Some history of Australia from 4000-1BC

Uluru in central Australia

This post will look at Australian history from around 4000BC to 1BC. These dates are very arbitrary and I will be describing some things that come before this time to give context and, due to the nature of archaeology, describing some things that come after this time period. I normally start by stressing that I am not an expert in the subject, but in the case of Australian history I’m not sure I even deserve to be described as an amateur. I knew almost nothing of Australian history before beginning to research this blog. Needless to say, all my thoughts here should be treated with extreme caution. This is the work of a new amateur who has tried to find sources online. In many cases the sources are unclear or defective. It is not that Australian history is under-studied per se. But there are many questions that have been asked about history in other regions that do not seem to have been asked here.

The region that I will be looking at covers the island continent of Australia itself, the nearby large island of Tasmania, and the Torres Strait Islands between northern Australia and New Guinea. While nowadays New Zealand and Australia are often looked at together, at this point in history New Zealand was uninhabited. The Maori settlers would not arrive until later, so we will omit New Zealand from this blog.

Near Lake Mungo

All history can be culturally and ethnically tense. If a non-Irish person studies the Famine in Ireland, their conclusions may cause resentment among Irish people. Likewise, because the history of Australia in this time is by definition the history of the Aboriginal peoples of Australia, conclusions drawn by outsiders may cause offence. The Aboriginal community in Australia was devastated by the arrival of the Europeans and there was officially mandated persecution of this community within living memory. Even when the Europeans tried to help the Aboriginal peoples, they usually did so in such a way as to cause far more harm than good.

The Aboriginal community today is still facing discrimination and major social problems caused by their disadvantageous position in Australian society. To sum up, there is a justified distrust of outsiders, including archaeologists, within the Aboriginal community and this has led to less archaeological work than may otherwise have taken place. The archaeological community and the Aboriginal people will have to work together to lay down guidelines and best practices to allow the study of history to continue in a way that does not do further harm to the community.

Australia had no records prior to the arrival of the Europeans. It does not seem to have even been written about (there may be some exceptions in later Indonesian text). This makes the period that we are looking at technically “before history” or pre-history. The extraordinary oral traditions of the Aboriginal peoples allow us to make some use of oral history, but this is not easy to do. The primary sources of the information in this blog is from archaeology with a smattering of historical linguistics and genetics thrown in.

According to the best guess by archaeologists Australia was inhabited perhaps 50,000-60,000 years ago. The lowest date on the current level of knowledge would be 40,000 years, as remains from Lake Mungo have been dated to this time. Human remains have been found, showing deliberate burial and with red ochre being used to decorate the dead. As an aside, I find it interesting that red ochre would be used at so many different times and places to decorate the dead. The Yamna culture from the Pontic steppe used red ochre, as did the Chinchorro peoples of the Andes and here we see the early Aboriginal cultures using this. It probably is just convergent cultural evolution, but it is interesting to see.

The Aboriginal peoples seem to have gained some unique genetic traits which seem to allow a greater than average tolerance to extremes of cold and heat. This is useful in Australia, which is a country of extremes. This would also affect archaeology however, as a culture whose inhabitants could survive great extremes of cold and heat might have less need to build shelters and thus would show up less in the archaeological record.

Torres Strait Islands

It is unclear how the Aboriginal peoples reached Australia. Australia and New Guinea form part of a large continental shelf called Sahul. While now the two countries are widely separated by the Torres Strait, during glacial maximums, when the ice-sheets were at their highest, the strait could be crossed. Perhaps the people at the time had already used boats (this is possible as Sahul is separated from the neighbouring plates by deep fault lines that would always have water in them regardless of ice-ages. But once Sahul had been reached it may have been possible to move from the coast of New Guinea to the northern coast of Australia without boats.

After the horrendous 2004 earthquake and subsequent tsunami in the Indian Ocean, some scholars speculated that coastal peoples could have been swept up what are now the islands of Indonesia and dropped on the coast of Australia. It has to be admitted that this is theoretically possible and it would allow reaching Australia at a very early date without the use of boats or land bridges but one would have to assume that only a very few would be swept over and this would lead to an extreme genetic bottleneck (as the Aboriginal communities would be primarily descended from just a handful of individuals). This does not appear to be the case so, to my knowledge, tsunami diffusion remains no more than an interesting speculation.

Reconstruction of a Diprotodon

However the Aboriginal peoples reached Australia, they would have found a strange continent before them. The centre of the continent was a series of forbidding deserts with wild extremes of heat and cold. The flora and fauna had developed for time out of mind in isolation from the rest of the world. Giant marsupials had become the dominant life-forms on the continent, with the giant Diprotodon being the largest marsupial to ever exist. It is hard to imagine an animal related to the koala as a giant creature roughly the size of a rhinoceros but these, and marsupial carnivores similar to the thylacine, roamed the vast lands of Australia.

When the humans first arrived the creatures of Australia may not have paid them any heed. Humans are relatively small compared to creatures such as the Diprotodon and may not have been considered a threat. However, humans would have quickly made their presence known and the large marsupials of Australia would have had to adapt to this new threat. About 45,000 years ago the largest creatures of the Australian megafauna seem to have gone extinct. It is not clear that humans are directly responsible, but it seems likely that they played a part. Humans would change environments to suit themselves, would have competed for resources and would occasionally have killed large creatures when they could. When an ice-age or dry period would arrive this competition from humans could become deadly to other animals and the most likely scenario is that the large creatures went extinct because of the presence of humans, although not necessarily because humans hunted them to extinction.

There is the possibility that an Aboriginal legend about a water spirit called a bunyip, which inhabited the waters of the Murray River, and would catch and kill humans that went down to the water, is an oral tradition remembering the Diprotodon, which like hippos, may have been deadly to humans without being explicitly carnivorous. If this is the case then either the dates for the extinction of the Diprotodon are in error, with some surviving in refuges, or the Australian oral tradition is the most enduring in the world, as no other culture to my knowledge has a folk memory that would endure for over forty-thousand years. But more work is needed. It is quite possible that the bunyip and the Diprotodon have nothing whatsoever to do with each other.

As the prehistoric peoples of Australia spread out throughout the continent they inhabited what is now the southern island of Tasmania, which would then have been connected to the mainland. If the seas were much lower at various stages, many crucial Aboriginal sites may now be under water, as humans seem to have often spread along the coastal regions.

Bradshaw cave paintings (much later than the Gabarnmung
cave paintings)

Around 28,000 years ago, in the northern regions of Australia, the Gabarnmung caves were decorated with the oldest known cave art in Australia. This is considerably older than the dates usually given to the Lascaux paintings in present-day France.

