Neolithic burial site discovered in Batu Niah

Malaysian archaeologists have discovered Neolithic burials in the Niah-Subis limestone hills in Batu Niah on the island of Borneo.

Eight skeletons were discovered along with other artifacts including pottery. I hope that they will try to extract some genetic material from these skeletons. It will also be interesting to see, especially if the earlier dates of around 3,000 years ago are valid, as to whether there is any linkage with the Lapita-type pottery of Oceania.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

ANCIENT BURIAL SITE DISCOVERED IN BATU NIAH

Bernama - Saturday, August 2

KUCHING, Aug 1 (Bernama) -- A research team from the Centre For Archaeological Research Malaysia, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) and the Sarawak Museum Department has discovered an ancient burial site, believed to be from the Neolithic period, at Gua Kain Hitam in the Niah-Subis limestone hills in Batu Niah, Miri division.

Sarawak Museum Department deputy director Ipoi Datan said today the excavations at the site, funded by the National Heritage Department in 2007 and the USM Research University Grant last year, has so far uncovered more than eight human skeletons, dating back 2,000 to 3,000 years ago.

"The human skeletons as well as the associated artifacts such as pottery, ornaments and food remains like shells and animal bones are currently being analysed in order to extract more information about the burials and lifestyles of the ancient people who lived in the Niah-Subis region during that time," he said in a statement here.

He said the new finding would not only enrich knowledge on the early history of Sarawak and the nation but also expected to attract more local and foreign tourists to visit the site, which is located in the Niah National Park.

The Sarawak Museum Department is asking for public cooperation in not disturbing or encroaching into the site as the finds had no commercial value but only contained valuable research and academic significance, he said.

-- BERNAMA

Thousands of Wooden Poles found at Yunnan Neolithic Site

Chinese new sources are reporting an exciting find from Yunnan, in southwest China. The discovery in Dali may turn out to be the largest Neolithic site anywhere in the world. So far it covers an area of 1,350 sq. meters and could eventually span 4 sq. kilometers.

Some 2,000 wooden poles sunk deep into the ground (4.5 meters) were uncovered. Archaeologists surmise that these are more than 3,000 years old and the article mentions they may be older than the Hemudu Culture of the Yangtze region, which would mean that it is still thousands of years older. Hemudu Layer 4 is generally dated to 5000 BCE. Yan Wenming of Peking University says the poles might have been used to support housing structures, which brings to mind the type of pile-raised architecture found further south or east along the maritime coastlines in Southeast Asia and South China. Ancient Yunnan is often associated with Daic and Austro-Asiatic speaking peoples prior to the arrival of Sino-Tibetan speakers. The latter are believed to largely descendants of the Di-Qiang people mentioned in Chinese literature as migrating into Yunnan from the north. And most, with the most notable exception of the Lolo, still mainly inhabit northern Yunnan.

Thousands of Wooden Poles at Yunnan Neolithic Site

DALI, Yunnan -- More than 2,000 wooden poles recently unearthed at a site in Jianchuan county, have been found to be more than 3,000 years old.

The poles, still standing, were dug 4.5 m into the ground.

Archaeologists said carbon tests showed the poles were from the Neolithic age, and were probably the foundations for a structure built by a community that existed at the time in southwest China.

Archaeologists excavate a site from the Neolithic age in Jianchuan county, Dali, Southwest China's Yunnan Province. [China Daily]

They said this community may turn out to be the largest Neolithic one of its kind that has ever been discovered in China, or even in the world. It could be older than the Hemudu community in Yuyao, Zhejiang province, birthplace of the Yangtze River civilization.

"I was shocked when I first saw the site. I have never seen such a big and orderly one. This could be only a small fraction of the actual community that existed at the time," Yan Wenming, history professor at Peking University, said.

Excavation of the site is still going on. A total of 28 excavations have been made so far of an area that covers 1,350 sq m. Min Rui, a researcher at the Yunnan Archaeological Institute who leads the excavation, said the area could eventually cover 4 sq km

Yan said the poles could have been the foundations for a house as these types of structures have been found in Hubei, Guangdong, Zhejiang and other provinces, the most famous being the Hemudu site.

