Chapter 10 Mainland and Insular Southeast Asia 381record is clear about the sudden appearance around 2500 B.C.E. of a new cul-
ture whose distinguishing feature is a red-slip (reddish coating) and incised pot-
tery. Along with these pots are found shell beads and fishhooks, a tool of agate
for drilling shells, and obsidian flakes. This undoubtedly indicates the arrival of
the daring, seafaring Austronesian-speaking people, who moved south from
Taiwan to the Philippines, to Sulawesi, and to Timor, covering 3,500 kilome-
ters in less than a thousand years (Bellwood 1992). Here they pioneered culti-
vation of taro, yams, and other tropical crops. These same peoples moved out
into the Pacific across 5,000 kilometers of islands from New Guinea to Samoa
and Fiji, where the culture is known by the term “Lapita” and the people
became the Polynesians.
Besides their red-slip pottery, it is burial practices that distinguish the pre-
Indic cultures of insular Southeast Asia. In caves in Tabon, Philippines, at
Niah Cave in Sarawak, and at Long Thanh in southern Vietnam large burial
jars with fitted lids containing human remains have been found. Jar burials, not
always in caves, have been found more widely in Java and Bali, and the famous
“Plain of Jars” in Laos may also be from this era. About five feet in height, they
appear to have been used for burial in the first century B.C.E. (Bellwood 1992).
During the Vietnam War many were destroyed, and no significant research has
been done there since the 1930s, so the famous jars are another puzzle waiting
to be solved. Most of the jars that have been closely examined appear to beThe Plain of Jars, Laos. There are thousands of stone jars in more than 90 sites on a dry plateau
in northern Laos. The Vietnam War made this a dangerous place, with thousands of active land
mines, so it remains little investigated by archaeologists. They are believed to be Iron Age
(500 B.C.E.–500 C.E.) sites of secondary burial similar to more recent Southeast Asian royal mor-
tuary rites.