11 Aug 2006 (Jakarta Post) – While this forum letter probably has a political undertone to it, it provides a concise overview about the diffusion of homo sapiens throughout southeast asia.
Who are indigenous Indonesians?
Homo sapiens first reached Indonesia about 50,000 years ago, when sea levels were lower than now and western Indonesia was still part of the Southeast Asia mainland. After several millennia, early Indonesians invented what were probably the world’s first sea-going vessels and went on to settle eastern Indonesia, Australia, including Tasmania, and the Solomon Islands.
Their descendants still inhabit Papua today. However, they were eliminated from western Indonesia by relatively recent migrants. The spark for this was the emergence of crop cultivation in the Yangtze River valley in about 7,000 BC. Agriculture spread across what is now China and farming communities began to migrate into Southeast Asia.
Related Books:
– Southeast Asia: From Prehistory to History by P. S. Bellwood and I. Glover (Eds)
– Bioarchaeology of Southeast Asia (Cambridge Studies in Biological and Evolutionary Anthropology) by M. Oxenham
– Man’s conquest of the Pacific: The prehistory of Southeast Asia and Oceania by P. Bellwood
– Prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian Archipelago by P. Bellwood
– The Archaeology of Mainland Southeast Asia: From 10,000 B.C. to the Fall of Angkor by C. Higham