Around 20,000 years ago, the last Glacial Maximum began. This may not have directly affected Australia but it would have made the climate far more arid and dry. This destruction of hunting grounds would have forced the inhabitants to flee to small areas that still had regular supplies of water and game. These are known as Ice Age refugia, with an example being the Lawn Hill Gorge site in present-day Queensland.

When the glaciers receded and the seas rose again, Tasmania was cut off for the last time from Australia, probably around 10,000BC. This would have also cut Australia off from the north, with the Torres Strait land bridge now simply existing as a chain of low islands between the lands of New Guinea and Australia.

Around this time the first securely attested boomerang was found, in Wyrie Swamp in southern Australia. While we sometimes think of the boomerang as a uniquely Australian tool it must be remembered that boomerangs were also used outside Australia and that not all Aboriginal peoples used boomerangs.

Around 9,000BC a stone alignment was made at Wurdi Youang in what is now Victoria. It is sometimes described as a circle but I find it more closely resembles a tear drop formation. It may possibly have been used as an astronomical tool, which is extremely interesting, as this would be one of the earliest astronomical observatories in the world if this is the case.

Sydney Rock Engraving

So, having given some account of the habitation and subsequent history of Australia, to give context to what will follow, we begin looking at the time period from 4000BC to 1BC. Around 4000BC the Sydney Rock Engravings were made. These were petroglyphs, pictures drawn upon rock, in the south-eastern region of Australia. Around 1500 of these are made, but there may have once been many more. Some of them may be much older, but at least some are from this period. As there were no metal tools, the engraving were difficult to make requiring some drilling into the softer rock and then extending lines between the points. Over the centuries and millennia the grooves would be deepened in ceremonies. It is not clear exactly what the purpose of the carvings were. The most frequent carvings were of a human foot or a fish.

Linguistic Map of Australia
The yellow regions show Pama-Nyungan languages

Around 3500BC the wet season seems to have been disrupted. This may have had something to do with the earlier 5.9 kiloyear event that brought climate change to Europe and Africa and contributed to the drying of the Sahara or it might be a completely unrelated event. Regardless it seems to have been involved in the drying out of the continent. A vast drought lasting centuries would have placed great stress on the peoples of the region and caused many groups to die out.

Around 3000BC the Proto-Pama-Nyungan language would have been spoken. This is the language family that covers by far the most territory in Australia. Linguistically the northern coast of Australia has many different language families, while the entire southern region now speaks Pama-Nyungan languages (Pama-Nyungan would be analogous to Indo-European). It is unclear where Proto-Pama-Nyungan was first spoken and how it came to dominate the lands, but I suspect that the Pama-Nyungan speakers had found some way of adapting to the increased aridity of the land. This would have allowed them to expand their territory in regions that others may have found uninhabitable. The increased ability to survive may have seen other groups adopt the cultural practices of the Pama-Nyungan speakers, including their languages. This is speculation on my part however. The mechanism of expansion of this language is not fully understood.

Crater at the Henbury Meteorite Conservation Reserve

Around 2700BC a meteorite crashed into the land not far from what is present-day Alice Springs in Central Australia. The impact would have been akin to a nuclear explosion and carved out a number of craters in what is now known as the Henbury Meteorites Conservation Reserve. To this day the Aboriginal peoples of the region speak of a fire-devil attacking the land and carving giant holes. This is an oral preservation of the meteorite event and yet another testimony to the longevity of the Australian Aboriginal oral tradition.

Around 2000BC the rains seem to have returned to a more normal pattern. The end of the dry period would have allowed the land to bear more plants, support more wildlife and thus support more people. The Bradshaw rock paintings in north-western Australia seem to have stopped being produced around this time and a different style, the Wandjina style of paintings, were used in its stead.

Wandjina Cave paintings

The tools used by the Aboriginal peoples shift around this time as well. The heavier stone implements were replaced by what is known as the Australian Small Tool Tradition. This included Bondi Points, Pirri Points and Tula Adzes, all of which appear to be technological advances. It is probable that these were natively developed, but the return of a wetter climate seems to have brought renewed contact between Australia and islands to the north. The dingo was probably introduced from Sulawesi around this time and it is possible that the Melanesian inhabitants of the Torres Strait Islands came to the region at this time, although this is unknown.

There are theories that the dingo is related to the Pariah dog in India and that there were Indian sailors who reached Australia. This is possible, as the Indus Valley Civilisation was flourishing at this time and was trading with Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf. But it is more likely that the dingo is related to the Singing Dog of New Guinea rather than the Pariah dog. Further research is needed but regardless, around this time dingoes appear in Australia. Dingoes were primarily wild, but some Aboriginal tribes domesticated them to some extent. This was the only domesticated animal on the Australian continent and the arrival of the dingo threatened the thylacine, which now had competition for that ecological niche.

Dingo

At some point the Aboriginal communities along the coasts began to develop towards agriculture. They did not perhaps develop full agriculture but there were definite practices of replanting gathered foods and the use of fire to terraform lands and regenerate the productivity in the soil. Certain areas saw semi-permanent settlements. Agriculture may indeed be too strong a term, but it is fair to say that the Aboriginal peoples were at least proto-agricultural. They may have resembled the people of Watson’s Brake in North America, where a hunter-gatherer culture could nevertheless maintain a steady enough source of food to establish permanent settlements. Or perhaps the Natufians of the Levant could be used as examples of similar behaviour, where they engaged in the preparation of grains long before they engaged in full farming practices. Whatever the case, not all Aboriginal societies engaged in these practices, as most of the inland regions were too arid to rely on anything other than hunting and gathering.

There is not much more that I can say about the period. Around two millennia ago, (circa 1BC) the thylacine went extinct in Australia, probably due to competition from the dingo, but survived in Tasmania, which did not have dingoes. I am sure that there is much, much more that can and should be said about Australian history but I do not know enough to confidently say more so I will leave the account here. Hopefully this gives at least an introduction to the history of the Australian continent and gives context to what general trends were happening here when we are discussing the rest of the world.

Some South American history from 4000-2000BC

Tierra del Fuego in Argentina

This is a post about South American history from 4000-2000BC. Please remember that I am not an expert on this time period at all and there is much that is still unknown and being discovered by archaeologists, but the broad outlines of what I will describe here will hopefully be mostly correct. The dates presented here will be very broad estimates and may well be wildly off. This is a time before writing in this part of the world so the main sources will be entirely archaeological. While oral history is important, this particular time period is too far in the past for oral history to be useful here.

For the purposes of this blog, South America will comprise of the continent of South America, excluding the islands of the Caribbean, which have been dealt with briefly in the blog post about the history of North America.

