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The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three historical Metal Ages, after the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. It has also been considered as the final Age of the three-age division starting with prehistory and progressing to protohistory. In this usage, it is preceded by the Stone Age and Bronze Age. These concepts originated for describing Iron Age Europe and the Ancient Near East. Still, they now include other parts of the Old World.
The history of Southeast Asia covers the people of Southeast Asia from prehistory to the present in two distinct sub-regions: Mainland Southeast Asia and Maritime Southeast Asia. Mainland Southeast Asia comprises Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Peninsular Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam whereas Maritime Southeast Asia comprises Brunei, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Christmas Island, East Malaysia, East Timor, Indonesia, Philippines and Singapore.
Ban Chiang is an archaeological site in Nong Han district, Udon Thani province, Thailand. It has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1992. Discovered in 1966, the site first attracted interest due to its ancient red-painted pottery. More recently, it gained international attention in 2008 when the United States Department of Justice, following an undercover investigation begun in 2003, raided several museums for their role in trafficking in Ban Chiang antiquities.
The Hoabinhian is a lithic techno-complex of archaeological sites associated with assemblages in Southeast Asia from the late Pleistocene to the Holocene, dated to c. 10,000–2000 BCE. It is attributed to hunter-gatherer societies of the region whose technological variability over time is poorly understood. In 2016, a rock shelter was identified in Yunnan, China, 40 km from the border with Myanmar, where artifacts belonging to the Hoabinhian technocomplex were recognized, dating from 41,500 BCE.
The Sa Huỳnh culture was a culture in what is now central and southern Vietnam that flourished between 1000 BC and 200 AD. Archaeological sites from the culture have been discovered from the Mekong Delta to Quảng Bình province in central Vietnam. The Sa Huynh people were most likely the predecessors of the Cham people, an Austronesian-speaking people and the founders of the kingdom of Champa.
Ban Non Wat is a village in Thailand, in the Non Sung district, Nakhon Ratchasima Province, located near the small city of Phimai. It has been the subject of excavation since 2002. The cultural sequence encompasses 11 prehistoric phases, which include 640 burials. The site is associated with consistent occupation, and in modern-day Ban Non Wat the occupied village is located closer to the Mun River.
Charles Franklin Wandesforde Higham is a British-born New Zealand archaeologist most noted for his work in Southeast Asia. Among his noted contributions to archaeology are his work about the Angkor civilization in Cambodia, and his current work in Northeast Thailand. He is an emeritus professor at the University of Otago in Dunedin.
The Austronesian peoples, sometimes referred to as Austronesian-speaking peoples, are a large group of peoples in Taiwan, Maritime Southeast Asia, parts of Mainland Southeast Asia, Micronesia, coastal New Guinea, Island Melanesia, Polynesia, and Madagascar that speak Austronesian languages. They also include indigenous ethnic minorities in Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, Hainan, the Comoros, and the Torres Strait Islands. The nations and territories predominantly populated by Austronesian-speaking peoples are sometimes known collectively as Austronesia.
Spirit Cave is an archaeological site in Pang Mapha district, Mae Hong Son Province, northwestern Thailand. It was occupied 12,000 to 7,000 uncalibrated radiocarbon years ago by prehistoric humans of the Hoabinhian culture.
Prehistoric Thailand may be traced back as far as 1,000,000 years ago from the fossils and stone tools found in northern and western Thailand. At an archaeological site in Lampang, northern Thailand Homo erectus fossils, Lampang Man, dating back 1,000,000 – 500,000 years, have been discovered. Stone tools have been widely found in Kanchanaburi, Ubon Ratchathani, Nakhon Si Thammarat, and Lopburi. Prehistoric cave paintings have also been found in these regions, dating back 10,000 years.
Prehistory, also called pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the first known use of stone tools by hominins c. 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use of symbols, marks, and images appears very early among humans, but the earliest known writing systems appeared c. 5,200 years ago. It took thousands of years for writing systems to be widely adopted, with writing spreading to almost all cultures by the 19th century. The end of prehistory therefore came at different times in different places, and the term is less often used in discussing societies where prehistory ended relatively recently.
