Pakistan is known as a cradle of civilization. The Indus Civilization developed around 3,000 BC and the dates of the earlier Kot Diji cultures, of the pre-Indus period, approximately 3300-2800 BC and flourished for a period of about fifteen hundred years. There are nearly 4,000 specimens of a script from the Indus Valley Civilization carved on stone, fragments of pottery and other objects, however the Aryans, who arrived from Central Asia around 1,700 BC, displacing the Indus Civilization and bringing Hinduism to the region. 1200 years later, the Aryans yielded in turn to the armies of Cyrus the Great, and the Indus region became a part of his Achaemenid Persian Empire.