As with North America, prior to the year 4000BC the majority of South America was inhabited. Even the wilds of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego seem to have been reached by humans quite swiftly upon the initial arrival in the Americas.

The exact date for the arrival of humans in the Americas is a mystery, but most agree that there was an arrival around 10,000BC where the most recent glacial maximum had lowered the sea levels to allow a land bridge to emerge in the Bering Strait. This connected North America and Asia and allowed for small groups of foragers to cross. There may have been earlier settlements but it is unclear. The group that arrived around 10,000BC was referred to as the Clovis culture (named after their flint weapons that were first found in the city of Clovis in the state of New Mexico in the United States). Within around a millennia humanity had spread all the way down to the southern tip of South America. The large mammals that had lived in the Americas disappeared, possibly because the humans hunted them, but possibly due to the pressure of climate change, combined with food competition from humans.

Cueva de las Manos in Argentina

Around 7000BC in a cave in southern Argentina, cave-dwelling hunter-gatherers would place their hands against the wall of the cave, known as Cueva de las Manos, and blow a type of paint over the hands, leaving an imprint that would last for millennia. Humans using art to say to future generations that they were there.

The original inhabitants of the Americas were hunter-gatherers, but as the populations expanded and the larger animals disappeared, it would seem that the dwellers in the warmer climates began to rely more on gathering food. Some foodstuffs were cared for and replanted and gradually this turned into gardening and from gardening to agriculture. Many of the main crops of the Americas, such as maize and beans, were domesticated in Mexico, but some, such as cotton and the potato, seem to have been independently domesticated in the area that is now known as Peru.

The guinea pig was domesticated by the inhabitants of the Andes, probably as a source of meat rather than because they are cute. Around this time the alpaca and the llama were also domesticated. These were primarily useful for the meat and for their wool. While it is possible for llamas to carry loads, their capacity is quite limited in comparison to a horse or a camel.

Pottery was first developed in the Americas in the Amazon Basin, possibly around 5500BC. There are pottery items from Guyana that appear shortly after this time. Pottery appears to have slowly spread northwards to Colombia, where it is particularly evident at the San Jacinto site. However, the later traditions of elaborate pottery making had not yet developed. These items were not widely used as of yet and these time periods are often referred to as aceramic, meaning, “Without pottery”, or pre-ceramic. From Colombia pottery would spread both north and south, into Mesoamerica and Ecuador and from Ecuador to Peru.

Chinchorro Mummy

The Chinchorro culture, spanning the northern regions of Chile and the southern regions of Peru, is also of interest. It predates the time period that we are looking at and possibly goes back to 7000BC. This was a fishing culture that managed to survive in the extremely arid region of the Atacama Desert by fishing in the coastal waters. The dryness of the land meant that sometimes the dead members of this culture would be preserved. The natural dessication and high salt content of the soil would preserve the tissue of the deceased in a natural mummification process. This happens in many dry regions of the world and is unusual, but not unprecedented. Taking advantage of this process, the Chinchorro people buried their dead with ritual goods and allowed nature to take its course. The Chinchorro people may have been the first people in the world to attempt to preserve and mummify their dead.

Later, around 5000BC, the Chinchorro people attempted to ensure that their dead would be mummified by removing the soft tissue of a person and then reassembling it, placing the skin (or replacement seal skin) back on top of ashen paste to ensure that the likeness of the dead was preserved. The skin was then painted black. The resulting mummy was now mostly ash rather than human and I wonder if perhaps a different term rather than mummy would be more accurate. The care shown to the dead would perhaps suggest that the Chinchorro worshipped their ancestors, but this is speculative. Plenty of cultures treat their dead elaborately, but do not worship them. By the year 4000BC the Chinchorro were still using the black mummy technique and would continue to do so for around a thousand years.

Around 3700 ceramics were found at Puerto Hormiga in Colombia, showing the adoption of the new technology. Pottery was still not widely used in this region at the time however.

Archaeological site in the Casma Valley

Around the year 3500BC the first signs of urbanisation appear in South America. The site at Huaricanga was inhabited from this period by people of a culture that is sometimes referred to as the Norte Chico culture (meaning “Little North” in Peru; confusingly there is also a separate Norte Chico region in Chile). The site at Huaricanga was situated in a dry region, but archaeology reveals that they were using crops to supplement their diet of fish. The combination of nascent agriculture combined with sea fishing appears to have sustained the people of the Norte Chico culture. The early site at Huaricanga was small, but may not have been the only site occupied around this time.

Around a hundred kilometres further north the Casma River and its tributary, the Sechin River, flows from the mountains towards the sea. Along the banks of these rivers another culture, possibly related to the Norte Chico culture, was developing. The close proximity of these two cultures makes it likely that there was some form of interaction between them and it would very strange if they had not known of each other. It is an open question as to which culture was the earliest, but the Casma-Sechin culture also seems to have begun to urbanise around this time. The archaeological site of Sechin Bajo has what are possibly the earliest monumental carvings in South America. This site was occupied for millennia afterwards however, so the carvings that visitors will see nearly all date from later.

A later temple from Bandurria

Another site, around a hundred kilometres to the south of Huaricanga, was the settlement of Bandurria. This was very close to the coastline and may possibly date to as early as 4000BC but the evidence is unclear and the site has been damaged. However, it is clear that a number of cultures were beginning to emerge along the northern Pacific coast in South America. Once urbanisation begins to occur it is quickly copied and so we see areas in the Middle East all beginning to move towards urbanisation at around the same time. A similar process must have occurred along this coast.

Around 3400 the Valdivia Culture emerged in what is now Ecuador. Like the Chinchorro, Casma-Sechin and Norte Chico cultures this was based along the coastline and the inhabitants were primarily reliant on fish from the sea. Because all of these cultures would have had access to some form of coastal boats they may have been in contact with one another, but this is not clear and there are no trade goods that could definitively point this out. The people of the Valdivia Culture lived in circular villages, growing crops to supplement their diet of fish and using nearly all the same crops as were later important in the region, such as maize, beans and squash. This meant that the Three Sisters of Mesoamerican agriculture had already reached the Pacific Coast of South America.

A pyramid from the city of Caral

Around 3100BC the Norte Chico culture began to expand, as did the other cultures in the region, such as the Casma-Sechin culture. Their urban sites grew larger and could now begin to be called cities, although the difference between a small city and a large town is really academic. The rivers began to be more important than the coastlands, although fishing was still important.

Around 3000BC the Preceramic Period in the Casma-Sechin culture begins. This saw the continued expansion of settlements and the founding of new ones, such as the coastal city of Huaynuná. Canals were also built to allow for more agriculture from the rivers.

