Real History: The Nuragic Civilisation

A look at a Bronze Age civilisation that many people might not know about. The Nuragic civilisation of the island of Sardinia.

Real History: Lost cities of the Amazon: how science is revealing ancient garden towns hidden in the rainforest

Two great articles about the the remains of cultures that existed in South America. I find this type of culture fascinating and imagine many of the cultures in my Sundaland setting exist.

The first article includes some artist impressions of what the area could have looked like. 

Archaeologists using 3D mapping are uncovering the remains of thousands of green metropolises with composted gardens, fisheries, and forests groomed into orchards

Lost cities of the Amazon: how science is revealing ancient garden towns hidden in the rainforest 

This article prioritized studying the roads and paths that are interconnected to geoglyph-type sites in the Western Brazilian Amazon, not only because of their originality, but also to understand some issues that permeate the universe of geoglyphs, such as how was gave the spatial distribution of these roads in the region, what meaning they had within the sociocultural context of that society.

The pre-Colombian roads of geoglyphs sites in the state of acre: the tequinho site road complex

Real History: Lost Maya city with temple pyramids and plazas discovered in Mexico

Another day and another lost Mayan city has been discovered: 

“The larger of Valeriana’s two monumental precincts has all the hallmarks of a Classic Maya political capital: multiple enclosed plazas connected by a broad causeway, temple pyramids, a ballcourt, a reservoir formed by damming an arroyo (a seasonal watercourse), and a probable … architectural arrangement that generally indicates a founding date prior to AD150,”

“The ancient world is full of examples of cities that are completely different than the cities we have today,” Auld-Thomas said. “There were cities that were sprawling agricultural patchworks and hyper-dense; there were cities that were highly egalitarian and extremely unequal. Given the environmental and social challenges we’re facing from rapid population growth, it can only help to study ancient cities and expand our view of what urban living can look like.”

You can read the article here:

Lost Maya city with temple pyramids and plazas discovered in Mexico

Real History: Carboniferous Period Was a Pure Nightmare HORROR

Here's some great inspiration for monstrous animals for any fantasy setting. The channel features many great videos about prehistoric animals.

 

Real History: World building in the Bronze Age: How did people live?

An interesting video about the Bronze Age, aimed at people who are just learning about the period. The information presupposes a focus on the Bronze Age in Europe and the Middle East (referencing the importance of grain agriculture, bread, beer, wine, wool, flax, linen etc.) but a lot is still relevant to my Sundaland setting. 

Real History: Valley of lost cities that flourished 2,000 years ago found in Amazon

Archaeologists have uncovered a cluster of lost cities in the Amazon rainforest that was home to at least 10,000 farmers about 2,000 years ago.

A series of earthen mounds and buried roads in Ecuador was first noticed more than two decades ago by archaeologist Stéphen Rostain. But at the time, “I wasn’t sure how it all fit together,” said Rostain, one of the researchers who reported on the finding in the journal Science on Thursday. 

Read the whole article here: Valley of lost cities that flourished 2,000 years ago found in Amazon

Real History: Lost ancient colony off coast of Australia that hundreds of thousands once called home discovered

This is a sensationalist article that vaguely implies the discovery of some kind of Atlantis but the reality is that this part of the world was indeed dry land until the floods started and there is now more evidence of people living in these now submerged areas. Hopefully these kinds of discoveries will lead to more archaeology in these kinds of locations and the acceptance that a lot of human history happened along coastlines that are now under the sea.

Lost ancient colony off coast of Australia that hundreds of thousands once called home discovered

Various artifacts and signs of human life were discovered on the northwest shelf of Sahul, located off the coast of the northern region of Kimberley on a landmass that connects to New Guinea, according to a study in Quaternary Science Reviews.