The prehistory of the Philippines covers the events prior to the written history of what is now the Philippines. The current demarcation between this period and the early history of the Philippines is April 21, 900, which is the equivalent on the Proleptic Gregorian calendar for the date indicated on the Laguna Copperplate Inscription—the earliest known surviving written record to come from the Philippines. This period saw the immense change that took hold of the archipelago from Stone Age cultures in 50000 BC to the emergence of developed thalassocratic civilizations in the fourth century, continuing on with the gradual widening of trade until 900 and the first surviving written records.
Since H. Otley Beyer first proposed his wave migration theory, numerous scholars have approached the question of how, when and why humans first came to the Philippines. The current scientific consensus favors the "Out of Taiwan" model, which broadly match linguistic, genetic, archaeological, and cultural evidence.
Maanyan or Maʼanyan is an Austronesian language belonging to the East Barito languages. It is spoken by about 150,000 Ma'anyan people living in the province of Central Kalimantan and South Kalimantan, Indonesia. It is most closely related to the Malagasy language spoken in Madagascar, although these languages are not mutually intelligible due to the geographical separation.
Prehistoric Indonesia is a prehistoric period in the Indonesian archipelago that spanned from the Pleistocene period to about the 4th century CE when the Kutai people produced the earliest known stone inscriptions in Indonesia. Unlike the clear distinction between prehistoric and historical periods in Europe and the Middle East, the division is muddled in Indonesia. This is mostly because Indonesia's geographical conditions as a vast archipelago caused some parts — especially the interiors of distant islands — to be virtually isolated from the rest of the world. West Java and coastal Eastern Borneo, for example, began their historical periods in the early 4th century, but megalithic culture still flourished and script was unknown in the rest of Indonesia, including in Nias and Toraja. The Papuans on the Indonesian part of New Guinea island lived virtually in the Stone Age until their first contacts with modern world in the early 20th century. Even today living megalithic traditions still can be found on the island of Sumba and Nias.
Philippine jade culture, or jade artifacts, made from white and green nephrite and dating as far back as 2000–1500 BC, have been discovered at a number of archaeological excavations in the Philippines since the 1930s. The artifacts have been both tools like chisels and ornaments such as lingling-o earrings, bracelets, and beads.
Southeast Asia was first reached by anatomically modern humans possibly before 70,000 years ago. Anatomically modern humans are suggested to have reached Southeast Asia twice in the course of the Southern Dispersal migrations during and after the formation of a distinct East Asian clade from 70,000 to 50,000 years ago.
Nyaung-gan is a Bronze Age cemetery in central Myanmar, and was the first site in Myanmar to have artefacts dating to the Bronze Age. Burials found over two seasons (1998–1999) were found to have grave goods consisting of pottery filled with animal bones, beads, spear points, terracotta and jewelry, no iron was found at the site and that provides a good benchmark to start with dating of the site. The site was initially thought to be a significant site due to surface findings, so a team was assembled to investigate the validity of that claim. Myanmar is centrally located along trade routes that connect South, East, and Southeast Asia, and has great potential to show cultural influence from all stops along those trade routes. Another unique aspect of the site is that the skeletons found in the burials were left in situ, and a museum was constructed around them.
Harry Truman Simanjuntak is an Indonesian archaeologist and prehistorian.
References
- 1 2 3 Szabó, Katherine; Cole, Franca; Lloyd-Smith, Lindsay; Barker, Graeme; Hunt, Chris; Piper, Philip; Doherty, Chris (2013). "The 'Metal Age' at the Niah Caves, c. 2000-500 years ago". In Barker, Graeme (ed.). Rainforest foraging and farming in island Southeast Asia. Cambridge: MacDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. pp. 299–340. ISBN 978-1902937540.