Around this time the Chinchorro people began to use a style other than the Black Mummy technique. This new method of mummification was called the Mud Coat technique and involved coating the dead with a mud coat of mud, sand and a type of mortar that functioned as a type of cement. This method did not remove the organs of the deceased and left them almost as types of statues.

Pottery has been found from the Valdivia Culture dating from 2700BC. This shows that the use of pottery was spreading gradually through South America, primarily along the coastlines. Around this time small settlements also begin to grow in what is now Colombia.

Around 2500BC the people of the Chinchorro culture began to also use the Red Mummy technique. This was used for around five hundred years and involved removing the internal organs of the dead, drying the remaining body cavity, stuffing the remains with straw and covering it over with a mask, artificial hair and skin and then painting the remains with red ochre. The Red Mummy and Mud Coat techniques seem to have overlapped in time. This was probably just a change of technique rather than a change of culture or religion.

Excavations at Ventarron

Around 2500BC the temple complex at Ventarron was inhabited. This was a site on the northern Pacific Coast of Peru, about ten kilometres from the sea and further north than the Casma Valley. Here, a large temple complex was founded with some indications that the people here were trading with the civilisations both north and south of them.

Also around this time, the city of Caral was inhabited. Caral lay on the Supe River, not far from Huaricanga. While previous settlements resembled large towns, Caral was unquestionably a city. The city covers 150 hectares and contains large public squares and buildings. Some of these are formed like low pyramids and were almost certainly temples. The people of Caral traded extensively with the nearby coastlands and their hinterland, which consisted of at least nineteen smaller settlements, even going so far as to import the vertebrae of blue whales to use as stools. The population was probably not very large however. The city itself may have had a population of just three thousand people. But the valley probably had around twenty thousand and more may have come from even farther afield to attend religious ceremonies.

The magnificent remains of the city of Caral

Religious ceremonies were probably held there regularly. Buildings that were built to preserve fire were dotted around the city, possibly suggesting a fire cult. A geoglyph, a carving scratched onto the ground, similar to the later Nazca Lines, was created near the city, and has some resemblance to carvings at Casma-Sechin. What its meaning was is unclear. Bone flutes have been found that may well have been used in religious ceremonies.

If Caral was a religious centre, as seems likely, then it was also a trading centre. Items have been found there that show that by this point, the peoples of Caral had contact with the Valdivia culture of Ecuador and with the higher Andean regions, with some goods even coming from as far afield as the rainforest on the far side of the Andes.

While the history of Caral is a mystery and will probably always be so, it is possible that even at this early stage the peoples of the region had progressed to proto-writing. Knotted strings have been found that resemble later Incan quipu. Quipu are knotted ropes that can be carried swiftly by runners from place to place and the number and positioning of the knots on the ropes will carry messages. But it is not likely that these strings would tell us much even if they are in fact quipus. Quipus were generally more like tally sticks in certain ways. They were very good for detailing transactions but not for handling more complex content. So the dealings of Caral are likely to remain a mystery forever.

The temples of Kotosh

Around 2300BC the Kotosh site was inhabited. This was a small site, further inland, to the southeast of the Casma River valley and further into the mountains. This is the type site for a culture that is referred to as the Kotosh Religious Tradition. It may have been a ceremonial centre for the people of the mountain valleys. The site itself is not large, but a nearby site called La Galgada may have been larger. It was continuously inhabited, perhaps by a class of priests. The temples in Kotosh had reliefs of crossed hands, but it is not certain what this signified. The Kotosh tradition would form a link to later cultures in Peru.

Around 2250BC a broken gourd showing a staff wielding deity was found. While it can never be exactly certain that this is a symbol of a deity it is almost certainly the same Staff God that was worshipped later in Peru. The Incas knew the Staff God as Viracocha and worshipped him as the creator of the world. If this broken gourd does indeed depict a god and if it is the same god, it shows that there was a cultural continuity from the time of the Norte Chico civilisation until the fall of the Inca Empire.

The mural of Ventarron, destroyed by fire in 2017
Image from the BBC

Around 2000BC the earliest dated murals in the Americas were made on the walls of the temples of Ventarron, along the northern coast of Peru. One of the murals depicted a snake like creature being caught in a net; perhaps a scene from mythology or perhaps simply an illustration from the lives of a fishing people. Sadly, at least one of the murals was destroyed in a fire in 2017.

This brings our survey of South American history for this period to an end. I will write more in a later post. Before closing I would like to take some time to briefly address a misconception. There is a city in Bolivia called Tiwanaku, sometimes called Tiahuanaco that is sometimes stated as being extremely ancient. An explorer from the early 20th Century believed that the site was at least 11,000 years old and, more plausibly, it has been said to date from around 1600BC. More recent estimates suggest that the city should be dated as being occupied from around 300BC onwards. Some older publication may include the earlier dates for the city, so one should be aware of this while reading about South American history. Some conspiracy websites have also taken up this line, speaking of the Tiwanaku civilisation as being the oldest city on earth and probably to do with aliens or something. This diminishes the real achievements of the earlier civilisations such as the ones at Casma Sechin, or Caral.

Later relief of the Staff God from Tiwanaku

Related Blog Posts: 
Some South American history from 4000-2000BC

Some South American history from 2000-1000BC

Some South American history from 1000-500BC

Some North American history from 4000-2000BC

Clovis flint spear heads

This is a post about North American history from 4000-2000BC. The reason I am covering two millennia rather than one is that the history of this area, while still interesting, has comparatively less happening than in Africa or Europe for example. I am not an expert on this time period at all and there is much that is still unknown and being discovered by archaeologists but the broad outlines of what I will describe here will hopefully be mostly correct. The dates presented here will be very broad estimates and may well be wildly off. This is a time before writing in this part of the world so the main sources will be entirely archaeological but I may make some references to the beliefs of later cultures.

For the purposes of this blog, North America will comprise of Alaska, Canada, the continental USA, Mexico, all the Central American countries as far as Panama, the Caribbean Islands and, for good measure and because there was nowhere else to really put it, Greenland.

Prior to the year 4000BC the majority of North America was inhabited. Certain areas of the extreme north in Canada and Greenland were not yet fully populated due to the extreme conditions but nearly everywhere else was populated. Even the islands of the Caribbean were inhabited by a hunter-gatherer population known to archaeologists as the creators of Casimiroid tools.