"Right now there is also such a site being excavated in Switzerland. But that site is smaller than the one in Yunnan. The Yunnan one could be the largest in the world," Yan said.

Archaeologists have also found more than 3,000 artifacts made of stone, as well as pottery, wood, iron and bones. The most eye-catching piece is a red jar, Min said.

The site, which lies on the banks of the Jianhu Lake, was discovered in 1957 during the construction of a canal. Broken pieces of pottery were found nearby. Excavation started in January this year - five decades after the discovery.

Lungshanoid (Glossary)

One major assertion in this work is that a volcanic eruption on Luzon during the 4th millennium BCE caused upheavels resulting in expanded Nusantao migration and trading clan wars.

The dispersion of Lungshanoid culture, where ever it originates, is one signature of the resulting activity in the region.

Hoabinhian background

Understanding the Neolithic situation in Southeast Asia starts with the Mesolithic Hoabinhian culture and also takes into account Wilhelm Solheim's latest theories on the Nusantao.

Solheim now proposes that "Pre-Austronesian" culture begins in the Bismarck Islands off northwestern Papua New Guinea beginning around 13,000 to 10,000 BP. He cites specifically the appearance of arboriculture and shell artifacts at this time.

He proposes that by at least 10,000 BP interaction networks had been established from the Bismarcks to Indochina and South China. Here they came into contact with Hoabinhian culture. Previously, Solheim has suggested that tool edge-grinding in northern Australia radiocarbon dated to about 20,000 BCE was of Hoabinhian provenance.

Carl Sauer and Solheim have suggested that simple agriculture may have begun as early as 15,000 BCE or even 20,000 BCE in mainland Southeast Asia based on Hoabinhian finds. Although the oldest radiocarbon dates for plant remains go back only to 9700 BCE, other evidence is found in successively deeper layers with no radiometric dating. Solheim has suggested a time scenario based on the depth of these layers.

Hoabinhian culture utilized chipped pebble tools, a "pebble" referring to a gravel stone of certain diameter. They appear to have used a simple hoe, one of the oldest known farming artifacts, consisting of a transversly-hafted adze, and to have made cord-marked pottery.

The cords used by the Hoabinhian and the roughly contemporary Jomon to the north provide some of the earliest evidence of hand-spinning in the world. We also find evidence of mat-making from mat impressions in the pottery.

Some early long-range dispersions of the Pre- or Proto-Austronesians appear to have been caused by sea flooding in Southeast Asia, and these could account, for example, in cultural changes seen at places like Spirit Cave in 6600 BCE.

Shell culture

In the region of the Philippines and eastern Indonesia, a culture based on shell tools and shellfish gathering emerged sometime around 7000 BCE.

Wilfredo Ronquillo has documented some early phases of this shell mound culture including stone-flaking and shell-working at Balobok Rockshelter in the southern Philippines starting in the period 6810-6050 BCE. By 5340 BCE, we see shell and stone tools, together with some polished tools and earthenware pottery (still not classified).


A Tridacna shell adze from Palau. Source: http://www.pacificworlds.com/palau/sea/reef.cfm

The Southeast Asian and coastal East Asian tradition of polished tools is different from that of areas of inner and northern eastern Asia. In the southern areas, they continued to chip pebbles, only grinding and polishing to finish the product. This practice often continued well into the Neolithic unlike other areas where grinding and pecking displaced the chipping process.

The Insular Southeast Asian and coastal East Asian polished tools also differed from those of mainland Southeast Asia and non-coastal East Asia in that stepped adzes of quadrangular cross-section were mostly used by the former, while the latter mostly used shouldered adzes.

