"During the period 2000–500 BCE, in terms of culture, many regions of the subcontinent transitioned from the Chalcolithic to the Iron Age. The Vedas, the oldest scriptures of Hinduism, were composed during this period,and historians have analysed these to posit a Vedic culture in the Punjab region and the upper Indo-Gangetic Plain." which is the present Pakistan. Also, "In the late Vedic period, around the 5th century BCE, the small chiefdoms of the Ganges Plain and the north-western regions had consolidated into 16 major oligarchies and monarchies that were known as the mahajanapadas. The emerging urbanisation and the orthodoxies of this age also created the religious reform movements of Buddhism and Jainism, both of which became independent religions"