The full research article: Sea level rise drowned a vast habitable area of north-western Australia driving long-term cultural change

Conclusion from the article:

It is clear that the temptation to ignore the continental shelf margins of Late Pleistocene Sahul in debates of early peopling and expansion carries the risk of both oversimplifying and misunderstanding important elements of this period of history. Our analysis indicates the Northwest Shelf was a large habitable landscape that connected the now-separated ancient archaeological landscapes of the Kimberley and Arnhem Land. Reconstructing the palaeoecology of these landscapes in sophisticated ways remains an important goal for future research to understand the potential lifeways of the First Australians. The appearance of new and distinctive rock art styles in the Kimberley and Arnhem Land coincides with major shelf-drowning events and a noticeable increase in stone artefact discard across both regions. We interpret this as the retreat of human populations from the Northwest Shelf as sea levels rose. Now submerged continental margins clearly played an important role in early human expansions across the world. The rise in undersea archaeology in Australia will contribute to a growing worldwide picture of early human migration and the impact of climate change on Late Pleistocene human populations.

Real History: New Guinea - lessons from a cradle of agriculture and languages

An interesting video about the linguistic history of New Guinea and what it reveals about the past of the people of the island.

The first inhabitants Indigenous people of New Guinea, from whom the Papuan people are probably descended, adapted to the range of ecologies and, in time, developed one of the earliest known agricultures. Remains of this agricultural system, in the form of ancient irrigation systems in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, are being studied by archaeologists. Research indicates that the highlands were an early and independent center of agriculture, with evidence of irrigation going back at least 10,000 years.^[38] Sugarcane was cultivated in New Guinea around 6000 BCE.^[39]

The gardens of the New Guinea Highlands are ancient, intensive permacultures, adapted to high population densities, very high rainfalls (as high as 10,000 mm per year (400 in/yr)), earthquakes, hilly land, and occasional frost. Complex mulches, crop rotations and tillages are used in rotation on terraces with complex irrigation systems. Western agronomists still do not understand all of the practices, and it has been noted that native gardeners are as, or even more, successful than most scientific farmers in raising certain crops.^[40] There is evidence that New Guinea gardeners invented crop rotation well before western Europeans.^[41] A unique feature of New Guinea permaculture is the silviculture of Casuarina oligodon, a tall, sturdy native ironwood tree, suited to use for timber and fuel, with root nodules that fix nitrogen. Pollen studies show that it was adopted during an ancient period of extreme deforestation.

In more recent millennia, another wave of people arrived on the shores of New Guinea. These were the Austronesian people, who had spread down from Taiwan, through the South-east Asian archipelago, colonising many of the islands on the way. The Austronesian people had technology and skills extremely well adapted to ocean voyaging and Austronesian language speaking people are present along much of the coastal areas and islands of New Guinea. They also introduced pigs and dogs. These Austronesian migrants are considered the ancestors of most people in insular Southeast Asia, from Sumatra and Java to Borneo and Sulawesi, as well as coastal new Guinea.^[42]

Real History: The First Sundaland People - The Negrito People of Southeast Asia

A look at some of the first people that came to live in Southeast Asia. 

Real History: How an advanced civilisation vanished 2,500 years ago – BBC News

A look at a Bronze Age civilization in Southern Spain. This site was deliberately buried so the architecture is well preserved and you get a great sense of what it must have been like to walk through the building thousands of years ago.

Learn more about this civilisation here: Wikipedia: Tartessos

Real History: Chaco Canyon

A look at the Chaco Canyon culture in New Mexico. The architecture of the great houses is especially interesting and a provides great inspiration for alternative types of urbanism in an ancient setting. The average contains 200 rooms and some as many as 700.

Read more about the: Ancestral Puebloans

Note: I've collected all my Real History posts in one place: Real History

Real History: Rice farming in India much older than thought, used as 'summer crop' by Indus civilisation

Thought to have arrived from China in 2000 BC, latest research shows domesticated rice agriculture in India and Pakistan existed centuries earlier, and suggests systems of seasonal crop variation that would have provided a rich and diverse diet for the Bronze Age residents of the Indus valley.

Rice farming in India much older than thought, used as 'summer crop' by Indus civilisation

Real History: Did Polynesians Reach America? DNA evidence

 A look at whether there is evidence for Polynesians reaching the American continent.