Balobok culture fashioned tools from the giant clam Tridacna giga, and we find this and similiar shell artifacts moving northward during the sixth millennium BCE. Shell tools pop up in Dapenkeng culture in Taiwan and in the Neolithic cultures around Hong Kong around 5000 BCE. It appears that the early shell-working in the Bismarcks was significantly enhanced in the region of the Philippines and eastern Indonesia and then taken northward by the Nusantao.

The stone and shell tool tradition in this area may be related to the earlier edge-grinding tradition in northern Australia. Most of the tools during this early period were still only edge-ground although some others like the rectangular stepped adze, found also at Dapenkeng and in the Hong Kong Neolithic sites, were more fully-polished.

At about his time we also see the appearance of the semilunar stone or shell reaping knife. It is difficult to say where this came from, but it eventually gets strongly associated with rice agriculture and becomes an important marker of Lungshanoid culture.

North-South interaction

After 5000 BCE, trade networks extending as far north as Shandong appear established. A two-way diffusion of culture begins to take place.

The Nusantao cultural kit by this time included items like the stepped adze/axe of rectangular cross-section, the semilunar reaping knife, the spindle whorl probably borrowed from the north, clay/stone net sinkers, perforated discs that may have been indigenous spindle whorls and/or net sinkers, shell tools and beads.


The image shows the process of reducing stone into the semilunar knive of the Korean Neolithic. Source: Pusan National University Museum, http://pnu-museum.org

Lungshanoid culture develops with the appearance of rice agriculture and is marked by the mainland tripod and ringfoot pottery tradition, the semilunar knives and the stepped adze. Otherwise the Lungshanoid is typically Nusantao especially in the southern locations of Fujian and Taiwan.

R. Ferrell believes the Yuanshan culture of Taiwan was "Proto-Lungshanoid" while KC Chang thought the culture may have originated in China. Whatever the case, there was a lot of exchange going on.

We also know that the Taiwanese Neolithic cultures were closely related with those in the Philippines. The red-slipped Philippine wares were very closely associated along with other artifacts to the Yuanshan wares and culture. Even the Dapenkeng sees it closest correspondence with Philippine sites. A comparison of the pottery at Balobok with that of Dapenkeng could be very revealing.

In both cases the pottery traditions are probably related to the Hoabinhian methods that filtered into the islands during the early Pre-Austronesian interactions with the Hoabinhian culture, the latter seems to be categorized by Solheim as consisting largely of Proto-Austro-Tai speakers.

Interactions between Taiwan and the Philippines continued through the Lungshanoid as rice agriculture appears to enter the islands at this time by at least 3000 BCE. Lungshanoid tripod and ringfoot pottery may also radiate into Insular Southeast Asia through the Philippines. Examples of such pottery are found at Novaliches in the Philippines and Leang Buidane in Sulawesi.

Tripod and ringfoot pottery together with the practice of jar burial also eventually moves westward into South India during the megalithic period, and apparently creeps northward into eastern India, where we hear of the practice of jar burial in Buddhist literature.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

References

Ronquillo, Wilfredo. "The 1992 Archaeological Reexcavation of the Balobok Rockshelter, Sanga Sanga, Tawi Tawi Province, Philippines: A Preliminary Report. With Mr. Rey A. Santiago, Mr. Shijun Asato and Mr. Kazuhiko Tanaka," Journal of Historiographical Institute, Okinawa Prefectural Library. No. 18, March, 1993. Okinawa, Japan pp. 1-40. 1993.

Solheim, Wilhelm, Archaeology and Culture in Southeast Asia: Unraveling the Nusantao, with contribution from David Bulbeck and Ambika Flavel, University of the Philippines Press, ND.

__, "Origins of the Filipinos and their languages," Paper presented at 9th Philippine Linguistics Congress (25-27 January 2006), University of the Philippines.

Dolmens II

The dolmens of the world tend to lack any of the markings of the more established religions. Even the more specific known symbols of the pre-Christian religions of Europe rarely find a place on the dolmens. These monuments and other megaliths though do have carvings and other marks quite commonly and the meanings of these symbols has fueled much speculation.

