ABSTRACT
Southeast Asian populations during the Neolithic and Early Metal periods also contributed much to human achievements in agriculture, art, metallurgy, boat construction and ocean navigation. Southeast Asia, indeed, must have served as the proximal source during the past 60,000 years for all the populations of Australasia and the Pacific Islands, from the Aboriginal Tasmanians to the Hawaiians and Easter Islanders. This chapter examines the flowering of indigenous traditions across the millennia, often stimulated by external contacts, and often in turn stimulating developments in other regions. As human prehistory in Southeast Asia progressed, so human relationships with landscapes and environments changed. Hunters, farmers, and urban dwellers tend to use different parts of the landscape, with increasing population density becoming focused through time in ever-smaller areas of high productive potential. In the islands of western Indonesia the contemporary populations are represented by the “Deep Skull” at Niah and by a series of flake-based, rather than pebble-based, lithic industries.
