far back into the past was the importance of women in trade. In later periods
Chinese and Arab observers noted this with surprise and sometimes disdain.
Women controlled retail markets in many places and sometimes were key
players in wholesale and long-distance commerce.
Out at sea the lanes were dominated from at least thefirst millenniumBCE
by the Malays, a term that may refer specifically to the inhabitants of the
Malay peninsula but is often applied in a larger, more generic sense to var-
ious seafaring peoples who spoke Austronesian languages and lived in parts
of Sumatra, Borneo, and other islands as well as on the peninsula. Malay
sailors were the earliest long-distance traders in the modern countries of
Malaysia and Indonesia, and their activities reached from the South China
Sea to the eastern rim of the Indian Ocean. They were skilled mariners with
their own advanced nautical technology who may have independently
invented the sail. Long before Greek and Roman merchants stepped into
Indian Ocean trade, the Malays created commercial networks extending from
the Philippines and New Guinea to the east coast of Africa.
Southeast Asia provides an excellent example of what can and cannot be
gleaned about early trade routes from tracing artifacts when no written evi-
dence is available. In the seventh centuryBCEthe Dongson culture emerged
in the valley of the Red River in northern Vietnam and over the next half
millennium developed an advanced bronze-making society that was sea-
oriented. Artifacts representative of the Dongson style have been found far
beyond Vietnam, the most outstanding of which is known today as Heger I type
drums cast in one piece by the lost wax method. They are large, sometimes
weighing over 200 pounds and standing 3 feet tall, and squat in shape with
a broadflat top, rounded sides, and splayed feet. And they are exquisitely
decorated with friezes depicting people engaged in various activities.
Heger I drums appear to have been made from thefifth centuryBCEto the
third centuryCE. Over 200, some whole, others in fragments, have been
recovered in a distribution range extending from Yunnan in south China
down the Malay peninsula to Sumatra and across the Sunda Islands to the
western tip of New Guinea. Some drums came back into trade networks
long after they werefirst made and exchanged, a process that scattered them
farther afield. Chinese observers noted that the people of Southeast Asia used
drums as symbols of power and status, and doubtless the function of Heger I
drums was ritual or ceremonial. Although they were not likely made and
sent out originally with profit in mind, Heger I drums do provide irrefutable
evidence of extensive distribution networks extending over thousands of
miles prior to the establishment of systems originating in India and China.
This funneled not only ceremonial drums but copper, bronze, and iron
ornaments and more functional products like tools as well as exotic materials
such as glass and beads to the border of the Pacific world.
Eventually trade did come from both India and China, tying Southeast
Asia into the larger Eurasian system. For a long time the trade with India
112 The all-water route