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.

The Nusantao, continued

The Nusantao lived around shell mounds and sand dunes. Often they lived right on top of them. Later as they moved into colder regions in the north they began to build their homes partly within the mounds. This was an excellent adaptation to cold weather and was one of a number of factors that allowed the Nusantao to easily explore colder regions.

Another thing that helped was their habit of hunting sea mammals. The shell mounds show abundant evidence of this type of hunting including sea mammal bones. They used harpoon heads including some probably of the toggling type, which have survived until modern times in the Philippines and New Zealand. A toggling harpoon has a detachable head attached to a line or cord.

The people also supplemented their diet by hunting and by raising domestic animals. They had chickens, pigs and dogs.

Many of them practiced horticulture -- evidence of which goes back to at least 15,000 BC in this region. And there is also evidence of sugarcane and rice agriculture.

The dates on the start of rice agriculture are rather controversial. Oppenheimer has a good discussion on this in Eden in the East. The earliest dates go back to 12,000 years ago at Spirit Cave and 9260 years ago at Sakai Cave on the Malay Peninsula. It is difficult though to tell wild rice from domestic rice just by looking at it.

The domestication argument is strengthened by the fact that other plants found at Spirit and Sakai caves were among those later domesticated in Southeast Asia.

Whatever the earliest dates for rice, the Nusantao that had reached South China definitely were planting this crop.

These shell mound people used ground-edge tools of both shell and stone. And a new discovery at Balobok Cave in the southern Philippines dated to 5340 BC suggests they also used fully-polished neolithic tools.

One thing we should remember in studying Southeast Asia is that a Neolithic or Metal Age "revolution" does not mean the same thing here as in other places. There are cases of "Stone Age" people surviving in this region to the present-day. The controversial Tasaday are one well-known example, but there are many other less controversial ones. "Mesolithic" Hoabinhian sites have been discovered surviving in regions that appear to had already moved into the Metal Age. Keep this fact in mind.

Here's a good summary of the Nusantao:

During the third and last rapid rise flood a Hoabinhian-like people that built shell mounds began migrating southward into insular Southeast Asia. These people certainly practiced horticulture and possibly agriculture.

These people eventually settle in eastern Indonesia and the Philippines where they begin using shell tools. They also learn (or relearn) the art of edge grinding. They manufacture edge-ground shell and stone tools, and also make fully polished neolithic blades.

One of the important tools made by these people was the celt, a groove-less axe. The blade industry is distinguished by the rectangular cross-section of the tools.

The shell mound people appear on the South China coast with their shell tools, edge-grinding and roughly polished tools sometime before 5000 BC. They form a culture along the Yangtze River. And they quickly move northward into present-day Shandong.

The cultural kit of these people came to include by 5000 BC: clay spindle whorls to make nets, clay net sinkers, disc-shaped earplug ornaments, stepped stone (socketed) adzes, stone hoes, stone knives and long-stemmed polished stone arrow/harpoon heads. They also made Hoabinhian-descended pottery.

The Yangtze and Shandong regions are important. They will become vital nodes in the Nusantao trade network.

Glossary: Shellfish Gathering

The use of shellfish as a primary source of protein has been linked by some researchers with the development of modern homo sapiens.

The earliest anatomically modern humans are associated with shell mounds in South Africa dating to 100,000 years ago. According to one theory of human migrations out of Africa along a southern route, populations hugged the coast because of their shellfish gathering practices.

The human nervous system, like that of all mammals, is composed almost entirely of long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LC-PUFA), docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and arachidonic acid (AA).

These essential fatty acids are generally lacking in land-based animals but high in in fish and shellfish. A study by Broadhurst et al. suggests that the move to shellfish and fish as major parts of the diet is linked with the brain development in early humans. They argue that such a diet "would have provided the advantage in multi-generational brain development which would have made possible the advent of H. sapiens. Restriction to land based foods as postulated by the savannah and other hypotheses would have led to degeneration of the brain and vascular system as happened without exception in all other land based apes and mammals as they evolved larger bodies."

The building of shell mounds by shellfish gathering people eventually took on a cultural form that is rather distinctive. The mounds were usually built at some distance from the community at first. Studies have suggested that the depth of shell mounds increases by about 8 inches to 1 foot per 100 years.

Eventually as the mounds grew high enough the community would often relocate on top of the structure. The raised elevation provided protection from floods and tides. Once on top of the mound, the midden continued to grow. Some waste was disposed of right under the home over the existing midden, while other types of waste were moved to a nearby dump that tended to extend the size of the current mound.

Some middens were also used as burial grounds and platforms for ceremonies. In cultures that still build shell mounds like the sea gypsies of Southeast Asia, the Andaman Islanders and the Nicobar Islanders, the heaps are a source of pride for the community.

Surface of a shell mound, Andaman Islands

In shellfish gathering cultures, the work tends to be done by women while men hunt, fish or do other chores. Consumption of shellfish and fish, on the one hand, is associated with nomadic and underdeveloped communities, and on the other with the food of the world's elite i.e., caviar, escargot, sashimi and oysters.

In the islands of Southeast Asia, shells were formed into blade tools during the early or pre-Neolithic period. These tools were often made from the operculum. In addition to their use as blades, shells were also used for bailers, scrapers, sanders, hooks, shovels and other instruments.

For some uses, shell tools were superior to those made of stone, while inferior for other uses. This situation may have sparked the trade of shell for stone tools and vice a versa in early Southeast Asian cultures.

The value of shells and their availability to seafaring merchants probably led to their eventual use as the first trade currency. The cowrie became the principal shell for this purpose over much of the world.

When the Phoenicians developed coins for trade they made them into the shapes of murex, scallop and triton shells. Today shells are displayed on the coinage of various countries.

Imperial Volute (Cymbiola imperialis Linne) on Philippine sentimo coin

Triton's Trumpet (Charonia tritonis Linne) on Vanuatu 2 vatu coin

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

References

Broadhurst CL, Wang Y, Crawford MA, Cunnane SC, Parkington JE, Schmidt WF. "Brain-specific lipids from marine, lacustrine, or terrestrial food resources: potential impact on early African Homo sapiens." Comp Biochem Physiol B Biochem Mol Biol. 2002 Apr;131(4):653-73.

Shellfish as Trade Goods, http://www.manandmollusc.net/advanced_uses/trade_goods.html

First evidence of shell fish-hook technology in the Persian Gulf

A new article is out on the discovery of shell fish hooks in the Arabian Gulf (Persian Gulf). Previously shell fish hooks had been discovered at Indian Ocean sites on the Arabian peninsula but not in the Gulf. Here is the abstract of the article.

First evidence of shell fish-hook technology in the Gulf

Authors: Méry, Sophie¹; Charpentier, Vincent¹; Beech, Mark²

Source: Arabian archaeology and epigraphy, Volume 19, Number 1, May 2008 , pp. 15-21(7)

Publisher: Blackwell Publishing

Abstract:

The technology of shell fish-hooks and line fishing is well attested in the coastal areas of the Indian Ocean during the Neolithic period (fifth-fourth millennium BC). Their presence in the coastal area of the Arabian Gulf is now confirmed by new findings from Akab (Umm al-Qaiwain) and Shimal (Ra's al-Khaimah) in the United Arab Emirates.