The exact date for the arrival of humans in the Americas is a mystery, but most agree that there was an arrival around 10,000BC where the most recent glacial maximum had lowered the sea levels to allow a land bridge to emerge in the Bering Strait. This connected North America and Asia and allowed for small groups of foragers to cross. There may have been earlier settlements, but it is unclear. The group that arrived around 10,000BC was referred to as the Clovis culture (named after their flint weapons that were first found in the city of Clovis in the state of New Mexico). Within around a millennia humanity had spread all the way down to the southern tip of South America. The large mammals that had lived in North America disappeared, possibly because the humans hunted them but possibly due to the pressure of climate change, combined with food competition from humans.

Teosinte, a related plant to the wild maize that was
domesticated in Mexico

The original inhabitants of the Americas were hunter-gatherers, but as the populations expanded and the larger animals disappeared it would seem that the dwellers in the warmer climates began to rely more on gathering food. These gatherers began to manage and maintain the squash plants that they were reliant on, gradually segueing into agriculture as they added maize and beans to their array of domesticated plants. The plants were originally much smaller than their modern counterparts. The importance of these foods, particularly maize, was that they could be dried and stored for later consumption.

The domestication of these plants happened mostly in what is now Mexico. Other plants were being domesticated in South America as well however. Chili plants were used, but were less important for calories. A number of other plants that are familiar to us today were eventually domesticated by the inhabitants of Mexico, such as tomatoes, vanilla and chocolate. But these would come later.

So, Mesoamerica had begun to move into an agricultural phase, but was still lacking ceramics. Instead of using pottery the inhabitants were able to use dried gourds, such as the bottle gourd, as water carriers. If heated stones were dropped into the gourds they could even be used to cook soups.

The first cultivation of crops seems to have come, not just from Mexico, but from a specific region in Mexico; the highlands of the Pacific coast, near Soconusco and Oaxaca. In particular, the cave of Guilá Naquitz and the Chantuto Archaeological Site seem to show a society that was beginning to transition from hunter-gathering to a sedentary agricultural lifestyle. A small site that may shed light on the period is Gheo-Shih, which seems to have been a meeting place for small groups. The site contains a great many stone artefacts and possibly some dwelling places. Most tantalisingly of all, there is the remains of what might be a marked off area for dancing/playing/doing ceremonies. It is possible that this might be a ball court and might point to an early origin of the Mesoamerican ball game, which would prove so popular in later Mesoamerican civilisations.

So this gives a picture of North America around 4000BC, at the outset of the time period. Nearly the entire region is inhabited by hunter-gatherers. But the beginnings of an agricultural system is flourishing on the southern Pacific coast of Mexico and these techniques would soon spread outwards.

Map showing Watson Brake archaeological site

Despite having talked so much about the developments in Mexico, the next milestone that must be mentioned is further north, in the US state of Louisiana. Around 3500BC work began on the Watson Brake earthworks. These were a circular series of earthworks with a number of large mounds around the edges of the circle. They were built by a hunter-gatherer society and the site was a ceremonial space rather than a living space. In some ways it reminds me of the site of Gobekli Tepe. It was a work of considerable size and sophistication, but done before the advent of agriculture. The nearby river bank and swamps provided a fertile area to hunt and fish in and the middens show that the diet of the builders was mainly fish and shellfish. The area had been inhabited by people for centuries before. but it was only around this period that they began to build.

It’s not clear why mounds were built here. The river nearby currently does not flood the land much and there is no evidence of defensive earthworks. Perhaps they were platforms for religious ceremonies, with different platforms for different deities. But this is speculation. Later cultures building along the Mississippi would build spectacular mounds, so perhaps the inhabitants of Watson Brake created a cultural trend.

A much later stela showing
Mayan symbols for the
Long Count Calendar

We move now from the mysterious mound-builders of the Lower Mississippi to consider a date that may have no significance at all. On the 11th of August in the year 3114BC, the Long Count calendar used by Mesoamerican peoples, most particularly the Mayans, began. It was believed by the later Mayan peoples that the world had been created on this day. But it is hard to know exactly why. The first clear uses of the Long Count calendar are much later, nearly three millennia later. The Mayan civilisation used two other calendars in addition to the Long Count (Haab’ and Tzolk’in). All three calendars were extensively used by the Mayans but were probably not invented by them. Thus the true significance of why the Long Count date was chosen may never be known.

Around the year 3000BC the Paleo-Eskimo settlement of the Arctic regions began. Not that there is anything special about the year 3000. I’m sure communities were on the move during that year, but I’m also sure that the communities were moving into the frozen Canadian tundra in 3001/3002/3003 etc. It’s just that historians have a tendency to round things they’re not very sure of into neat round numbers: The greater the uncertainty, the rounder the number. The settlement of the tundra and the arctic lands beyond it are one of the great achievements of humanity. It ranks with the exploration of the Pacific islands or the climbing of Everest. The hunting bands who learned to catch seals and walruses and to carve ivory in lands where there was no more wood or stone for spears have pushed forward the boundaries of the human species.

Around 2800BC the hunter-gatherer earthworks at Watson Brake were abandoned. Perhaps the region could no longer support the population or perhaps the people migrated to new lands. Perhaps disease broke out among the people or they had a political or religious revolution. Whatever the cause, the first known mound building civilisation in North America, contemporary with ancient cities such as Uruk in Mesopotamia or Memphis in Egypt, were abandoned to the embrace of nature and the trowels of future archaeologists.

Around 2500 culture changes could be seen in the far north. In Alaska, near the Bering Strait, the Arctic Small Tool tradition developed. This is a blanket term for a number of cultures that spread across the north of the western hemisphere using bows and arrows. They would have capitalised on the developments made by the Paleo-Eskimo cultures and most of the people using the Arctic Small Tool tradition would have been from those Paleo-Eskimo cultures. Using this new technology the arctic hunters spread across the land and sea reaching Greenland. In the south of Greenland the Saqqaq culture began, while in the north the Independence I culture began shortly thereafter.

Clay objects from Poverty Point Culture that were
used for cooking

Around 2200 the Poverty Point culture begins in what is now Louisiana, not far from now empty site of Watson Brake. This was a culture that predated the adoption of mass agriculture. The people of this culture traded all along the Mississippi Valley and as far away as the Ozarks and the Ohio and Tennessee River regions. They were probably able to use the vast fisheries of the river and the swamps to sustain a permanent population in the region. They began to use ceramics and made some small pots but they were more interested in making small clay objects that could be heated up and used to cook food in non-pottery vessels. Later they would make spectacular mounds, but at this point their culture was only beginning.

Around 2000BC many archaeologists refer to the Mesoamerican Archaic Period ending and to the Pre-Classic period beginning. This is more a matter of definition than of any real change. Nothing really changed for the inhabitants of the region. But it is an acknowledgement that in Mesoamerica all of the major crops had been domesticated and that villages were now forming that would eventually grow into cities.