To sort this out we can explore the traditions connected with the European megalithic sites. As noted, the greatest monuments often have only relatively late notices in the literature. Stonehenge is first mentioned only in 1135 by Geoffrey of Monmouth. The impressive ruins of Carnac despite rather detailed early descriptions of the surroundng area are only related in 1779 by Sauvagère in Recueil d'Antiquités dans les Gaules who attributes them mistakenly to the Romans.

However, it may be through the folklore linked with these monuments that we can work back and connect with the more ancient literature. In northern Europe, the dolmens and other megaliths are often associated with fairies, elves and other folkloric peoples or creatures. These mythological beings may at one time have been real cultures that over the centuries or millennia became transformed through the telling of tradition.

In the medieval literature, these peoples play a rather distinct role and are often associated with faraway mystical places. In the chansons de geste, Arthurian cycles and other romantic epics, the fairies are linked with the lush paradisical place called the "island of apples" or Avalon.

A land of apples is also found in earlier Greek and Norse myths. In the Greek versions, this place is located "beyond the river Oceanus at the outer limits of the world." As mentioned earlier, the river Oceanus was seen as existing both to the west and to the east. This could be either according to the astronomical view of a globular world or to the popular and medieval one of a flat circular world.

"As for Okeanos, the Greeks say that it flows around the whole world from where the sun rises, but they cannot prove that this is so." - Herodotus 4.8.1

"The unending flow and ebb of Tethys, of the sacred flood of Okeanos fathomless-rolling, of the bounds of Earth that wearieth never of her travail, of where the Sun-steeds leap from orient waves." - Quintus Smyrnaeus 2.115

"[The] rivers [of the world] are many, and mighty, and diverse, and there are four principal ones, of which the greatest and outermost is that called Okeanos, which flows round the earth in a circle; and in the opposite direction flows Akheron, which passes under the earth through desert places." -Plato Phaedo 112E

"The root-fixt bed of refluent Okeanos surrounds the circle of the world and its four divided parts, girdling the whole earth coronet- wise with encircling band." –Dionysiaca 2.247

The golden apples of the Garden of Hesperides were a gift from Gaea during the wedding of Zeus and Hera, have been located in many places including Africa and America. The golden apples in many ways resemble the forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden. The tree possessing these apples was said to be guarded by a serpent or dragon sometimes called Ladon.

The serpent Ladon protecting the golden apples

Earlier I mentioned that the forbidden fruit of the Bible has often been equated with the banana. Could this also be the case with the "golden apples." The tree was cared for by the sisters known as the Hesperides. As one of his labors, Hercules went to fetch the golden apples and came to a land known as Hyperborea.

The country of Hyperborea was said to be located in the far north beyond the north wind or the Boreas in Greek (Latin Aquilon).

However, like Avalon, Hyperborea was described as a lush warm paradise where the natives ran naked and carefree. Abaris, a Hyperborean priest, was said to have carried a magic arrow and is linked with the founding of magic and shamanist traditions in Greece and also to a particular school of medicine. It was said that the Sun was worshipped here in the form of Apollo, and both Kronus and Leto, the grandfather and mother of Apollo were stated to have come from Hyperborea.

It was here that Hercules finds Atlas or in some versions Prometheus. Interestingly, Titans alone seemed to know the way to the mystical Garden of the Hesperides.

The Norse myth of Iðunn also mentions golden apples and contains the following motifs: 1) The tree's fruit provides eternal youth to the gods of Asgard, 2) Loki takes the form of a bird to steal Iðunn and the golden apples, 3) Loki and Thor hide the apples in the belly of the Midgard serpent.

You may notice here the combination of the tree, the bird and the serpent that we discussed earlier.

Vennemann believes the Hesperides are linked with North Africa and that even that the name is of Afro-Asiatic origin. He has suggested pre-Indo-European peoples like the Picts and the Scandinvian Vanirs were Afro-Asiatic speakers.