One of the article's authors, Mark Beech, wrote an article, The Development of Fishing in the U.A.E.: A Zooarchaeological Perspective, in which he compares the use of shell fish hooks in the Gulf with practices in the Pacific (without suggesting direct links).

Shell fish hooks are found in the Neolithic kits of Insular Southeast Asia especially in Taiwan and Timor, but are more abundant in Oceania. The word "fish-hook" has been reconstructed in Proto-Austronesian as *kauil and in Proto-Malayo-Polynesian as *kawil.

Beech, citing Charpentier and Méry (1997), notes that the limestone tools found at apparent shell fish hook workshops in Oman resemble tools used for the same purpose in Polynesia at a much later period. He quotes Sir Joseph Banks' observation on the island of Tahiti:

. . . the shell is first cut by the edge of another shell
into square pieces. These are shaped with files of coral,
with which they work in a manner surprising to any one
who does not know how sharp corals are. Ahole is then
bored in the middle by a drill [. . .] the file then comes
into the hole and completes the hook . . .’

(Best 1929: 32–3)

Other similarities between the shell mound fishing cultures of Oman and the Arabian Gulf with those of the Pacific and Southeast Asia, although of different chronology, include the use of gorges and lures, and stone wall fish corrals. In both regions, we find that Neolithic cultures also practiced sea mammal hunting.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

Sundaland

If you're having trouble with any of the terminology here, try the free encyclopedia Wikipedia. If that doesn't work, send me a personal email.

The weather here today in Sacramento is quite stormy which leads well into the topic of this post. Storms, volcanoes, floods and the like were often seen in the Southeast Asian/Pacific Islander worldview as conflicts between dual forces. Duality is integral to the Austronesian psyche. The linguist Robert Blust reconstructed the word *hipaR which can mean either "sibling-in-law" or "across the river" in Proto-Austronesian.

Proto-Austronesian is a proposed reconstruction of a proto-language that gave birth to the present-day Austronesian languages. Other linguists have reconstruced words similar to Blust's *hipaR.

Blust and others have also found this as evidence that Proto-Austronesians had a dual phratry or kinship system based upon residence on either side of a river. Indeed, those familiar with Austronesian studies know that these people had dual classification systems engrained in their ethnos.

Such classification based on dualities such as Sun-Moon, right bank-left bank, upstream-downstream, Heaven-Earth, left hand-right hand, etc., etc. are found throughout the Austronesian regions.

Where I am from the term kaladua refers to one's dual self. Everyone has two "souls" -- one that occupies the body and is active on the conscious level, and the other that exists mostly on the unconcious level. A spiritual master though could control their kaladua and use their other self even while awake. This might give a bit of an idea as to the pervasiveness of dual thought in Austronesian society.

The duality was recursive i.e. it recurred in cycles. Like the cycles of the lunar month -- the waxing and waning Moon.

It was also both oppositional and complimentary. Dual forces like fire and water seemed to oppose each other, but they also complimented each other as in 'opposites attract.'

Now back to the flooding of Sundaland. There were three major rapid rise floods -- the first one about 14,000 years ago, the second 11,500 years ago and the third about 8,500 years ago. Sea levels continued to rise gradually to peak levels about 5,500 years ago. Note that these floods were caused by rising sea levels and were not river or flash flooding caused by rain.

Depending on when one dates the split of the Austronesian language family either the Austronesians or their ancestors would have likely experienced all these floods. The events would have had quite an impact on societies that lived along the coastline -- the prevailing practice in Southeast Asia to this day.

The ancient Austronesians and their ancestors may have seen the rising levels as a struggle between the sea and land with the sea obviously winning.

The first and second of the floods probably had more of an impact on Austric rather than Austronesian speakers. The culture at this time was known as Hoabinhian from the site of Hoa Binh in Vietnam. These people used edge-ground blades which technically are Neolithic although usually classified as either Mesolithic or even Paleolithic.

The term "Neolithic" refers to stone tools that were ground or polished rather than simply crafted through the process called flaking.

The earliest edge-ground tools in the world are from Australia dated to about 20,000 BC and Solheim classifies them as Hoabinhian.

The dispersal of the Austric peoples led to one group, the Austro-Asiatics taking off to the north and to the west at least as far as India. In fact, they may have gone much further than India, but that's a whole different subject.

Now personally I believe that Wilhelm Solheim, the retired anthropology professor from the University of Hawai`i, has a very good chronology for the splitting and dispersal of the Austronesian languages.

Solheim believes that the Proto-Austronesians began to leave the coasts of Vietnam or possibly peninsular Malaysia somewhere between about 9000 and 8000 years ago. These people built shell mounds and we will call them the shell mound culture. They migrated southward through the Philippines into eastern Indonesia.

Possibly somewhere in the northern Philippines or along coastal Vietnam according to this model, Proto-Austronesian split into two branches with one moving northward toward Taiwan and the other southward. Oppenheimer thinks that around 8000-7000 years ago that major dispersions were taking place in insular SE Asia that could have resulted in very long-range migrations extending to Mesopotamia and Europe.

Indeed, around 6,600 BC there is evidence of a new cultural element at Spirit Cave on the Thailand-Burma border, and numerous coastal settlements spring up along mainland Southeast Asia. These would have been probably Proto-Malayo-Polynesian or Proto-Formosan peoples.

In the southern Philippines and eastern Indonesia, the Malayo-Polynesian branch began its own split sometime well before 5000 BC. These people began to make shell tools and used edge-grinding for both shell and stone tools. They began to move northward toward South China. Solheim calls them the Nusantao "the people of the islands."

---

Some useful abstracts:

TAIWAN, COASTAL SOUTH CHINA AND NORTHERN VIET NAM AND THE NUSANTAO MARITIME TRADING NETWORK
Author: Solheim II W.G.1
Source: Journal of East Asian Archaeology, 1 January 2000, vol. 2, no. 1-2, pp. 273-284(12)
Publisher: Brill Academic Publishers

The primary concern of this essay is to present details of the development of the Nusantao Maritime Trading Network between Taiwan, coastal South China and Northern Viet Nam from a bit before 7,000 B.P. until about 2,000 B.P. The Nusantao Maritime Trading Network is seen as a very widespread trading and communication network which came to cover all of the Pacific Ocean, the coastal areas of the China Sea and Japan, the coastal areas of the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean as far as Madagascar, and Island Southeast Asia and the coastal area of Mainland Southeast Asia. Having begun in eastern Island Southeast Asia a few hundred years before 5000 B.C., it expanded from there to the north through the Philippines to Taiwan and coastal South China and then north along the coast of China to western and southern Korea and finally to Kyushu in Japan, starting here just before 3000 B.C., but becoming best developed in Korea and Japan during the first millennium B.C.


Island Networks
Communication, Kinship, and Classification Structures in Oceania
Per Hage, Frank Harary
Published February 1997

Contrary to common perception and belief, most island societies of the Pacific were not isolated, but were connected to other island societies by relations of kinship and marriage, trade and tribute, language and history. Using network models from graph theory, the authors analyse the formation of island empires, the social basis of dialect groups, the emergence of economic and political centers, the evolution and devolution of social stratification and the evolution of kinship terminologies, marriage systems and descent groups from common historical prototypes. The book is at once a unique and important contribution to Oceania studies, anthropology and social network analysis.