Greenland

To the far north, in Greenland, a young man died. His body was discovered four thousand years later and his genome sequenced. He is known now as Inuk, from the current Greenlandic language word for “man”. The cold climate and the fortunate preservation of some of his hair allowed for the DNA sequencing to take place and points to Inuk being closely related to the current tribes on the Russian side of the Bering Strait.

So, the period that we are looking at comes to an end. The two millennia examined saw the continuous development of the Mesoamerican agricultural communities, the expansion of humans across the frozen northlands and the development of the first monumental architecture in the Mississippi floodplains. While North America in this period still does not have any culture that can be unequivocally called a civilisation it nevertheless has all the ingredients for several to develop.

Related Blog Posts:
Some North American history from 4000-2000BC
Some North American history from 2000-1000BC
Some North American history from 1000-500BC

Some history of New Guinea and the Pacific Islands from 4000-1BC

Aerial Photo of Kuk Region where the inhabitants of
New Guinea developed agriculture independently

This is a post about the history of New Guinea and the Pacific Islands from 4000-1BC. The reason that I am covering a period of 4000 years, which is a long time, is because the history of these regions is interesting, but for large swathes of it there is simply not much that can be said at the moment. Archaeology, historical linguistics, paleo-biology and genetic studies will almost certainly change this picture over the years. As always, I am not an expert in this subject matter. I have some knowledge of the history of Assyria and Greece and other such culture, but for these type of blogs I am at least partly writing about these regions to give myself an excuse to learn some new history. So, in short, I am very far from an expert and these blogs should be treated with great caution before using as a source.

Unlike nearly every other region we have looked at so far, the Pacific islands (of Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia) are probably uninhabited when we gaze out upon the world of 4000BC. However, the island of New Guinea was very definitely inhabited and has been estimated to have been inhabited from about 40,000BC.

Around the year 7000BC the people of New Guinea had independently developed agriculture. This makes it one of the few places in the world to have unequivocally developed agriculture in isolation. Their type of agriculture was a very different one to the grain and pulse based agricultural revolution in the Near East. This type of agriculture is known as swamp garden agriculture and involved controlling water flows out of a natural basin to create a large swamp. This was then extensively farmed for crops such as taro and bananas.

This is not only a huge achievement, effectively replicating the Neolithic revolution independently, but it also made the island of New Guinea quite densely populated relative to other parts of Southeast Asia, which were still reliant on hunting and gathering for survival. This will become important in the history of the Pacific. Sadly, despite developing agriculture so early, the subsequent history of the island of New Guinea is less well-known, at least by me, and there is not much more that can be said about it by myself.

Dugout canoe in the Solomon Islands

Around the year 4000BC, as mentioned in the previous blog about the history of Southeast Asia, the Austronesian speakers possibly began to migrate from the island of Taiwan to the Philippines. There is not much more that can be said about this time, save that over the next fifteen hundred years the speakers of certain Austronesian languages had made their way southwards through the islands of the Philippines and had migrated to the island of Sulawesi. This island is to the south of Mindanao in the Philippines. From here certain groups moved west, but the ones that concern us, moved east to the island of North Maluku. By about the year 2000BC there were Austronesian speakers along the coasts of New Guinea, with population clusters near Cenderawasih Bay on the north-western coast of the island of New Guinea.

However, here the Austronesian speakers had some difficulties expanding. Unlike previous areas, where they arrived from the sea bearing knowledge of sailing, fishing and agriculture and had been able to at least partially displace the hunter-gatherer populations, the peoples of New Guinea were not displaceable. Having already developed their own form of agriculture and having achieved a relatively high population density the peoples of New Guinea were not absorbed by the newcomers. By this time the Austonesian arrivals, whose cultural ancestors had travelled all the way from Taiwan, were certainly familiar with the sea, sailing and voyages into the near unknown. Moving by short hops along the shore of New Guinea they expanded eastwards along the coast without moving substantially inwards, eventually coming to the Vitiaz Straits.

Probably around 1500BC these speakers of Austronesian languages, whose language families had now diverged enough from Austronesian to be referred to as Polynesian, made the jump across the Vitiaz Straits to the shores of the island now known as New Britain and from there across the small St George’s Channel to what is now known as New Ireland and from there to the other islands of the Bismarck Archipelago. These islands were already inhabited by hunter-gatherers whose ancestors had previously sailed from New Guinea or crossed via land bridges during the fallen sea levels during the times of the previous glaciations.

The Polynesian navigators, who must now have become quite confident and skilful and crossing from island to island now began to expand to the Solomon Islands to the east and south of the islands of New Britain and New Ireland. Here again there were original inhabitants who mixed with and interacted with the new Polynesian culture, but it is unclear whether or not the local populations of these islands survived the contact with the Polynesian navigators.

Lapita culture pottery

From around 1300BC we see a distinct pottery culture that is now known as the Lapita culture. While the usual cautions of “Pots are not people” still apply, it is quite probable that the original pottery culture that spread across the islands of the south Pacific at this time was the work of a single culture.

Around 1300BC the Polynesian navigators, by now adept at crossing distant seas, reached Santa Cruz at the end of the Solomons Chain and the islands of Vanuatu, which lay to the south and west of the Solomon Islands. These were uninhabited lands and it is here that the Polynesian expansion can be truly said to have fully begun.

There are a few different accounts of the history of the settlement of the Pacific Islands. They normally differ in how long the ancestors of the Polynesians spent in the area around New Guinea. Some models see the migration has happening almost directly from Taiwan, bypassing the Philippines and the Indonesian islands. This is certainly possible I guess, but the version of the story that I have given above is plausible. Regardless of which theory turns out to be the truest one, it is known that the Lapita pottery horizon occurs around 1300BC and that this was very definitely associated with the Polynesian expansion. So, all the models converge around the Bismarck Islands around 1300BC.

The Lapita culture began to expand its frontiers around this time. The reasons for this expansion are simply not known. Perhaps those who had organised the initial migration to the Bismarck Islands had consolidated power among themselves and their families. When questioned about these arrangements they justified their power in the concept that they had organised the sea trip and that if other families wished to rule, that they should find a new land to rule in. This is of course speculation but the islanders seem to have gone on a flurry of new settling and colonisation expeditions.

Aerial view of Mango Island in Tonga

By the year 1000BC the Polynesians had settled New Caledonia, Fiji, Western Samoa and Tonga. These were all new territories and even though they were small, they were able to support decent population sizes. As resources became scarce on one island, the incentives to jump to a new island would increase, but those that remained would be able to switch to different food-gathering methods and sustain their lifestyle on these islands. As each island was colonised in rapid succession, there was no reason to forget the sea routes that had taken them there, so the islands seem to have traded items with each other, particularly obsidian. This could be used for weapons, as technically these advanced mariners were still in the Stone Age, but obsidian was not available everywhere. The Lapita cultures kept up their trade contacts. An experienced group of high-status navigators must have arisen to carry out this high-risk trade and to occasionally engage in the even more dangerous business of exploration for new lands.