However, like Avalon, the Hesperides and Hyperborea are linked in some ways with voyages to the north as well as the west. While there is some indication of polar days and nights, these lands are thought of as having warm, even tropical climates.

Could we have here some vague recollection of northern journeys that eventually led to the South Seas as postulated by Hornell and others? In the medieval romances, Ogier the Dane was said to have spent a long time in Avalon where he reportedly made many conquests in the "Indies."

We find later too that Prester John becomes entwined in the romance literature connected, for example, with Parzival and Ogier, often with the further geographical link of the Indies. We will discuss this in greater detail later on in the blog.

Vennemann has also suggested that the word "apple" was borrowed into Indo-European from Afro-Asiatic 'abol "genitals." However, Pedersen notes that the apple words like those for "river bank," i.e., German uber and Welsh aber, show an alternation between the letters "a" and "u" and he believes this may be related to Austronesian influence.

Of the symbols found on the megaliths, one of the most common is the cup mark. Monuments in Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines, Korea, Europe, India and other regions all display, often profusely, these concave etchings.

Oppenheimer notes that in Sumatra and eastern Indonesia, these cup marks are found in parallel rows in a pattern similar to a Mancala board game (Sungka in the Philippines). In fact, these cup etchings are actually used to play this Indo-Pacific-wide game locally. Similar patterns have been found on megaliths in Turkey and East Africa, and amongst the rock carvings of Scandinavia. That a game would be played on a sacred tomb should not be thought of as strange. In many ancient cultures, ancestral tombs were looked at as not less than a home away from home, where family activities such as eating and playing were encouraged.

Other cup marks seem to represent something else entirely and are often shown with surrounding concentric rings. In the view of the dragon and bird clan, these symbols might represent the holy volcano in a Mt. Meru design with the concave cup symbolizing the volcanic crater.

Megalithic cup and ring marking from Achnabreck, Scotland

Megalithic cup and ring marking from Ballochmyle, Scotland

In some cases, these cup markings are connected by grooves that follow the natural contours of the stone. They have been thought of in many ways to include outlines of tomb structures and representations of constellations. Some believe the groove system is designed to help drain water off the rock although this is usually not obvious. It may be that the builders saw the stone's contours as a representation of a natural landscape and that the grooves represented water ways leading from one mountain (cup mark) to another.

The early Greeks divided history into different ages of which the first was the Golden Age. During this period, Kronus ruled over the Titans, the Golden Race, in Hyperborea also sometimes described as the "Saturnian isle." After the volcanic overthrow of the Titans, the Golden Age continued in the mysterious otherworldly "Isles of the Blessed." The period was known as one of innocence and natural living.

Plato writing in Cratylus notes that the Golden Race were also known as "demons" although the meaning of that word was different in earlier times. Referring to Hesiod, he states:

And therefore I have the most entire conviction that he called them demons, because they were daemones (knowing or wise), and in our older Attic dialect the word itself occurs. Now he and other poets say truly, that when a good man dies he has honour and a mighty portion among the dead, and becomes a demon; which is a name given to him signifying wisdom. And I say too, that every wise man who happens to be a good man is more than human (daimonion) both in life and death, and is rightly called a demon.

Hesiod described the early Golden Race as "holy demons upon the earth, Beneficent, averters of ills, guardians of mortal men."

It is probably not by coincidence that the word "demon" has come to refer to the "fallen angels" of Biblical lore.

Indeed we have shown that the fallen angel camp "ruled" first through their willingness to exploit the trade routes without moral reservation. However, the eruptions and corresponding alliance of the dragon and bird clans allowed for the "overthrow" of the old regime and their expulsion from "Eden."

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento


References

On the folklore of the megaliths

Evans-Wentz, W. Y., The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries, 1911.

Dumézil, Georges, “The Gods: Aesir and Vanir,” in Gods of the Ancient Norsemen 3-25 (1973).

MacRitchie, David. Ancient and Modern Britons : A Retrospect, W. Preston, 1986 (reprint).