Real History: The Invisible Barrier Keeping Two Worlds Apart

 A look at why the wildlife in Southeast Asia and Australia, Papua New Guinea etc. are so different from each other. Useful setting knowledge for the world of Sundaland. The clue is in the past, the time of the last Ice-Age.

Real History: The Lemon was "invented" in Asia

This information has almost no relevance for playing RPGs but just another interesting piece of evidence for South East Asia being very important in early human history.

The lemon is a human invention that’s maybe only a few thousand years old.

The first lemons came from East Asia, possibly southern China or Burma.  (These days, some prefer to refer to Burma as Myanmar.  I’ll try to stay out of that controversy here and stick to fruit.)  The exact date of the lemon’s first cultivation is not known, but scientists figure it’s been around for more than 4,000 years.  The lemon is a cross breed of several fruits.

From: How The Lemon Was Invented

Reminder that the Chicken, Sugarcane, Bananas, the Coconut as well Ginger were also first domesticated in or around Southeast Asia.

More about early domestication around the world: Geographical Sites and Ecological Components of Agricultural Domestication

Real History: Bronze-age people took hallucinogenic drugs in Menorca, study reveals

Researchers have found evidence of drug use during bronze age ceremonies.

Analysis of strands of human hair from a burial site in Menorca, Spain, indicates ancient human civilisations used hallucinogenic drugs derived from plants.

The findings are the first direct evidence of ancient drug use in Europe, which may have been used as part of ritualistic ceremonies, researchers say.

Full article here: Bronze-age people took hallucinogenic drugs in Menorca, study reveals

Real History and Geography: Llanos de Moxos and Tepui

Today, some interesting geography and cultures from South America that might have existed in a similar way in Sundaland.

In Bolivia there is a watery plane of hundreds of thousands of square kilometres in size that is flooded for large parts of the year. In this area there are the remains of mounds connected by causeways, raised strips of land, artificial islands and canals. This type of environment might have existed in central Sundaland and a similar culture would fit right in.

Archaeologist Clark Erickson summarized the early Spanish description of Baure villages:

the villages were large by Amazonian standards and were laid out in formal plans which included streets, spacious public plazas, rings of houses, and large central bebederos (communal men's houses). According to the Jesuits, many of these villages were defended through the construction of deep circular moats and wooden palisades enclosing the settlements. Settlements were connected by causeways and canals that enabled year round travel.^[27]

As usual I recommend you read the Wikipedia entry to learn more: Llanos de Moxos

Nearby in Venezuela there exist huge tabletop mountains called Tepui which function as ecological islands. These mountains served as the inspiration for the Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in which explorers discover a land of where Dinosaurs still exist. 

Perhaps there exist hidden mountains, valleys and giant caves and sinkholes in what is now Borneo or Papua New Guinea where similar ancient animals, and perhaps other surprises, can still be found?

Real History: Discovery of Oldest Bow and Arrow Technology in Eurasia

"The origins of human innovation have traditionally been sought in the grasslands and coasts of Africa or the temperate environments of Europe. More extreme environments, such as the tropical rainforests of Asia, have been largely overlooked, despite their deep history of human occupation. A new study provides the earliest evidence for bow-and-arrow use, and perhaps the making of clothes, outside of Africa ~48-45,000 years ago –in the tropics of Sri Lanka."

Source: Discovery of Oldest Bow and Arrow Technology in Eurasia

Real History: Gunung Padang | Megalithic Pyramid in Prehistoric Java 22,000 BC | Megalithomania

 A nice close up look of Gunung Padang on the island of Java.

Real History: Kiribati Coconut Armour

Kiribati armor was designed to offer protection from the shark-toothed swords, spears, and daggers that rival warriors often carried. The suit was a set of overalls and sleeves which were woven from coconut fiber. On top of this, a coconut cuirass was worn. This cuirass was distinctive, in that it often came with a high backboard to protect from back attacks.

Kiribati Coconut Armor - Not as Nutty as it Sounds!