Age settlements date back 4,000 years. Ancient Bengal was settled by Austroasiatics, Tibeto-Burmans, Dravidians and Indo-Aryans in consecutive waves of migration.  Major urban settlements formed during the Iron Age in the middle of the first millennium BCE,  when the Northern Black Polished Ware culture developed in the Indian subcontinent. In 1879, Sir Alexander Cunningham identified the archaeological ruins of Mahasthangarh as the ancient city of Pundranagara, the capital of the Pundra Kingdom mentioned in the Rigveda. The Wari-Bateshwar ruins are regarded by archaeologists as the capital of an ancient janapada, one of the earliest city states in the subcontinent.[34] An indigenous currency of silver punched marked coins dating between 600 BCE and 400 BCE has been found at the site. Excavations of glass beads suggest the city had trading links wi...