This name commonly indicates that island world that extends between the south-eastern part of the Asian continent and New Guinea, starting from the Andaman group up to the Aru and Formosa islands: three island regions which, moreover, are usually excluded..
Indonesia is also called Insulindia or Australasian Archipelago and also, less properly, East Indies, Malay Archipelago or Malaysia, Indian Archipelago. It includes the Sunda Islands, the Moluccas and the Philippines, which together have about 2 million sq km. surface area and 84 million residents. Politically, Indonesia is divided between Holland, which includes the Sunda Islands (outside the northern part of Borneo) and the Moluccas; Great Britain, on which the northern part of Borneo depends; the United States, which owns the Philippines; and Portugal, which has the eastern part of Timor left.
For the geography of Indonesia see especially to Filipino voices ; Dutch Indies ; and then to the Borneo voices ; celebes ; java ; moluccas ; sarawak ; sumatra ; fear, etc.
Prehistory
Other than the skeletal remains of the Pithecanthropus found in Trinil, on the island of Java, Quaternary human traces are missing in Indonesia. In Wadjak (Java), E. Dubois discovered parts of two skeletons of a race very similar to today’s Australians, but the Quaternary age of the deposit is very doubtful. Likewise, all the findings of Paleolithic-type artifacts that have occurred so far, are to be placed, at least in all cases in which the age was determinable, in the current geological age. For Indonesia history, please check areacodesexplorer.com.
Three distinct Paleolithic, possibly contemporary, cultures can be recognized in Indonesia: an amygdale culture, a splinter culture, and a bone culture. In Sumatra, between Atjeh and Medan, in piles of waste (shells) and in superficial finds, a culture has been found that uses the hand ax and pike, often in the shape of a laurel leaf, almost always worked as its typical tools. on one side only. There were also strikers of unworked stone, slightly concave grinding stones and red ocher. Objects of a similar culture have been found in Java (Patjitan), in northern Borneo and on the island of Luzon: it has close affinity with the amygdaloid cultures of Indochina. A Paleolithic culture characterized by the processing of splinters (awls, knives, etc.) was found in two caves of the upper Djambi River in central Sumatra and in the Lamontjong caves in southwestern Celebes (P. and F. Sarasin), where however winged or serrated arrows put a Neolithic character. Finally, the caves of Sampung and Bodjonegoro, in Java, have given van Es and van Stein Callenfels a culture composed exclusively of artifacts of bone and deer antler. The three cultures were perhaps brought by people of different races: that of the amygdales can, in this case, be attributed to Papuasic or Australoid peoples, the culture of splinters to the Widdoid peoples. in Java, they gave van Es and van Stein Callenfels a culture composed exclusively of artifacts of bone and deer antler. The three cultures were perhaps brought by people of different races: that of the amygdales can, in this case, be attributed to Papuasic or Australoid peoples, the culture of splinters to the Widdoid peoples. in Java, they gave van Es and van Stein Callenfels a culture composed exclusively of artifacts of bone and deer antler. The three cultures were perhaps brought by people of different races: that of the amygdales can, in this case, be attributed to Papuasic or Australoid peoples, the culture of splinters to the Widdoid peoples.
When abstracting from the still somewhat enigmatic layer with arrowheads of Celebes and Java, three great cultures can be distinguished in the Neolithic of Indonesia. The oldest, characterized by the ax with an oval or lenticular section (cylindrical ax), is known for eastern Indonesia, Celebes and Borneo, but seems to be missing in Java and Sumatra: it probably invaded the archipelago from the north, passing through Formosa and the Philippines. This culture survives in New Guinea and Melanesia, and many cultural elements still surviving here and there in Indonesia itself perhaps belong to it: Fr. eg, the boat made up of several boards and the manufacture of ceramics by overlapping clay circles. Its bearers perhaps introduced the Papuan languages to the Moluccas,
The second Neolithic culture is that of the shoulder ax well known for Indochina, whose diffusion goes from Formosa to the Philippines and to the district of Minahassa in Celebes; perhaps even a part of Borneo.
In the second millennium a. C., from the peninsula of Malacca the great wave of the Malacca Polynesian peoples spread, dividing into several ways. Two of the migratory currents can be clearly reconstructed: one passing through Sumatra, Java, Bali, etc. up to Tenimber, the other for Borneo, the Philippines and Formosa up to Japan. Their culture brought the axes with rectangular section and the pointed ax, cereal farming, the breeding of ox, buffalo and pig, the outrigger canoe (probably born in the river waters of the continent), megalithic monuments and hunting to the heads. The stone-working technique reached extraordinary perfection, especially in Sumatra and Java; the language and culture spread throughout Indonesia and merged, giving rise to various types of mixtures, to the oldest peoples and the most archaic cultures of the archipelago. Probably in its north-eastern lands (Formosa, Philippines, northern Celebes), from a mixture of the quadrangular ax culture with that of the shoulder ax, with the addition of younger elements not yet well identified of perhaps eastern Asian origin, the Polynesian civilization was formed which was to continue towards the Pacific Ocean.
Little is known about the Bronze Age of Indonesia. Shower axes (see Indochina: Prehistoric cultures) have been found almost everywhere: Java has also given spearheads, daggers and bronze halberds. Shapes and decorations cast doubt on the northern origin, from the Asian continent. From this, at the latest with the Indian colonization, also came the knowledge and working of iron. From the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea it is inferred that the Indians knew part of Indonesia, Sumatra or Java (Javadvîpa) already in the century. I d. C. Inscriptions in Java and eastern Borneo prove the existence of Indian kingdoms in the archipelago around 400 AD. C.