Contents

Preface
Acknowledgements
1. Island networks and graphs - graph theoretical models - geographical, linguistic and anthropological terms
2. Trees: Basic definitions - a Micronesian prestige good system - ‘Recursive dualism’ in Austronesian classification systems - cognatic kinship networks - cycle rank and network connectedness
3. The minimum spanning tree problem - dialect groups and marriage isolates in the Tuamotus - the evolution of the Lakemban Matanitu - the Renfrew-Sterud method of close proximity analysis - on deconstructing a network
4. Search trees I: Independent discoveries of the conical clan - social stratification in Polynesia - a structural model of the conical clan - Prestige good systems: 5. Search trees II: the Marshallese conical clan - the devolution of social organisation in nuclear Micronesia;6. Centrality: Southern Lau, Fiji: a natural trade area - power centers in the greater Lauan trade network - political and mythological centers in Ralik and Ratak - expeditions in Torres Strait - on the position of Delos in the archaic Aegean network
7. Dominating sets: local domination in the Caroline Islands - alliance structures in the Western Tuamotus - pottery monopolies in Melanesian trade networks
8. Digraphs: Murdock’s maze: the bilateral hypothesis of Austronesian origins - sibling classification and culture history in Island Oceania
9. Conclusion.

Recapping the TImeline

Prehistoric shellfish gatherers were rather active in the Paleolithic from 50,000 to 30,000 years ago. In some locations they continued to leave sites such as in South Africa between 100,000 to 18,000 years ago, and Vietnam from 33,000 to 11,000 years ago.

Starting in the Holocene period after the last Ice Age, we see a significant increase in the building of shell mounds as noted by anthropologist Katherine Szabo:

From about 17 000 years ago until about 7000 years ago the sea steadily rose as the ice of the last glacial maximum melted, inundating many areas of land that were previously dry. It is at this time that we see an increase in the number of sites with shell midden deposits. This has been an archaeological talking point over the last few decades - why did people start intensively exploiting marine resources at this time?

Some researchers have called this phase the "mega-midden" period because of the vast size of shell mounds created.

Shell mound builders in coastal Vietnam and probably also in Sundaland began expanding with the rapid rise in sea levels during the Holocene. One particular culture of Hoabinhian affinity developed an advanced fishing and sea/aquatic mammal hunting culture.

They made earthenware perforated spindle whorls for fishing nets, and also similar-looking earthenware net sinkers. They used whole shells, particularly cowries, for various purposes including as burial goods. Among the notable types found are Cypraea moneta (money cowrie), Cypraea tigris (tiger cowry) and Cypraecassis rufa (red helmet).

They made beads of shell and also apparently in some places of opaque glass. Jade/nephrite tools appear in regions associated with the culture. and less frequently tools made of shell.

The Nusantao, most likely Malayo-Polynesian or Proto-Malayo-Polynesian speakers, established distant settlements in areas explored earlier by others including their Proto-Austronesian ancestors. These events occured initially during the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition period, which I believe in this case is linked with earlier edge-grinding practices.

Some researchers have commented negatively on shellfish gatherers as people who acquired low status, and have characterized shellfish as a secondary protein source inferior to land-based game.

However, these concepts may be overly-simplified. Some shellfish today, for example, such as lobster are among the most expensive sources of high-quality protein and are generally thought of elite food. Oysters have a similar reputation and the oyster shell was conceived in Roman myth as the throne of the goddess Venus. Indeed, shellfish collection among fishing cultures is generally performed by women, while men take to the seas to fish and hunt.

One thing that modern research has shown is that shellfish and marine fish are
much higher, sometimes by many fold, in brain-specific fats as compared to meat and other protein sources.

For thousands of years shells, albeit of the non-edible kind, were used as money over most of the world throughout. Indeed, if we look at many cultures, the rise of status-based civilization is often linked with the sea-coasts, and in some cases with peculiar people depicted as amphibious humans.

I've suggested that these marine humans were none other than the Nusantao, whose sea-based lifestyle may have seemed peculiar to other observers. By virtue of their long-range travel, these people had a major impact by transferring ideas to and fro, and also because they had an inter-related economic and spiritual agenda.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

Money as the root of all evil

I have noted that rising sea levels and natural disasters played a big role in the Nusantao and previous Sundaland migrations. Also covered briefly was the possibility of a spiritual component to exploration and colonization.

Of course, when dealing with trade networks we also have to follow the buck, so to speak.

How did Nusantao trade occur? Solheim thinks it was barter trade, however, there is also a possible that money was involved.

Otto Dempwolff reconstructed a word for money: *'uwan. Cecilio Lopez later updated this to *huwaN "money." These reconstructions though occur before the Formosan languages were brought into the Austronesian family and thus might only apply really to Proto-Malayo-Polynesian.

That however is significant as Solheim postulates that the Nusantao were mostly Malayo-Polynesian speakers, albeit always with a minority of people among them who spoke other languages. If we accept Solheim's dates that means the Nusantao could have been using money before 5000 BC.

The type of money used by Austronesians upon contact with Europeans was mostly shells particularly cowries and often in stringed form. Here are some examples:

Solomon Island stringed shell money
http://www.janeresture.com/solomon_postcards2/Fine%20Ancient%20Solomon%20Islands%20Shell%20Money%201.jpg


Sumerian stringed shell money
http://images.channeladvisor.com/

Giant stone money (rai) of Yap (resembles Chinese stringed copper coins)
http://www.reefseekers.com/PIXPAGES/Stone_money.jpg

The early trade in shell tools may have evetually led to the use of shells as money. Clan competition could easily heat up with the large scale use of money even on a regional scale. It is much easier to accumulate wealth with money than attempting to stockpile bulky trade goods.

The abstract quality of money indeed helps the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

The Nusantao Trade Network

Solheim writes about the northern expansions: "I hypothesize that any time that maritime people in their explorations would come across the mouth of a large river, they would have moved up the river making contact with the local inhabitants and not have stayed totally along the coast." (Solheim 2000)

All indications point to the maritime Nusantao as expert seafarers. Often their sites had bones of sea mammals that could only be obtained after lengthy blue-water voyages. Their semi-permanent dwellings indicated that they moved seasonally over water as part of their lifestyle. Naturally they would settle on the coast, along river banks and lake shores.

In addition to the archaeological evidence, Solheim believes the Nusantao migrations help account for three sets of linguistics relationships that exist between Austronesian and other East Asian languages.

Others have suggested that these relationships are genetic links: Paul Benedict has postulated a family called Austro-Tai creating a link with Daic languages such as Thai and Laotian. He latter expanded Austro-Tai to include Japanese and Hmong-Mien. Schichiro Murayama had suggested Malayo-Polynesian influence but not genetic relationship with Japanese.

More recently, Laurent Sagart has proposed that Sino-Tibetan languages and Austronesian descend from a shared proto-language.

