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Introduction: The climatic amelioration at the end of the LGP had profound effects on landscapes and environments. In ISEA, the rising sea levels, as a consequence of polar ice melt, resulted in the drowning of a large proportion of the low-lying plains on the Sunda Shelf and separated Borneo, Sumatra and Java from each other and Peninsular Malaysia. Inundation of the rich and diverse coastal ecology that provided important hunting and foraging grounds for local hunter-gatherer populations was severely disrupted, causing their displacement. Some populations likely died out, others migrated inland or crossed the oceans to find more productive environments and establish new territories. The profound environmental shifts during the terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene were also coincident with one of the pivotal periods in human history in the region, on that included significant changes in technology, the intensification of plant processing and the emergence of burial traditions. This chapter discusses climatic factors throughout the Late Pleistocene to mid-Holocene that contributed to the dramatic re-shaping of landscapes and environments across ISEA. It examines the likely effects marine transgression and landscape submergence had on resident hunter-gatherer populations and discusses some of the new technologies in stone, bone and shell that appear in Southeast Asia (SEA) during this period, as well as the translocation of plants, and the emergence and spread of a variety of burial traditions. It also investigates how the initial appearance and then geographic spread of these cultural and technological practice3s inform on contact and interaction between human populations from MSEA across maritime SEA as far as Melanesia.
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