The Big Book of Yoga: The Yoga Family Treehouse (page 1 of 4) Yoga has been around for a long, long time. The earliest reliable evidence we have of Yoga being practiced in ancient India is a carving from the early Indus Valley settlement, Mohenjo-Daro, possibly dating back to 3300 BCE1. By way of comparison, Lao Tze, Socrates, and Buddha wouldn't be born until almost 3,000 years later. So in order to provide a truly comprehensive history of Yoga would entail the work of a lifetime (or lifetimes!). What follows instead is a brief timeline and "genealogy" of the major influences in Yoga going as far back as we have reliable documentation, which is a bit more than 2,000 years or so. (Much beyond that and we have to rely mostly on speculation based on archaeological evidence.) As always, the focus here is weighted towards the evolution of Hatha Yoga, specifically, although many of the earlier texts apply to all the various approaches to Yoga.
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