Solheim, however, believes that the first two links are the result of massive early borrowing with Nusantao traders. Firstly, contacts with Daic speakers near the Yangtze, and then with Korean and Japanese speakers during the transfer of Yayoi culture from Shandong and Korea to Japan.

We might add also this as a possible explanation for the Sino-Tibetan similarities. Certainly it does not seem that all these languages were related.

Proto-Sino-Tibetan, for example, was likely tonal and monosyllabic as this appears as a family trait of Sino-Tibetan languages. Most languages that have been in contact with Sino-Tibetan languages for some time tend to pick up some of these traits as in the example of Mon-Khmer languages.

Neither Austronesian, Korean or Japanese show anything roughly similar to this type of influence on their sound systems.

The Nusantao may have obtained their penchant for seafaring and trading from the earliest people in the region, many of whom doubtless were their ancestors. From very early dates in the Paleolithic, there are indications of settlement and trade that involved long sea voyages in the region of Australia and Melanesia (New Britain).

Some of the earliest evidence of long-range sea trade in the world is the regional exchange of the volcanic glass known as obsidian.

In mainland Southeast Asia, we first see evidence of trade in the presence of shell tools in highland areas far from the coast, and stone tools in coastal regions without stones. Solheim also believes at least two important agricultural products were traded -- rice and sugarcane -- and thus the common words for these products over much of this region.

The widest evidence for trade though comes from the presence of jade and nephrite in large quantities that seems quite likely to come in all cases from the Yangtze region. They occur in the Middle Neolithic culture of Shandong known as the Dawenkou and a bit north in the latter Hongshan culture.

Jade and nephrite have been found at neolithic sites in Batangas and Palawan in the Philippines. The presence of nephrite adzes indicates large quantities of this material in a location not known to have any natural sources.

Later, possibly by about 5500 years ago, particular types of jade/nephrite ornaments of the lingling-o and bicephalous (double-headed) type appear. Solheim sees these as strong evidence of the Nusantao trade.

The nature of these ornaments, as we will explore later, are clan-related.

Now at about this same time (pre-5000 BC), we see shell mounds popping up at Ubaid sites in the Persian Gulf. Oppenheimer has noted that the Ubaid sites contain pretty much the same inventory as those in the SE Asian Neolithic -- quadrangular stone adzes, stone hoes, clay sinkers and spindle whorls, beads, discs and painted pottery.

The Ubaid culture is thought to have given risen to the culture of the Sumerians some 5500 years ago.

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

The warm "Maritime Phase" of the Arctic

The earliest shell mounds of the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition period in Europe agree well with the dating of the third and last rapid-rise Sundaland flood.

In the latter part of the 19th century, the Marquis of Nadaillac commented on what he thought were clear similarities between the shell mound cultures of the Americas and those of Neolithic Europe.

http://www.globusz.com/ebooks/Prehistoric/00000014.htm

"I cannot close this account of the kitchen-middings, without
calling attention to two very interesting facts. The importance of
these mounds bears witness alike to the number of the inhabitants who dwelt near them, and the long duration of their sojourn. Worsaae sets back the initial date of the most ancient of the shell-mounds of the New World more than three thousand years. This is however a delicate question, on which in the present state of our knowledge it is difficult to hazard a serious opinion. It is easier to come to a conclusion on other points: the close resemblance, for instance, between the kitchen-middings of America and those of Europe. In both continents we find the early inhabitants fed almost entirely on fish; their weapons, tools, and pottery were almost identical in character; and in both cases the characteristic animals of Quaternary times had disappeared, and the use of metals still remained unknown. Are these remarkable coincidences the result of chance, or must we not rather suppose that people of the same origin occupied at the same epoch both sides of the Atlantic?"

It has been rather popular to theorize on pre-Columbian passages from Europe to the Americas. More recently, we have seen the theory that the Paleo-Indian Clovis culture originated in Europe. However, rarely do we hear of the possibility of pre-Columbian journeys from the Americas to Europe.

I would say that these definitely occured and Austronesians played a part in these journeys.

Shell mounds from late Mesolithic Maglemose culture, Denmark

Maglemose cultural artifacts including bifid canoe and fish hooks


On left and right, renderings of boat-shaped burials from Slätteröd, Sweden and Batan Island, Philippines (from Chris Ballard et al.), a Maglemose boat-shaped burial in center (http://cientual.com/7tesis/Paginas/C12/Ritos.htm)

The use of boat burial or boat-shaped burials were common in both Scandinavia and Southeast Asia. The Niah caves have examples of very early boat burials and also cave art showing what are apparently bifid boats. These are Neolithic burials and the artwork is positioned over the high water mark of the last major sea flood.

Another common cultural feature is found in the types of bailers used in both regions to empty water from boats. Pedersen has noted a similarity between the Proto-Oceanic and Danish words for this device:

*asu "scoop or ladle out; ladle, bailer," Proto-Oceanic
øse "bailer, scoop," Danish

The "Oceanic" bailer from Hornell. Similar bailers are also found in Pacific coast Amerindian culture

We will study next the linguistic evidence that links the Nusantao with these far-ranging similarities.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

References

Ballard C.; Bradley R.; Myhre L.N.; Wilson M. "The ship as symbol in the prehistory of Scandinavia and Southeast Asia," World Archaeology, December 2003 2004, vol. 35, no. 3, pp. 385-403(19).

Hornell, James. Water Transport: Origins and Early Evolution (1946, repr. 1970).

Transition

Before the end of the 16th century, the Lusung kingdom had been colonized by the West although the specific Sambali area where Mt. Pinatubo is located was largely covered with forest growth at this time, and was fiercely guarded by Aeta and Sambal peoples.

The spread of Islam to the north had been stopped but just barely. We won't explore what happened to the old kings of the mountain, but instead will investigate how the Dragon and Bird Clan influenced the world of prophecy and messianism in much of the world.

But first we will recap the historical outline we have presented here. Then after the section of prophecy we will have an epilogue bringing us to present times after which the narrative portion of this blog will be completed. From that point, I will compile as extensive a glossary as my time permits of the symbology, archetypes, myths, artifacts and other evidence presented here, as well as some not yet presented. Also, periodic news briefs related to this blog well be posted. I will also try to arrange the blog into one easy-to-read and ordered pdf file for download, hopefully with some interesting new images.

