The Pyu city states (, ) were a group of city-states that existed from about the 2nd century BCE to the mid-11th century in present-day Upper Burma (Myanmar). The city-states were founded as part of the southward migration by the Tibeto-Burman-speaking Pyu people, the earliest inhabitants of Burma of whom records are extant. The thousand-year period, often referred to as the Pyu millennium, linked the Bronze Age to the beginning of the classical states period when the Pagan Kingdom emerged in the late 9th century.
The major Pyu city-states were all located in the three main irrigated regions of Upper Burma: the Mu River Valley, the Kyaukse plains and Minbu region, around the confluence of the Irrawaddy and Chindwin Rivers. Five major walled cities- Beikthano, Maingmaw, Binnaka, Hanlin, and Sri Ksetra- and several smaller towns have been excavated throughout the Irrawaddy River basin. Hanlin, founded in the 1st century AD, was the largest and most important city until around the 7th or 8th century when it was superseded by Sri Ksetra (near modern Pyay) at the southern edge of the Pyu Realm. Twice as large as Halin, Sri Ksetra was eventually the largest and most influential Pyu centre. Only the city-states of Halin, Beikthano and Sri Ksetra are designated as UNESCO World Heritage Sites, where the other sites can be added in the future for an extension nomination.
The Pyu realm was part of an overland trade route between China and India. The Pyu culture was heavily influenced by trade with India, importing Buddhism as well as other cultural, architectural and political concepts, which would have an enduring influence on the political organisation and culture of Burma. The Pyu calendar, based on the Buddhist calendar, later became the Burmese calendar. The Pyu script, based on the Brahmi script, may have been the source of the Burmese script used to write the Burmese language.
The millennium-old civilisation came crashing down in the 9th century when the city-states were destroyed by repeated invasions from the Kingdom of Nanzhao. The Bamar people set up a garrison town at Bagan (Pagan) at the confluence of the Irrawaddy and Chindwin Rivers. Pyu settlements remained in Upper Burma for the next three centuries but the Pyu gradually were absorbed into the expanding Pagan Kingdom. The Pyu language still existed until the late 12th century. By the 13th century, the Pyu had assumed the Burman ethnicity. The histories and legends of the Pyu were also incorporated to those of the Bamar.
Background
Based on limited archaeological evidence, it is inferred that the earliest cultures existed in Burma as early as 11,000 BCE, mainly in the central dry zone close to the Irrawaddy. The Anyathian, Burma's Stone Age, existed around the same time as the lower and middle Paleolithic eras in Europe. Three caves located near Taunggyi at the foothills of the Shan Hills have yielded Neolithic artefacts dated to 10,000–6000 BCE.
About 1500 BCE, people in the region were turning copper into bronze, growing rice, and domesticating chickens and pigs; they were among the first people in the world to do so. By 500 BCE, iron-working settlements emerged in an area south of present-day Mandalay. Bronze-decorated coffins and burial sites filled with earthenware remains have been excavated. Archaeological evidence at Samon River Valley south of Mandalay suggests rice-growing settlements that traded with China between 500 BCE and 200 CE.
In about the 2nd century BCE, the Tibeto-Burman-speaking Pyu people began to enter the Irrawaddy River Valley from present-day Yunnan using the Taping and Shweli Rivers. The original home of the Pyu is reconstructed to be Qinghai Lake, which is located in the present-day provinces of Qinghai and Gansu. The Pyu, the earliest inhabitants of Burma of whom records are extant, went on to found settlements throughout the plains region centred on the confluence of the Irrawaddy and Chindwin Rivers that has been inhabited since the Paleolithic. The Pyu realm was longer than wide, stretching from Sri Ksetra in the south to Halin in the north, Binnaka and Maingmaw to the east and probably Ayadawkye to the west. The Tang dynasty's records report 18 Pyu states, nine of which were walled cities, covering 298 districts.