Northeast India
History

The earliest settlers may have been Austroasiatic speakers from Southeast Asia, followed by Tibeto-Burman speakers from China, and by 500 BCE Indo-Aryan speakers from the Gangetic Plains as well as Kra–Dai speakers from southern Yunnan and Shan State. Due to the biodiversity and crop diversity of the region, archaeological researchers believe that early settlers of Northeast India had domesticated several important plants. Historians believe that the 100 BCE writings of Chinese explorer Zhang Qian indicate an early trade route via Northeast India. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea mentions a people called Sêsatai in the region, who produced malabathron (cinnamon-like aromatic leaves, dried and used as a flavouring agent), so prized in the old world. Ptolemy 's Geographia (2nd century CE) calls the region Kirrhadia, apparently after the Kirata population.

In the early historical period (most of the first millennium CE), Kamarupa straddled most of present-day Northeast India. Xuanzang, a travelling Chinese Buddhist monk, visited Kamarupa in the 7th century CE. He described the people as "short in stature and black-looking", whose speech differed a little from mid-India and who were of simple but violent disposition. He wrote that the people in Kamarupa knew of Sichuan, which lay to the kingdom's east beyond a treacherous mountain.

The northeastern states were established during the British Raj of the 19th and early 20th centuries, when they became relatively isolated from traditional trading partners such as Bhutan and Myanmar. Many of the peoples in present-day Mizoram, Meghalaya and Nagaland converted to Christianity under the influence of British (Welsh) missionaries.
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