On Vennemann's and related theories

Linguistic abstracts, http://www.germanistik.uni-muenchen.de/theoretische_linguistik/vennemann.html#abstracts

Dolmens

The worldwide distribution of megaliths has spawned theories of a megalithic culture that spanned the globe at some early epoch. Grafton Elliot Smith was among the first to speculate on such hyperdiffusion.

The concept of moving or raising large stones for purposes ranging from marking boundaries to building tombs is natural enough to have risen independently in many cultures. However, one type of megalith does attract our attention.

The dolmen tomb occurs over a wide distribution in an arrangement that does not lead one to think of independent origin. The dolmen often occurs as a "stone table" consisting of a massive flat capstone lying horizontally on smaller upright stones acting as "table legs."

What make the dolmen unusual is that it usually is found surrounded by a mound or tumulus. Underneath the dolmen, one will again usually find a stone cist containing one or more burials. A large hole in one of the rocks, apparently symbolic in nature, will also be associated with the dolmen. The Marquis of Nadaillac commented on the unlikely possibility of this occuring independently:

We can understand how men were everywhere impelled to raise mounds above the bodies of their ancestors, to perpetuate their memory or to enclose their mortal remains between flat stones to save them from being crushed by the weight of earth above them. We may even, by straining a point, admit the idea that a large cist developed into a dolmen, but when in districts separated by enormous distances we see monuments with the wall pierced with a circular opening or combining an interior crypt with an external mound and dolmen, it is impossible to look upon these close resemblances as the result of an accidental coincidence, and equally impossible to fail to conclude that the men whose funeral rites were remarkable for such close similarity belonged to the same race.

Dolmens in Europe and eastern Asia appear divided mainly into Neolithic and Bronze Age categories. In some cases, iron is found in these tombs but often along with evidence that this metal was deposited only long after the dolmen was erected. This is different than in other areas such as India where megalithic burials are often associated with iron. Heine-Geldern thus thought there were two "waves" of megalith builders in Europe and Southeast Asia who were in fact linked.

The strongest evidence that would suggest the dolmen builders of Europe came from far away in the East is found in the megalithic fields of France. Here burials with jade, nephrite and jadeite (chloromelanite) hatchets and celts have been found.

Jade is not found in Europe and turns up only very far to the east. There is a difference of opinion on nephrite and jadeite. Some limited deposits have been found of both although most experts tend to agree that jadeite was probably imported from an eastern source. Nephrite deposits have been found with workshops in proximity although without evidence that the deposits had ever been worked.

The strongest argument against local mining of these minerals is that their use totally disappears after the megalithic age. Like the hard-fired pottery of Neolithic Iraq and Syria, and the early lashed-lug boats of Scandinavia, the jade tools vanish either due to the loss of a culture or to a lost trading source.

We know as a fact that with the rise of urban China, jade and nephrite became increasingly harder to obtain outside of that country. For example, in the Philippines, the situation with nephrite shows clear signs that the supply diminished over time.

We find jade, nephrite and jadeite tools also among the pile dwellings or "Lake Stations" of neolithic Switzerland. Remains from this culture included perforated clay spindle whorls and net sinkers similar to those found in the neolithic shell mound cultures much further east. The Lake Stations are naturally linked with the nearby pile dwellings of northern Italy.

The dolmen burials also contained tools made of fibrolite, another material not native to Europe, and Indo-Pacific cowries.

The neolithic Shandong and related coastal Korean cultures raised dolmens. Indeed, Korea has more dolmens than all the rest of the world combined. Today, the peoples of Sulawesi and Sumba in eastern Indonesia continue to build dolmen tombs although with some modern touches.

The traditional dolmens of this region often were combined with carved totemic menhirs.

In both Europe and Southeast Asia we find evidence in the Neolithic and Bronze Age of the cult of the axe. Blades with no signs of wear are found, often in large numbers, as burial items. Sometimes these tools appear purposely broken as if due to some form of ritual.

