Читать книгу The Times History of the World - Richard Overy - Страница 15

With its long coastlines, mountain ranges and great river valleys fed by heavy seasonal rains, both the mainland and islands of southeast Asia provided a wealth of resources for early humankind. The diversity of flora and the abundance of metal ores allowed the growth of agricultural communities from at least the 4th millennium BC.

There seems little doubt that Homo erectus, the ancestor of all modern humans, was established in southeast Asia west of the biogeographical boundary “Wallace Line” more than one million years ago. But only Java, with its favourable geological conditions, has provided the skeletal evidence; elsewhere only discoveries of stone tools along river terraces and in some limestone fissure deposits reveal his passing.

ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE

Abundant archaeological evidence for modern human hunter-gatherers comes only in the Late Pleistocene, and mainly from sites in the limestone mountains: among the best known are Tham Khuong and Nguom in northern Vietnam, Lang Rongrien in Thailand, Leang Burung in Celebes, and Tabon Cave in the island of Palawan in the Philippines. From about 40,000 years ago a varied range of flake stone tools have been found in these caves, left by people who exploited a wide range of plants, small and large animals and molluscs. This way of life persisted until about the 6th millennium BC, with changes in the toolkit from flake tools to pebble choppers—the Hoabinhian tradition, called after the region in north Vietnam where it was first described.

From at least 6000 BC village settlements with evidence for rice-growing and pottery-making have been found in southern China, but perhaps because there has been relatively little research on early village sites in southeast Asia no settlements of rice farmers older than 3000 BC have been found in northern Vietnam and inland areas of Thailand, although Phung Nguyen in the Red River valley of Vietnam and Ban Chiang and Non Nok Tha in northern Thailand have all been well investigated. But the best evidence for late Neolithic occupation of southeast Asia comes from Khok Phanom Di, a 7m (23ft)-deep village mound occupying about 5ha (12 acres) near the coast southeast of modern-day Bangkok. Here over 150 burials and rich occupation layers dated to between 2000 and 1400 BC provide evidence of intensive exploitation of the sea and adjacent mangrove forests, and the beginnings of social differentiation.

METAL TECHNOLOGIES

From early in the 2nd millennium BC bronze tools were added to the existing stone, bone and antler toolkits in central and northeast Thailand and northern Vietnam, where we can refer to a true Bronze Age from about 1500 to 500 BC. The best known Bronze Age locations in Thailand are Ban Chiang and Ban Na Di in the northeast and Nil Kham Haeng near Lopburi in the Chao Phraya valley. In Vietnam more sites of this phase are known including Dong Dau, Viet Khe, Cau Chan, Trang Khen, Lang Vac and Dong Son on the Ma river where a rich burial ground has been excavated since the 1920s and given its name to the late Bronze Age culture of the region, best known for its great bronze drums. These are widely distributed from Yunnan in southwest China to Thailand, Malaya and many parts of Indonesia where they seem to have been traded in antiquity as objects of great prestige and magical power.

INFLUENCE FROM INDIA

In western and peninsular Thailand, Malaysia, Burma (Myanmar), Indonesia and the Philippines bronze metallurgy seems to have arrived only with iron after about 500 BC and to have been introduced from India as maritime trade routes were extended across the Bay of Bengal. In graves of this period are found glass and semi-precious stone jewellery of great aesthetic and technical sophistication together with iron tools and weapons, while in inland areas large moated-mound settlements and well laid-out cemeteries mark the emergence of powerful chiefdoms whose rulers, attracted by the rituals and prestige of Indian culture, soon adapted these to enhance their own status and power. Sites such as Ban Don Ta Phet, Khao Jamook, Khuan Lukpad, Ban Prasat, Non U-Loke, Ban Lum Khao and Ban Chieng Hian in Thailand, and Giong Ca Vo, Giong Phet, Doc Chua, Long Giao, Hang Gon and Hau Xa in southern and central Vietnam have all produced rich examples from this last stage of prehistoric culture on the mainland of southeast Asia, as have Plawangan and Lamongan in Java and Gilimanuk and Sembiran in Bali, where glass beads imported from south India and a potsherd with a Brahmi inscription serve to mark the end of prehistory.