Let's start off with a timeline of some the events suggested here (approximate dates):

Nusantao Timeline 33,000 - 11,000 BP:  Shell mound building culture in Vietnam and possibly Sundaland  |  | 20,000 BP:  Edge-ground tools in Australia, classified as "Hoabinhian" by Solheim  |  | 17,000 BP:  Jomon culture in Japan makes first pottery,  build "mega-middens"  |      |      |      Toggle harpoon by 7,000 BP  | 11,500 BP:  Rapid-rise sea floods, Hoabinhian  migrations    |      |  |  Spirit Cave culture near Thai-Myanmar border  | 9,000 - 8,000 BP:  Proto-Austronesian migrations due to  sea flooding, fully-polished tools  |                        |  |        Maglemose shell mounds, Denmark prior to 8,000 BP  | 7,000 BP:  Nusantao trade network already underway,  E. Indonesia to China coast  |                            |                                  |  |  Ubaid mounds in Persian Gulf    Siberian/Arctic shell mounds  |  | 5,500 BP:  Pinatubo eruption, allied Dragon and Bird  Clan dominate Nusantao network  |                                                    |  |          Rival clans expelled from "Eden," move southeast  | 5,500 BP:  Extended contacts with eastern African coast  |  | 5,000 BP:  Nusantao established in Sumer and on  Atlantic coast of Europe, contacts increasing with Americas  |  | 4,000 - 3,500 BP:  Nusantao spice routes are firmly  established to Africa, extended Pacific exploration/colonization     |                           |  |        Wave of Bronze Age Nusantao influence in N. Europe  | 2,000 BP:  Roman ships begin sailing western leg  of northern spice route, Hindu-Buddhist influences in SE Asia  |  | 1,800 BP: Southeast Asia/South Asia exchange builds  up rapidly  |  | 1,400 -- 1,000 BP:  Islam spreads quickly through  Asia threatening Nusantao trade routes  |  | 1,100 -- 900 BP:  Kalacakra doctrine from SE Asia  filters back to India and Tibet  |  | 1,000 -- 900 BP:  "Prester John" makes significant  contacts with West  |  | 700 BP:  Map-making revolution, European exploration  begins gradually  |  | 500 BP:  Major expansion of European exploration,  "discovery" of "Golden Land"

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

Spice merchants and Sea Kings

The early term for "merchant" in Austronesian is *dagang (Dempwolff) and this word is very similar to one of the terms for "ocean."

That the word for merchant might be derived from the word for ocean would make sense in light of archaeological evidence showing the earliest Nusantao trade involved coastal shell tools traded further inland. The tradition of maritime trade would expand to unprecedented levels with the introduction of spices and precious metals.

The movement of spices from Southeast Asia to Tanzania and other ports of southeastern Africa continued well into medieval times. The Muslim texts speak of merchants from Zabag and Wakwak in Southeast Asia conducting regular trading missions to Africa. The merchants from Zabag and Komr appear to have had a friendler trade relationship with Africa at this time, while Wakwak was more militaristic. Madagascar may have been populated originally by people engaged in the spice trade. The local Malagasy language is of Austronesian origin.

By the time the spice trade was roaring around 3,500 years ago, the names of spices coming via the clove route, even those of certain Southeast Asian origin like cloves, usually were of Indic origin further west in Europe and the Middle East. Those coming via the cinnamon route usually had more Austronesian-looking names in the West. This would indicate that the Nusantao were mostly only traveling as far as India on the clove route, but were moving all the way down the line along the cinnamon route.

For such long distance trade to work in this early period, autonomous sea kings had to manage things in their own regions along the spice routes.

Torsten Pedersen has reconstructed *H-r-g- as a probable Austronesian word linked with these early types of rulers.

*H-r-g-

Regarding the word rex, Torsten quotes E. Benveniste:

Rex, which is attested only in Italic, Celtic, and Indic - that
is at the Western and Eastern extremeties of the Indo-European
world, belongs to a very ancient group of terms relating to
religion and law. The connexion of Latin rego with Gr. orégo:
“extend in a straight line” (the o- being phonologically
explainable), the examination of the old uses of reg- in Latin
(e.g. in regere fines, e regione, rectus, rex sacrorum)
suggests that the rex, properly more of a priest than a king
in the modern sense, was the man who had authority to trace out
the sites of towns and to determine the rules of law.

However, Torsten suggests the rex words may belong instead "to a very ancient group of terms having to do with navigation which were introduced by invaders arriving from the east into exactly those Western and Eastern extremeties of the IE area because they have a coastline."

He links rex and related terms with the idea of a ship captain whose duties include ship-building and navigation. Indeed, one of the Austronesian terms for "ruler" is ratu/datu, which can also mean captain of a ship (barangay). Some likely cognates of this word in the Pacific -- ratu and latu -- have the meaning "master builder."

The builder and navigator must both use measurements for accuracy.

The idea of a builder is strengthened by some ancient images associated with early kings.

Fu Hsi and Nu Gua as part sea-serpents with entwined tails (sometimes fish tails) and holding carpenter's square and bow compass respectively (Shandong temple)

Shamash shown holding the royal lapis lazuli measuring rod and looped measuring cord

The practice of ship burial of kings and chiefs may be another remnant left by the ancient Nusantao sea kings. The practice was found in ancient Egypt, among the Vikings and of course among the Austronesians.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

News: More evidence of Neolithic exchange in S. China

A new study focused on the composition of stone tools in Neolithic Southeast China suggests trade between islands off the coast of Fujian with the mainland and also possibly Taiwan.

As mentioned previously in the blog, evidence of early trade in this region including coastal Vietnam and the Philippines comes first in the apparent trade of shell and stone tools. This trade usually involved coastal people trading shells for the stones of those living further inland. Obsidian was also a part of this trade.

Later, jade and nephrite become important tool and jewelry materials in Neolithic exchange systems.

Tracking Neolithic Interactions in Southeast China: Evidence from
Stone Adze Geochemistry
http://apu.addr.com/a2/neolithic_trade_sechina.pdf

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

Metallurgy, Southeast Asian (Glossary)

Southeast Asian metallurgy has been a source of controversy since the early dating of metal technology in places like Ban Chiang and Non Nok Tha in Thailand.

Thermoluminescence dating of pottery associated with eight bronze bracelets discovered by N. Suthiragsa revealed dates between 5000 and 4500 BCE. Radiocarbon dating of separately excavated bronzes uncovered by C.F. Gorman and P. Charoenwongsa gave dates of about 3600 BCE.

Such early datings for bronze technology exceeded that found elsewhere in the world and caused much commotion when first revealed. Joyce White who worked on Gorman's sites after the latter's death, found that the early dates were not "archaeologically meaningful." Her "re-analysis" of the radiocarbon findings pushed the date forward to 2100 BCE, based on the explanation that the bronzes may have been 'cut down' to lower levels than their true age.

However, it must be said that prior to the startling early data, the excavators apparently saw no problem with the strata and approved tests. Also, White's reanalysis can only apply to the radiocarbon dates and not to the direct thermoluminescence findings.

Recent discoveries at Balobok Rockshelter in the southern Philippines have unearthed early Neolithic tools dated to 5340 BCE and a bronze adze from a layer at 3190 BCE.

Early finds from Thailand reveal the use of four metals in local bronze work: copper, tin, arsenic and lead. The last three metals, each combined with copper to make bronze, are found naturally together with copper ores at worked sites near Ban Chiang and Non Nok Tha. So it would be rather simple for the blacksmith to accidentally or experimentally combine the metals and realize the superior resulting product.

Linguistic evidence

Probably even more controversial than the archaeological evidence is the suggestion by Robert Blust in 1976 that Proto-Austronesians dating from the period 5000 to 3000 BCE had a "knowledge of iron."

He states "the probability is small that a collection of unrelated bypotheses will provide a more plausible explanation of these facts than the single hypothesis that iron was known and worked at an early date, perhaps as early as Proto-Austronesian times." Although Blust in 1999 notes that words for metal do not necessarily require knowledge of metallurgy, we cannot dismiss the idea simply due to the negative archaeological evidence.