The mounds associated with dolmens can be either artificial or natural, and some of the former are massive having circumferences of thousands of feet and standing over 170 feet high. They remind us of similarly expansive shell mounds that were also used for burial.

In many ways, the dolmen resembles also the houses, and at times, semisubterranean houses built on mounds in the northern regions. The hole found in many of these monuments may represent an opening allowing the souls interned to exit the structure. However, it has also been theorized that dolmens were used to bury entire families using secondary internment, and that dessicated skeletons were placed through the opening. Often the local folklore connected with dolmens views them as homes made by little people, or by giants for little people.


Dolmen with opening from India

Also of interest is the fact that the megaliths of Europe though extensive and spectacular in scale are hardly mentioned at all by the ancient Greek and Roman writers, or even by early medieval chroniclers. They certainly were known as there is abundant evidence especially of Roman intrusion into these monuments. However, it was almost as the memory of these structures was thought to be better forgotten.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

Thunderstones

A widespread belief in Southeast Asia associates the stone axe with the thunderbolt or with the teeth of a dragon that causes thunderstorms. In fact, ideas linking thunder with stone axes is rather widespread being found among Amerindians, West Africans, Northern Europeans and others.

However, a number of researchers have noted that the association with thunder is particularly linked with the battle or sacrificial axe consisting of a curved blade -- the round axe, the double axe and the throwing axe (tomahawk).

Earlier I mentioned the development of curved blades in Asia in relation to the Neolithic, which brought the technology needed to make good symmetrical curved weapons. Some early examples of these blades are the semi-lunar knife of Neolithic Asia and the crescent-shaped flint "sickle" of late Neolithic Denmark.

In China, were the battle axe was one of the first symbols of regal authority it was known by the name yuet ?. The name was the same used to describe the non-Chinese people of South China. Later the name Yuet was used specifically for the Vietnamese who pronounced it as Viet.


Jade axe or yuet from China

The stone battle axe was followed by the bronze axe of the same form. The ceremonial nature of the bronze axe is often connected with sacrifice. However, the myths regarding thunder refer usually only to stone axes and in certain areas specifically to those made of flint. This may indicate the Neolithic age and dispersion of the belief.


Bronze ceremonial axe from Roti, Indonesia


Bronze ceremonial axes from Scandinavia, top, and Irian Jaya, bottom.

The thunderstone was widely seen as having healing properties and as protecting against lightning. The god or king who wielded the battle axe was linked with thunder and thus with rain. In the case of the king, the battle axe represented the king as a controller of rain according to Frazer's notion of the "King of Nature."

In numerous cultures, we find that thunder is associated either with a dog or a bird. The thunder dog and thunder bird are totems that represent the sky as opposed to the dragon/serpent totem which generally represents the water. These emblems, of course, relate back to our original story of the two battling volcanoes.

Tala, the Morning Star, who descends to earth has as his totem, the dog. There is something similar to this elsewhere in the region where the Kimat, the dog of the Tinguian supreme thunder-god Kadaklan, is the personification of lightning. Tala's father Manalastas has the rooster totem. The descent of the star is viewed in the same sense as lightning and thunder and thus one can see a model for the thunder dog and thunder bird.

In his research, Torsten Pedersen has noted the resemblance of western words for the double axe such as pelekus in Europe with those in Austronesia, i.e. palakul of the Philippines. These words may stem from a root of the form *b/p-l-g.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

A Neolithic snapshot

During the migrations mentioned by Oppenheimer that took place between about 8000 and 6000 years ago, shell mound cultures appear in three major distant locations. The Ubaid sites have already been mentioned previously and we will investigate them in detail later.

Shell mounds also appear to the north in the Bering Sea and Arctic regions. Decades ago, Soviet prehistorians had suggested that Proto-Eskimo and Proto-Inuit people had been influenced by people from the southern Pacific and Southeast Asia, or that they had even originated from those regions.

They found many common items in the cultural inventory of these people that had southern correspondences including toggling harpoon heads with sockets and barbs at their base and slate points unique to the region.