Some of the people from the time of the Lapita culture have been preserved in the cemetery of Teouma, on Efate Island in Vanuatu. The cemetery is around three thousand years old and is well preserved. The remains show that the people of Vanuatu were genetically quite close to certain people groups currently in the Philippines, suggesting that the Polynesian populations did not mix much with the groups in the Solomon Islands. But this is hard to know for sure, as there were only a few genetic samples taken. The genetic samples were all from women as well, and if there was a matrilineal culture this might affect the sampling. Another important Lapita site from this era is Mulifunua in Samoa. This was not a cemetery, but a living area, which yielded a large amount of pottery and some tools and is useful in showing not only the Lapita lifestyle, but also how far they had reached at that time.

Samoan outrigger

Over the next few centuries the expansion continued further west and north. The Mariana Islands far to the north were settled. These dates are a little odd to me, as it would seem that the navigators bypassed a large number of other island chains to reach the Marianas. Perhaps the dates are wrong or the sequences of colonisation are wrong. Nevertheless it is extremely likely that Saipan, Guam and the other Mariana Islands were reached by the Polynesians by at least 500BC and possibly a great deal earlier. It is entirely possible that the Marianas were populated by a separate expansion from the Philippines, possibly as early as 1500BC. This honestly makes more sense than tying it in to the other Polynesian expansions further east.

Less controversially, Nauru, Niue and the South Cook Islands were also discovered and inhabited, probably before 500BC. Now however the distances were becoming vast. The Lapita culture was spread over such a territory that it simply ceased to exist as a unified entity. The Lapita peoples traded with the Papuan islanders who probably began to migrate from New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, into the islands inhabited by the Lapita cultures. The melding of the Papuan and Lapita groups led to the groups that we now know as the Melanesians. The Melanesians spread as far as Fiji, which stands at the crossroads between Polynesia and Melanesia.

The Lapita culture itself simply ceases to exist after 500BC. The distances needed to maintain trade and contact simply cause the trading network to break down. The Polynesians to the east seem to have stopped making pottery altogether over the next centuries. This period is poorly known, as there is little archaeological evidence but it is too early to rely on the oral traditions of the later Polynesians.

Model of an outrigger canoe that could be used
to cross the oceans

Over the next centuries the Polynesian seafarers may have reached the islands of Micronesia, such as Tuvalu, the Caroline Islands and Kiribati. They may even have reached outer islands of Eastern Polynesia, such as the Tuamotus and Tahiti. But in the absence of any real archaeological evidence it is hard to pin down anything even close to exact dates. It is also possible that islands were settled several times. Pitcairn Island was later inhabited by Polynesians before the colony either evacuated or died out. It is possible that certain expeditions achieved initial success before ultimately failing.

The important thing to remember is that by the time Augustus in Rome, the Polynesian navigators had explored and settled a gigantic region in the southern Pacific and were reaching out to expand their settlements on to other regions. By about 1300AD nearly every island in the Pacific would be settled by either Polynesians or Melanesians or by both groups together.

Before genetic and linguistic evidence was combined with archaeology and the finds of the Lapita culture it was a mystery as to where the Polynesian peoples had come from. When the Europeans met these people, they found Stone Age societies that had nevertheless managed to sail to the most remote regions of the earth. The Europeans were baffled as to how this had occurred and this bafflement continued into the 20th century.

An adventurer by the name of Thor Heyerdahl thought there was a possibility the explorers had come from the South American continent. His ideas were crazy, but at least parts of them sounded like they might be plausible. To prove that his theory was at least possible, Thor Heyerdahl and a band of like-minded adventurers, (including some veterans of the Norwegian resistance against the Nazis) set out on an expedition to sail across the Pacific using a raft called the Kon-Tiki, sailing from South America towards the setting sun and the South Seas.

The expedition was successful and has triggered a wave of similar attempts to recreate ancient voyages (such as Tim Severin’s crossing of the Atlantic in a boat like the Irish monks used). Thor Heyerdahl wrote about the experience in a book called “The Kon-Tiki Expedition: By Raft Across the South Sea”. I remember reading it as a child and being enthralled by the book and by the idea of a noble adventure to push the limits of science and history.

The Kon-Tiki raft in a museum in Norway

However, as inspiring as the expedition was, genetics and linguistics have very firmly placed the Polynesian ancestors as migrants from East Asia, and the Melanesians as migrants from the New Guinea region. There is a possibility that later Polynesian navigators reached South America and returned with certain plants, such as the sweet potato. These claims are yet not as of yet substantiated and would fall outside the timeframe of this blog post even if they had definitely occurred. So, if while researching the settlement of the Pacific islands you come across the works and theories of Thor Heyerdahl, by all means read them with pleasure but just be wary of accepting them uncritically, as much new evidence has since come to light that contradicts his theory of settlement from South America: an interesting idea, nobly pursued, but ultimately incorrect.

Some Southeast Asian history from 4000-2000BC

Mountains in Yunnan Province in southern China

This is a post about Southeast Asian history from 4000-2000BC. The reason I am covering two millennia rather than one is that the history of this area, while still interesting, has comparatively less happening than in Africa or Europe for example. I am not an expert on this time period at all and there is much that is still unknown and being discovered by archaeologists, but the broad outlines of what I will describe here will hopefully be mostly correct. The dates presented here will be very broad estimates and may well be wildly off. This is a time before writing in this part of the world so the main sources will be entirely archaeological, but I may make some references to later myths and legends.

For the purposes of this blog, Southeast Asia will be held to comprise the lands of Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, the archipelago of Indonesia and East Timor. There are strong reasons for including Taiwan and southern China within the remit of this piece, but these will be covered elsewhere I think.

Prior to the year 4000BC nearly all of Southeast Asia was inhabited by modern humans, with the possible exception of some small islands in the archipelago. It is thus likely that the inhabitants of these regions were quite comfortable with seafaring. The inhabitants may have been the ancestors of the groups such as the Ati and Aeta peoples of the Philippines, who appear to have been in the region before the later waves of migration occurred. While the entire area was inhabited there is less evidence for this habitation. The reason for this would seem to be that the climate is hot, damp and humid and would quickly consume any evidence of wooden structures. The actual footprint of these structures was also reduced, as in many cases the buildings would have been raised on stilts, meaning that that a large settlement might only leave a few hundred post holes, which could easily be missed by archaeologists and would leave no mark on the landscape to indicate where to dig.

