The rest of India during this period was inhabited by Neolithic and heliolithic
farmers and Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. With the introduction of iron
technology about 3000 years ago, the focus of development shifted eastward into
the Indo-Gangetic divide and the Ganga valley. The location of the Mahabharata
epic, which is set in the beginning of the first millennium B.C., is the Indo
Gangetic divide and the upper Ganga-Yamuna doab (land between two rivers). Iron
technology enabled pioneering farmers to clear the dense and tangled forests of
the middle and lower Ganga plains. The focus of development now shifted further
eastward to eastern Uttar Pradesh and western Bihar which