S. I Rudenko noted that the distribution of these toggling harpoons matched the distribution of shell mounds both in the north and the south.

Rudenko states: "Eskimo sea-mammal hunters appeared in the Bering Sea region comparatively late and were really the wedge dividing related peoples, alien to them, of northeastern Asia and northern America, they apparently came to the Bering Sea region not from the north but the south, not from Asiatic Asia but from Asia's insular southeast."

The sea vessels of these Arctic peoples also shared morphologies with the south. Indeed, experts on maritime history like James Hornell have suggested that the bifid double construction ship found in the circum-Arctic regions was of southern Pacific origin.

M.G. Levin, another researcher specializing in Northeast Asian ethnology writes: "It was not difficult for these coastal peoples of the Pacific to adjust to the conditions of the Far North, since they had long practised fishing and sea-mammal hunting, they knew how to build the warm semisubterranean houses necessary in arctic surroundings, and finally they were excellent seafarers for whom it was easy to move along the coast and settle the Far North. (Okladnikov, 1941c, pp. 30-31)"

In addition to the Persian Gulf and Eskimo/Inuit region, shell mounds also appear on the Atlantic coast of Europe. Here also, in mesolithic Denmark, we find the bifid boats that Hornell and others had given a South Seas origin. In addition at a latter date we find the uniquely SE Asian/Pacific technique of lashed-lug construction in Scandinavia.

We will examine each of these region in more detail later in this blog.


Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

References


Levin, M. G. _Ethnic origins of the peoples of northeastern Asia._ Edited by Henry N. Michael. [Toronto] Published for the Arctic Institute of North America by University of Toronto Press [1963]

Hornell, James, _Water transport: origins and early evolution_. Newton Abbot, David & Charles, 1970.

The Yi Peoples

Shun-Sheng Ling wrote: "During ancient times the majority of the inhabitants of the Pacific coast of China belonged to the East Yi. The East Yi people in accordance with the results of our research consisted chiefly of peoples from Polynesia and Micronesia".

Pointing more toward Taiwan and the Philippines, the late Harvard historian Kwang-chih Chang agreed that Austronesian presence in early coastal China was likely.

The "East Yi" (Dong Yi) are the Yi peoples who lived in Shandong and Henan as described in Chinese literature. The Yi to the south were known as Nan Yi and those to the north as Bei Yi.

Chinese literature describes the Yi as "maritime" people who built large ships. Eventually the name Yi became synonomous with the sea itself.

The Yi peoples are normally associated with Dawenkou, Lungshan, Liangzhu and Hongshan cultures. These people practiced tooth removal and head deformation, and built their homes on piles (stilts), all common features of Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

The Dawenkou showed the first signs of significant social stratification in China. Elite burials became increasingly common and elaborate toward the latter Dawenkou period. By the time that Dawenkou transitioned to its daughter Lungshan culture in Shandong, signs of extreme hierarchy were present to include, at times, funerary human sacrifice.

In the Lungshan period we see the rise of forts with rammed earth walls. This has been interpreted as possibly signaling an increase in clan warfare and the consequent need for protection.

Chinese texts make it clear that the Yi people were considered foreign in comparison to the Hua folk of the Upper Yellow River region. In latter times, the term "Dong Yi" came to exclusively mean foreigners and no longer applied to Shandong province.

However, during the earliest times, the Yi people were very important in the formation of Chinese culture and civilization.

The Dawenkou Pottery Inscriptions may have faciliated communication and trade between people who spoke different languages. These characters were pictographic in nature and thus would have facilitated cross-cultural communication.

As noted earlier there is extensive evidence of long-distance trade particularly that involving jade and nephrite originating in the Yangtze region (Liangzhu culture).

During the Lungshan period, we see the increasing use of clan emblems. By studying these symbols we can see that some clans were able to extend their range considerably. Sometime around 5500 years ago things started heating up in this region. If the war had not started yet, it was about to begin.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento