Pre-Austronesian origins of seafaring in Insular Southeast Asia (original) (raw)
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Origins of Southeast Asian Shipping and Maritime Communication across the Indian Ocean
While people elsewhere just began developing maritime mobility during the Late Pleistocene – Mid Holocene period of the rising seas, equatorial populations in Insular Southeast Asia (ISEA) looked back on many millennia of experience since the crossing of Wallacea from the Sunda to the Sh‡hul Shelf, making further steps in watercraft construction. Moving Northwards, they brought the double canoe to Southeast China, from where it was transmitted to the Han Chinese and the Austronesians. The possible transmission of earliest constructional sophistications of the raft — the tapered raft and the multiple dugout — to the west coast of South India are considered. Common distinctive features of Indian, Chinese. and Malayo-Polynesian shipping are seen as reflecting their common origin from Ausraloid (mainly Negrito) maritime mobility.
Seafaring ships are the largest and most important vehicles invented by man. Mankind employed a variety of watercraft in the colonisation of uninhabited areas, to reach otherwise isolated populations and to transport everyday and valuable commodities as well as crops, spices and animals. The history of the Indian Ocean, in particular, is shaped by maritime developments and activities. This study focuses on the diffusion of nautical technology and particularly on contributions from insular Southeast Asia to other regions of the Indian Ocean. Many cultures of insular Southeast Asia, even those far inland, display an ancient and profound connection with boats, which becomes evident in the shape of houses, village structures, textile and other art forms and serves as a constant reminder of their seafaring ancestors (Maxwell, 2003: 4-7). To understand the origins and development of the sophisticated maritime traditions of insular Southeast Asia, it is important to recognise that the earliest inhabitants of this area were oriented towards the sea and frequently undertook sea journeys (Gosden, 1992: 61). At least 40,000 years ago, pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherers were able to transgress the natural barrier between the Eurasian mainland and the Sahul landmass, presumably helped by favourable winds, sea currents and patterns of intervisibility between island groups (Irwin, 1992: 5; Allen, 1996: 13). Recently, even earlier dates for the initial settlement of Australia have been proposed , though the chronology of Australia's colonisation remains controversial. At all glacial periods, these population movements required crossing sea straits of at least 90 kilometres, while the settlement of Near Oceania involved even longer voyages (Gibbons and Clunie, 1986: 72-75; Irwin, 1992: 18ff). Thus, deliberate seaborne journeys were carried out, presumably with children and foodstuffs on board to successfully colonise new islands and establish viable populations. While our understanding of early seafaring and interethnic contact in the Indian Ocean is gradually improving, several questions remain unanswered. Elsewhere I demonstrate that Malay-speaking seafarers played a major role in the transmission of a significant number of insular Southeast Asian commodities across the Bay of Bengal, while this was much less the case in the regions west of the South Asian subcontinent . This study explores to what extent the dispersal of maritime technology displays a similar geography. It examines linguistic data on boatbuilding terminology and addresses the development and dispersal of various types of watercraft and nautical devices across the Indian Ocean, highlighting elements introduced by insular Southeast Asian boat builders . In the first section, the non-Southeast Asian shipbuilding traditions of the Indian Ocean will be addressed and placed into an historical context. The boats and ships used in 23 AN INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH TOWARDS THE DISPERSAL OF SOUTHEAST ...
The Dispersal of Austronesian boat forms in the Indian Ocean
Arguments, including particularities in sailing maneuvres, are presented in support of a revised succession of Austronesian boat forms: (raft >) double canoe > asymmetric double canoe > non-reversible single-outrigger canoe > reversible single-outrigger canoe > double-outrigger canoe. Historiographic data suggest approximately simultaneous westward movement of Aaustronesian shipping and eastward. activity of Semitic shipping between 1000 B.C and 700 A.D., mutual influence in form of the sail is inspected. Historiographic data for sewn hull and large size of early Malay ships. Linguistic and archaeological data on boat burial (also Indochinese süonson boats) suggest Austronesian ascent of mainland rivers (Mekong, Salween, Irrawady, Brahmaputra), and eastward spread of burial custom after 600 B.C. The outriggerless keeled plank-hulled boat is considered to have been spread from Indochina to Botel Tobago, Maluku, the Solomons by around 500 B.C. The distribution of the protoform *p[a@]DaHu "sailing boat for long-distance navigation" in Oceania and South india is considered.
2021
This thesis has been substantially accomplished during enrolment in this degree. This thesis does not contain material which has been submitted for the award of any other degree or diploma in my name, in any university or other tertiary institution. In the future, no part of this thesis will be used in a submission in my name, for any other degree or diploma in any university or other tertiary institution without the prior approval of The University of Western Australia and where applicable, any partner institution responsible for the joint-award of this degree. This thesis does not contain any material previously published or written by another person, except where due reference has been made in the text and, where relevant, in the Authorship Declaration that follows. This thesis does not violate or infringe any copyright, trademark, patent, or other rights whatsoever of any person. This thesis contains published work and/or work prepared for publication, some of which has been co-authored.
Evidence for the Austronesian voyages in the Indian Ocean
Despite the presence of undoubted Austronesian speakers on the island of Madagascar, the Austronesian world is very much characterised by the Pacific and the dramatic narrative of its settlement. Although there is credible evidence for the presence of Austronesians in India (Mahdi 1999), Japan (Summerhayes & Anderson in press), in the Arabian Gulf and in North, Central and South America the present-day absence of Austronesian speakers has tended to relegate these remarkable voyages to footnotes. Similarly, the movement of Austronesian navigators across the Indian Ocean still excites little comment, in part because archaeologists and prehistorians tend to keep to their appointed spheres. As a consequence, standard texts still repeat an increasingly outdated narrative. Recent research has altered existing perspectives on the settlement of the East African coast and Madagascar (Adelaar 2006, in press; Blench 2007, in press a,b; Walsh 2007; Beaujard 2003, 2007a,b). It now seems likely that; a) Madagascar was first settled, not by Austronesians, but by hunter-gatherers migrating from the East African mainland prior to 300 BC. b) Madagascar was also reached by Graeco-Roman trading ships, which may have been trading tortoiseshell with the resident foragers and were responsible for the translocation of commensal murids c) There was regular contact between island SE Asia and the East African coast prior to 0 AD by an unknown people using outriggers and trading in spices d) After a gap, precursors of the modern Malay established a ‘raiding and trading’ culture based in settlements along the East African coast from the 5th century onwards e) Malay ships had pressed crews of non-maritime origin from the Barito-speaking area of SE Borneo f) The Malay settlements on the East African coast transported captured mainland African populations from the Sabaki-speaking area to Madagascar, primarily for agricultural labour, between the 5th and 7th centuries AD g) That other SE Asian island peoples may also have followed these established trade routes to East Africa, accounting for a residue of non-Malay Austronesian items in the Malagasy lexicon h) That the Malay impact on Barito society was indirectly responsible for the evolution of the Samalic peoples, the ‘sea nomads’ of the region between Borneo and the SW Philippines i) That similarly, on the East African coast, the transfer of nautical technology to coastal Iron Age cultivators stimulated the development of Swahili maritime culture j) That the expansion of Arab shipping in the Indian Ocean from the 10th century onwards obscured the Austronesian origins of local seafaring through the replacement of boat types and maritime terminology k) Finally, if the Indian Ocean was criss-crossed by experienced Austronesian navigators from an early period, then settlement would be expected on many Indian Ocean islands. Although most islands were apparently unoccupied at first European contact, they may still have been reached by Austronesians and that more extensive archaeology will reveal this
Asian Ship-Building Traditions in the Indian Ocean at the Dawn of European Expansion
thus, when Vasco da Gama entered the scene through the back door at the end of the fifteenth century, he was but the representative of the last of the old World powers to join the crowd: the nations of the atlantic faÛ cade of europe, spearheaded by the Portuguese, were now entering the indian ocean scene. in doing so, they heralded dramatic changes in world economy; but these would only mature and unfold in later centuries. What they found, as observed and described in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, was a multinational, complex maritime trade network in full swing, within which a wide variety of sophisticated techniques for building ships and sailing them were in use. in some 10 years, the time taken by the newcomers to reach the eastern gates of the indian ocean, the Portuguese were to come across ships built and sailed by east africans, arabs, Gujaratis, Malabaris, Maldivians, people from coromandel, Bengalis, Mons of Pegu, Malays, Javanese, people from Luzon, and chinese, to speak only of the major trading powers that plied the indian ocean and the South china Sea waters in large sea-going vessels. ashin das Gupta, in a review article on asian shipping, rightly called attention to the multinational, and therefore complex, nature of seafaring in the indian ocean of late medieval times. in order to try and understand this thriving maritime scene, there are many questions that should be posed by historians of asia. General questions about who sailed and traded in the ocean, about which products were exchanged, about commercial methods, etc., will not be dealt with in this chapter. technical aspects of shipping, that is, the actual foundation of the maritime economy, should, i believe, be first-and best-studied per se. a study of nautical technology would in turn cover two quite different matters: how the ships were built, and how they were sailed and guided along sea lanes. the present chapter only attempts to address the ship-building subject, further limiting its scope to the study of the larger sea-going vessels that carried the long-distance trade. as F.c. Lane pointed out, 'the ships themselves pictured the trade'. 3 only when this is achieved should the intimate ties and interaction between socioeconomic history and the above concrete field of knowledge be explored, so as to try and master an integrated picture of maritime history.
This thesis has been substantially accomplished during enrolment in this degree. This thesis does not contain material which has been submitted for the award of any other degree or diploma in my name, in any university or other tertiary institution. In the future, no part of this thesis will be used in a submission in my name, for any other degree or diploma in any university or other tertiary institution without the prior approval of The University of Western Australia and where applicable, any partner institution responsible for the joint-award of this degree. This thesis does not contain any material previously published or written by another person, except where due reference has been made in the text and, where relevant, in the Authorship Declaration that follows. This thesis does not violate or infringe any copyright, trademark, patent, or other rights whatsoever of any person. This thesis contains published work and/or work prepared for publication, some of which has been co-authored.
This paper examines the distribution of Southeast Asian sail types and maritime vocabularies across the wider Indian Ocean. In terms of solid archaeological evidence, very little of the sails used by pre-modern seafarers is known beyond any doubt. By bringing together data and inferences from maritime archaeology, iconography, and, especially, historical linguistics, I offer some interdisciplinary perspectives on the history of sailing technology in this part of the world. I demonstrate that several types of spritsails spread from insular Southeast Asia, where they were invented, to the Southeast Asian mainland, the Indian subcontinent and the western Indian Ocean. This is partly supported by lexical data relating to rigging terminology, which suggests a particularly active role of Malay-speaking sailors in the dispersal of nautical technology. The evolution of the lateen sail in the western Indian Ocean, which superficially resembles Southeast Asian sail types, appears to have been a separate development.