Iron was reconstructed as *bariS and further reconstructions were given for words such as "blacksmithing" and "anvil," the latter two terms restricted to Western Malayo-Polynesian. Using Solheim's chronology at least, this could fit well with the evidence of bronze at Balobok by 3190 BCE.

Admittedly though, no archaeological evidence has yet been found to support such an early iron-working hypothesis.

Fired pottery and the development of metallurgy

Evidence for pottery kilns predates that of metal working and it may be that the latter owes its existence to the former.

Hoabinhian culture in Vietnam began a process of firing clay pottery starting possibly as early as 10,000 BCE. At Shiweishan and Chenqiaocon near present-day Xiamen, clay pots were fired to about 680 degrees C. around 5000 BCE. At Ban Na Di in northern Thailand, pottery was fired to temperatures of 950 degrees C, and high-fired pots are associated with bronze finds near Hong Kong.

Early dates for high-fired pottery present development stages that could have led to experimentation with metal smelting.

Tools of the trade

Clay-lined furnaces were popular in the Southeast Asian region, and in some areas portable chimney furnaces were used.

Moulds were often made using the lost wax method in which a model of the desired object is first made with beeswax. The model is then covered with clay and baked, hardening the clay into a mould and melting the wax.

The magnificent Dong Son drums required a complex alternating clay and wax mould-making procedure that many believe required a trained full-time bronze specialist workforce.

Piston bellows

Although evidence of ancient bellows is lacking, in historical times, piston bellows have been the signature technology in Southeast Asian blacksmithing.

Piston bellows, the fire piston and the blowgun are related Southeast Asian technologies that rely on the principle of compressed air.


A sumpak (right) or fire piston of carabao horn and silver for lighting fires, and a kalikot (left) for grinding betel nuts made of ebony and silver, both from the Philippines and utilizing the principle of air compression. (Source: Conrado Benitez's History of the Philippines)

Possibly the blowgun was the first of these devices. In areas where no metal technology is present, the weapon is constructed from two strips of wood cemented together and wrapped with bark. Where metal is available, a metal rod is commonly used to bore through solid wood.

Frequent use of the blowgun will soon lead to the realization that the compressed air within the tube generates heat.

Piston bellows in Southeast Asia and Madagascar are made of bamboo or wooden tubes usually with feather-covered pistons on the end of a plunger. A "double-action" piston bellows normally involves two tubes worked alternately with each hand. As the plunger is pushed down the cylinder, the air is forced through a tube into the furnace. Upon reaching the end of the cylinder, the feathers collapse allowing the plunger to rise back without effort.

By working one piston at a time, a constant flow of air is introduced into the furnace.


Carving from Candi Sukuh in Java dating from the early to mid-1400s showing a smith forging a kris to the left, and a helper working a two-handed piston bellows to the right. (Sourc: http://www.nikhef.nl/~tonvr/keris/keris1/keris.html)

Development of the cannon

The earliest mention of possible military use of cannons may be that John de Plano Carpini who tells of a battle during the time of Genghis Khan, i.e., before 1227. The Mongol leader sent one of his sons to fight against Prester John, the king of "Greater India," a location which as we discuss in his blog is rather vague.

From thence the Mongol army marched to fight against the Christians dwelling in the greater India, and the king of that country, known by the name of Prester John, came forth with his army against them. This prince caused a number of hollow copper figures to be made, resembling men, which were stuffed with combustibles, and set upon horses, each having a man behind on the horse, with a pair of bellows to stir up the fire. When approaching to give battle, these mounted images were first sent forwards against the enemy, and the men who rode behind set fire by some means to the combustibles, and blew strongly with their bellows: and the Mongol men and horses were burnt with wildfire, and the air was darkened with smoke.


--- The Travels of John de Plano Carpini and other Friars, sent about the year 1246, as ambassadors from Pope Innocent IV, to the great Khan of the Moguls or Tartars

Some scholars have speculated that the hollow figures stuffed with combustibles might refer to small portable swivel guns like the lantaka.

Another possibility is something similar to the modern sumpak made by village smiths in the Philippines. The sumpak has the same name as the earlier fire piston and is similar in design relying on air compression using a plunger to ignite a shotgun-like shell. The age of this design is questionable but it makes sense that early cannons could have been derived from the fire piston. Both fires pistons and piston bellows were found in Madagascar but not the cannon, so the former are probably earlier inventions.

It is known that the Chinese had early knowledge of gunpowder and cannon-like devices. The medieval Arabs knew of saltpeter, the most important ingredient in gunpowder, as "Chinese snow," while the Persians called it "Chinese salt." According to Needham, the oldest cannon artifact is a bronze bombard at the Peking Historical Museum dated by inscription to 1332.

However, there is significant difference in the methods used by the Chinese to obtain saltpeter, as compared with those found in Southeast Asia.

In China, saltpeter is found on certain nitrogen-rich soils where winds from Eurasia helped dry decomposing organic material. In many areas, saltpeter crystallized on the soil surface especially during winter. The Chinese method was to inject urine into such soils to enhance the saltpeter formation.

Such methods were followed by the Arabs and Europeans. In Europe, beds of manure and other decomposing materials, were mixed with soil and ash and charged with urine.

Southeast Asians, on the other hand, appear to have used guano as their main source of saltpeter in contrast to the Chinese methods.

"This island [Mindanao], like the rest, is lacking in saltpetre, but the fault is remedied from the deposits of the giant bats (Murcielagos) which congregate in dark caves where they deposit an abundance of excrement which is made a substitute for saltpetre: and to this end there follows the labor necessary to extract the elements required for the manufacture of gunpowder, which is one of the most important needs of the islands. But although they succeed, the quality is not as quick on account of the moisture nor as powerful as ours. The matter of its manufacture has been brought to the notice of his Majesty as being more expensive and impracticable for the needs of the government."

(Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago, by P. Francisco Combes, 1645, abridged translation. Original Spanish: "Falta en esta Isla el salitre, como en las demas deste Archipelago; pero suple su falta el Mindanao con otra mina que dio la naturaleza en unas grutas, y cueuas grandes, guarida de los murciegalos, que los ay mayores que una gallina, y en numero inmenso, que a no ser negras auroras de la noche, pudieran introduzirla en lon mejor del dia, segun assombra los ayres su multitud, ocupando muchas horas su negro exercito en la mancha, que a puestas del Sol ordena en busca del sustento. Estos como enemigos de la luz se acogen de dia al assilo de last tinieblas, que reynan en las grutas, con que les dexan abundancia de exrementos, los quales beneficiados se sustituyen al salitre; y al fin llega a conseguir el trabajo industrioso los ingredientes necessarios para la poluora, que es le mayor necessidad destas islas. Pero aunque salen con ella, ni es tan prompta, por ser naturalmente mas humeda, ni tiene la violencia que la nuestra. Por lo que, aunque muchos han presentado este arbitrio a su Magestad, nunca se ha aceptado, por ser de poco efecto, y de mayor gasto que el ordinario, y practiable para pocas cantidades, y no para la grandeze de los abastos Reales.")

"The process of manufacturing saltpetre and gunpowder will demand a short account. Saltpetre is obtained by boiling the soil of caves frequented by bats and by birds, chiefly swallows. This soil is decomposed dung of these animals, which commonly fills the bottom of the caves to the depth of from four to six feet."

