Rock carvings found in many parts of Ladakh indicate that the area has been inhabited from Neolithic times. Ladakh's earliest inhabitants consisted of a mixed Indo-Aryan population of "Mons" and "Dards", who find mention in the works of Herodotus, and classical writers as well as the Indian Puranas. Around the 1st century, Ladakh was a part of the Kushan Empire. Buddhism spread into western Ladakh from Kashmir in the 2nd century. The 7th-century Buddhist traveller Xuanzang describes the region in his accounts. Xuanzang's term of Ladakh is "Mo-lo-so", which has been reconstructed by academics as "*Malasa", "*Marāsa", or "*Mrāsa", which is believed to have been the original name of the region.