Sunset on the coast of Sulawesi

Before 4000 rice and millet agriculture had begun to be adopted in southern China, from where they would eventually spread across the mountains of what is now Yunnan province and into southeast-Asia. In Vietnam red slip pottery was being produced near the Red River Delta, but it does not appear that the inhabitants were fully using agriculture at this point. In Thailand there is a long history of occupation at a cave referred to as Spirit Cave, which shows occupation levels around this time. The primary artefacts found in Southeast Asia at this time are known as Hoabinhian, which refers to a type of flaked stone implements that were used by the peoples of the region. It is named after a type site called Hoa Binh in Vietnam. It was used for so long and over so wide an area that it was probably not a culture per se, but rather it was a very persistent tool-making method that was retained by many cultures over a long time.

From a linguistic perspective, the mainland of Southeast Asia was probably populated by speakers of Proto-Austroasiatic languages, which would later diverge to form language groups such as the Khmer and Vietic languages. The speakers of Austronesia languages were situated in the island of Taiwan at this point in history and had not yet begun their epic migrations that would see their language family stretch from Madagascar to Easter Island. Other languages such as Tai languages group or the Lolo-Burmese portion of Sino-Tibetan were not yet much spoken in the region, as the speakers of these languages came in later migrations to the region.

At some point after the year 4000BC some speakers of Austronesia languages began to migrate from Taiwan to the island of Luzon and from there to the rest of the Philippines. The migration is unlikely to have started much before 4000, but was probably not later than 2000, so now is as good a time as any to mention it.

While much may well have been happening in the region there is little that can be said with certainty for the next thousand years. The nature of the region simply does not permit much to be said. There are forest clearances in Java around 3000BC that would suggest that agriculture or proto-agriculture was beginning to spread through the region but it is hard to pinpoint this for definite. The supposedly very early dates for agriculture given by some archaeologists working in Thailand is almost certainly incorrect.

Red River Delta in northern Vietnam

Later Vietnamese writers of history identified a legendary dynasty beginning around 2800BC. This is extremely ancient and there is no real evidence to support this. The dynasty was referred to as the Hồng Bàng dynasty and was supposed to have ruled in what is now northern Vietnam, near the Red River Delta. This dynasty reigned over a kingdom that was supposedly called Văn Lang. It should be noted that the history of Vietnam, while undoubtedly ancient, was also affected by a number of destructive wars fought with the Chinese, which seems to have destroyed a certain amount of records. As this dynasty is only really referred to by later writers from the 15th Century AD and there is no archaeological evidence for it, we should probably relegate this kingdom to the realms of legend. However, it would be correct to state that the Red River Delta would be important to the later history of the region.

Around the year 2500BC pigs were introduced to Timor, suggesting that farming practices were beginning to spread through the region. By this time the speakers of Austronesian languages seem to have spread throughout most of the Philippine archipelago. They did not wipe out the original inhabitants of the land but they did occupy most of the coastal areas and the peoples such as the Ati moved inland to become forest dwellers. These forest dwellers eventually abandoned their own languages and spoke Austronesian languages as well.

Around this time the speakers of Austronesian languages seem to have reached the coastlands of Borneo, Sulawesi, and possibly Timor. If this is the case then they were bringing agriculture with them. Interestingly, the Austronesia peoples had no success in spreading to the island of New Guinea, as the inhabitants there had already developed their own indigenous form of agriculture and had a sufficient population density to absorb the newcomers instead of being absorbed by them.

Around the year 2100 the site of Ban Chiang in Thailand was occupied, although this date is contested and it might be some centuries later. This site would later produce some spectacular pottery and impressive bronze works, but the earliest layers of the site were still Neolithic. The people who lived here buried their dead near to their homes and had established a permanent settlement. This either meant that they had reached a fully agricultural phase or had managed to attain a stable hunter-gathering state such as the Jomon of Japan had reached around this time.

Nephrite Jade such as that traded between
Taiwan and the Philippine islands

Around the year 2000, as the period which we are examining draws to a close, regular trade contacts begin to appear between Taiwan and the Philippines. Both island groups spoke mostly Austronesian languages at this point and may have shared vaguely similar cultures. The mainland cultures in China prized jade highly and the Taiwanese islanders also became enamoured of the beautiful stone. Jade items began to be traded between the islands of the Philippines and Taiwan. In some ways this high status good had similarities to the lapis lazuli trade in the Middle East at that time. It is one of the earliest well-defined trade routes in the region.

By the closing of the period we are certain that wet-rice agriculture and millet farming had been introduced to areas such as Laos and northern Thailand. Around this time, the Hoabinhian methods of making stone tools seem to be gradually phased out across southeast Asia, as the inhabitants of the region shifted their tool production to match their increased use of agriculture.

In northern Vietnam the Phung Nguyen culture began to flourish. Here as well, we begin to see definite evidence of farming in a recognisable fashion. In southern Thailand the Khok Phanom Di site began to be occupied. It comprises a series of burials near habitations from the late Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age. The inhabitants of Khok Phanom Di may not have been full agriculturalists at the beginning of the settlement however, as they seem to have eaten a great deal of fish, suggesting a more hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

Reconstruction of hunter-gatherers in Ban Chiang

Thus the period draws to a close. Sadly we can say far less than we would wish to say. I suspect that much of the history of the region has simply been swallowed by the region’s environment but I also hope that the years to come will shed much light on what the patterns of growth and change in Southeast Asia.

Before ending the blog I would like to address a few historical inaccuracies that I have seen while researching this blog. I have noted that a number of countries tend to extend their history further back than is justified. I suspect that there are nationalist reasons for this but for whatever reason, it is inimical to history and should be avoided.

The site of Gunung Padang

A rather more specific flaw is Gunung Padang. Gunung Padang is an archaeological site in Indonesia near an extinct volcano. It is believed to be a pyramid of huge size and extraordinarily ancient date. While I don’t want to be too sceptical I am deeply unconvinced by this site. The entire area looks like it is natural. Sure, there are orderly and regular formations but volcanic rocks like basalt are often regular. The local inhabitants have shaped some of the stones into something resembling temples and such like but this does not change the fact that the rocks and structure are almost certainly a natural phenomenon. Perhaps I am wrong but I have seen nothing to suggest that this is anything more than a natural site. I don’t think that the archaeologists are deliberately lying but I do think that they are badly mistaken. Perhaps I am wrong. Time will tell.

Related Blog Posts:
Some Southeast Asian history from 4000-2000BC
Some Southeast Asia history from 2000-1000BC
Some Southeast Asian history from 1000-500BC