(History of the Indian Archipelago : containing an account of the manners, arts, languages, religions, institutions, and commerce of its inhabitants, by John Crawford, 1820)

Nowhere in his vast work does Needham mention the use of guano, bat or bird dung, in making saltpeter.

Interestingly, guano, sulfur and charcoal, the three ingredients used in manufacturing gunpowder, occur naturally where volcanoes coincide with caves for bats and swallows. Such areas are, in fact, quite common in Southeast Asia.

In Medieval Technology and Social Change Lynn White, suggests that the cannon was developed through the concept of the blowgun imported by Arabs from Southeast Asia.

She states that Tamil sungutan and Malayalam tumbitan, both meaning "blowgun" are derived from the sumpitan "blowgun" of Insular Southeast Asia.

The Arabic zabatana and zabtaniya "blowgun" are traced to the
same source, and these also became names for the Arab arquebus.

From the Arabic derives the Italian name for blowgun, cerbottana, which by 1440 also is the name of a long-barrelled, small-bore cannon.

Lantakas

European explorers found excellent weapons known as lantakas used in Southeast Asia in the late 1400s and early 1500s. Mounted on a swivel yoke, the portable lantaka was most often suspended on stirrups attached to the rail of a ship. The setup allowed for recoil and quick, versatile aiming.

Most lantakas were made of bronze and the earliest ones were breech-loaded. During colonial times, there was a trend toward muzzle-loaded weapons. Europeans hired local smiths and also cast their own lantakas for use on their ships. The most impressive were the large double-barrelled lantakas. Small cannonballs or grape shot were fired from these weapons.


Double-barrelled lantaka from the Museo d'Arte Orientale. (Source: http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=137)


Lantaka with swivel mount clearly displayed. (Source: http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/printthread.php?t=88)


Larger culverin-like weapons, often made of iron, were also cast like the 17-foot cannon of Manila's Rajah Soliman. An indigenous type of arquebus, sometimes made of copper, is also frequently mentioned.

Despite the high-quality of their weapons, most kingdoms in Southeast Asia at the start of the colonial period had only small inventories. Problems procuring iron, and long rituals involved in producing weapons will be discussed below. Tome Pires was impressed with the artillery and firearms possessed by the Vietnamese empire, and their skill in using these weapons. However, even here Vietnam was forced to import most of its saltpeter and sulfur from places like Solor in eastern Indonesia.

As most of Southeast Asia lacked dry season winds such as those found in India and China, guano tended to be very moist compared to that found in Peru and other locations. The process of extracting saltpeter from guano thus was lengthy and expensive.

Iron technology and the Kris

The oldest dates for iron in Southeast Asia are from Ban Chiang going back to 1600 BCE. Again these are a source of controversy like the bronze datings.

Other early dates for iron can be found at Sa-Huynh sites in Vietnam.

Meteoric iron may have been preferred because of its supposed spiritual qualities as a 'heavenly metal.' The taste for meteoric iron may have even hurt local iron mining efforts. When Europeans came to the Philippines iron was valued higher than gold or silver, although they were well aware of the prices for these metals in other countries.

Kris manufacture throughout Southeast Asia involved the heavy use of meteoric metals. The kris was first and foremost a spiritual and ritual amulet as much as a battlefield weapon. The early high quality armament of the Shang dynasty in China was also made of meteoric metal.

Alternating "soft" and "hard" layers were folded in making the kris, with the hard layers involving iron, nickel and titanium, at least one of which and preferably all of meteoric origin. The soft layers were made of ordinary iron. Many modern kris makers (empu) however, use industrial metals to make their weapons.


The Wonotirto meteorite of 2001 in Java was found to have a high titanium content. X-ray fluoresence testing indicated that the stone was primarily titanium mixed with nickel, manganese and iron. (Source: http://ww.indomedia.com/)

A high quality kris involves hundreds of laminations, and the best quality might involve thousands of layers.

While some kris may be highly-polished, the more characteristic technique is to create a rough finish known as a pamur. The kris is described as a three-edged weapon with the rough pamur side complementing the normal edges. An empu will often make cuttings to expose veins, considered to have special spiritual power.

After a bit of polishing, acidic solutions, including lime and arsenic, are used to pickle the blade to help prevent rusting. The arsenic blackens the iron and steel allowing the nickel and other impurities to shine through and give the pamur appearance. Etchings are also made using arsenic. The kris is then dryed over charcoal and incense and finally lubricated with scented oils.


The pamur of the kris is clearly displayed in this image. (Source: www.aagaines.com/man/kris1.html)


Source: http://www.arco-iris.com/George/indonesia.htm


Sacred smith

The smith has been studied in world cultures and most often the position is either highly-regarded or despised. In some cases, castes and taboos arise with particular reference to the blacksmith.

In India, for example, metal-working is most closely associated with the tribal peoples, particularly those of the Vindhyas. Iron is considered the metal of the sudras, or lowest caste, while copper was assigned to the highest caste brahmins.

Iron tools were forbidden in Ancient Greek temples, and the Roman priests of Jupiter used bronze and avoided iron tools for cutting their hair and nails. This prohibition was passed on to the Frankish kings.

African society is nearly divided between pastoral peoples, particularly those who ride the horse, who hold the blacksmith as a pariah caste, and settled agricultural people who elevate the smith to nobility, priesthood and royalty.

Turko-Mongol peoples generally revered the blacksmith and two of their greatest heroes Temujin (Genghis Khan) and Timur both had names derived from the word for "blacksmith." The Ghuz Turks in particular where considered practically a blacksmithing people en masse at one time.

On the other hand, from Nepal to Tibet the blacksmith generally has the same low position as in India.

"Blacksmith" itself denotes a low status, and in medieval Europe the work was often assigned to semi-nomadic Gypsies.

Southeast Asian cultures generally fall into the category of cultures that revered blacksmiths, and placed iron very high if not at the top of the metal hierarchy. In old Java, the terms empu or kyai "lord, master" referred specifically only to the iron smith or later to the weapons-maker.

A prince who was not in the line of succession could favorably consider becoming a blacksmith in the region from Java to Mindanao in old-time culture.

Blacksmith shops acted also as communal meeting places and even temples, and the blacksmith often held an hereditary chiefly position in the community. Only the high nobility maintained their genealogies as carefully as the blacksmith.

Because the weapons of the smith were often considered also as sacred heirlooms and at times even the domains of one's ancestors, the forging process was particularly painstaking in detail. The master smith awaited special astrological conjunctions and signs to undertake each stage of the weapon-making process.

In some cases, a very precious kris could take many years or even the entire lifetime of the smith to complete.




A Maranao sultan's betel box with silver applique (above). Below is a betel box with silver inlay and strap. The Maranao were skilled silver and goldsmiths and even practiced their own indigenous form of dentistry. Gold teeth were implanted by cutting away the tooth, allowing the pulp to dry, and placing a silver core in the cleaned socket. A gold exterior was welded to the silver nail.(Source: http://www.lasieexotique.com/mag_betel.html)

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

References

Blust, Robert A. "Linguistics versus archaeology : early Austronesian terms for metals," Archaeology and Language, 1999, pp. 127-143.

Combes, Francisco. Historia de Mindanao y Joló: por el p. Francisco Combés ... Obra publicada en Madrid en 1667, y que ahora con la colaboración del p. Pablo Pastells ... sanca nuevamente á luz W. E. Retana, Madrid: Viuda de M. Minuesa de los Ríos, 1897.

Higham, Charles. The Archaeology of Mainland Southeast Asia, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

___. The Bronze Age of Southeast Asia, Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Kerr, Robert. General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels: Arranged in Systematic Order: Forming a Complete History of the Origin and Progress of Navigation, Discovery, and Commerce, by Sea and Land, from the Earliest Ages to the Present Time, W. Blackwood and T. Cadell, 1824.

Needham, Joseph, Science and Civilization in China Volume V Part 2 Chemistry and Chemical Technology..., Oxford University Press, 1974.

Did seafood lure people "Out of Africa?"

A new study reveals the oldest known coastal human habitation in Africa. The evidence helps support theories that early humans began living close to the sea and subsisting largely on shellfish.

I have proposed that the Nusantao, probably consisting largely of Austronesian seafaring peoples, extended this ancient practice as a logical adaptation to their environment, and that early shell mound sites stand as evidence.

Did seafood encourage 'Out of Africa' trips?

October 17 2007 at 10:28AM

By Richard Ingham

Paris - Archaeologists have uncovered the earliest known remains of
human habitation by the coast, a finding that may explain how humans
ventured beyond Africa at the start of their planetary odyssey.

Mussel shells, sharpened pieces of red ochre and stone micro-tools
found in a sea cave in South Africa suggest that Homo sapiens headed
for the beach quite soon after emerging from the savannah, they say.

By stumbling upon the rich harvest of the sea, Man found the means to
explore beyond Africa, sustaining himself through maritime edibles by
probing along the coast, they suggest.

Read more.

The Great Maw

On Mocha Island off the coast of Chile, chicken bones were found that apparently belong to the pre-Columbian period. Chickens are not native to the Americas and must have come ultimately from Southeast Asia where they were domesticated.

This evidence is also supported by the existence of the blue egg-laying and melanotic (black-skinned) chicken, which form links between the Americas and tropical Asia. It is interesting that the domesticated chicken did not appear to be consumed nor its eggs during early times on either side of the Pacific.

One of the earliest breeds of chicken was the fighting cock. From the fighting cock, special breeds of long-crowing cocks were developed in Asia.

The trail of evidence of transpacific voyages might be obscured a great deal by the northern route which would have led to a thinning out of cultural kits. The drift factor here would loom very large.

Still we do see sometimes some very interesting correspondences. For example, the practice of making barkcloth and the specific tools used to make this cloth. Also, we find the rather unusual practice of ear elongation with disc-like ornaments. Such practices date back in southern Asia to at least the Neolithic period. Shell ear discs have been found at Duyong Cave in the Philippines with a calibrated date of 4,300 BC.

The opening to the underworld in Mesoamerican cultures discussed previously takes on an interesting form known as the double merlon or double step motif. The motif somewhat resembled a letter "U" or "V" in upright or inverted form. This resulted again in the "twin peaks" profile that we have discussed in detail. One example of this are the carved Olmec faces were both the "frowning" mouth and cleft head form inverted and upright double merlon motifs respectively.


Hacha from Oaxaca and a celt from Cardenas, Tobasco from Reilly 1989. The cleft head and mouth represent the Underworld maw. Notice the "twin peaks" appearance of the head.

The monumental heads of Easter Island often have "hats" known as pukao. What exactly the pukao represent is not known but hats, crowns, headdresses and top-knots have been suggested. They may also be a representation of the cosmic mountain.





Easter Island heads with Pukao hats. Notice second figure from left.






Indigenous-style images of Jesus and Mary with child from Easter island. They wear the bird headdress of the Make Make cult.

The hacha image shown above has its hand/feet placed symmetrically on its chest. This posture or mudra is a very common one that occurs early on on both sides of the Pacific. In this posture, the hands are placed in symmetrical fashion either on the hips or across the waist or chest. Here are some examples:



'Mother Goddess' from the Jomon period. Female figurines like this with the hands on the hips or waist are common in Jomon culture.

Figurines from the Kulli culture of Baluchistan.

Dagger hilts from Dong Son and Lang Vac.


The figure on the far left is from Mexico, the other two are from the Marquesas Islands in the Pacific (First two photos from Musee de l'Homme, and the third from the Musee d'Ethnographie).


Monumental stone statue from Raivaevae, Tubuai Group, Bishop Museum.


Statue from Behoa, Sulawesi in Indonesia from Van Heekeren 1958.

These are just a few of numerous examples. Notice that many statues using this posture are female. The symmetrical position of the hands (sometimes the arms are not visible) is key as I believe this is a symbol of duality. The same symbolism is found in the circular eyes often associated with this posture. In most cases, when legs are represented they are square, spread apart and usually in a half-squat position.

The head is disproportionately large as is the mouth, with the latter often gaping wide open representing probably the entrance to the Underworld.

The cleft head motif probably has reference to the anterior fontanelle, a "hole" or soft spot at the top of the skull that hardens as one ages. In many cultures, the anterior fontanelle was viewed as an opening through which the soul ascends to heaven. Notice the feathered plume that extends from the top of the head depicted on the Roti bronze ceremonial axe.


Roti axe head

I submit this plume represents the same thing as the pillar of the Benben Stone of Egypt and the projection at the top of the Aztec glyph for "mountain." They symbolize a volcanic plume which was associated with the Sun.

In Mesoamerican art, we often see the Underworld maw portrayed in dual form as with the Olmec "dragon" and the Mayan bicephalous serpent. This represents the polar openings related to Sun and Moon of the two sacred volcanoes of the Dragon and Bird Clan.


Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

References

Johannessen, Carl L. 1981 Folk medicine uses of melanotic Asiatic chickens as evidence of early diffusion to the New World. Social Sciences and Medicine 73-89.

Johannessen, Carl L. and May Chen Fogg. 1982 Melanotic chicken use and Chinese traits in Guatemala. Revista de Historla de America 93:427-434. Mexico.

Langdon, Robert. 1980 When the blue egg chickens come home to roost. The Journal of Pacific History 24:24-36 and 164-192.

Ramírez, José Miguel. 1990/91. Transpacific Contacts: The Mapuche Connection. Rapa Nui Journal Vol. 4 Nº 4:53-55

Reilly, F. Kent. 1987 The Ecological Origins of Olmec Symbols of Rulership. Master’s thesis, University of Texas at Austin.

___. 1991 Olmec Iconographic Influences onthe Symbols of Maya Rulership: An Examination of Possible Sources. In Sixth Palenque Round Table, 1986, edited by Virginia M. Fields (General Editor, Merle Greene Robertson), pp. 151-166. Norman:University of Oklahoma Press.

Simoons, Frederick J. 1966 Eat Not This Flesh: Food Avoidance in the Old World. Madison:University of Wisconsin Press.

Heekeren, H.R. van. 1958. The bronze-iron age of Indonesia. 's-Gravenhage-Martinus Nijhoff, 1958.