GES1011: Lecture 2

Recap:
- How old is singapore? -> It depends :)
- Why did we not question our geological context?
-> It has continuously and even right now experience changes
-> Island in the regio have disappear in the last 150 - 200 years
Raffles came around this times, but how come we didnt take note of this instead?
- Tambora quake
- Krakatoa quake
- Geological formation can appear and disappear and singapore is not immune to this.

Human Unfolding

When these humans left africa around 100-200000 years ago.. there were hunter gatherers with stone tools.

We discover fire (400000 years ago) but were not agriculturalist until 12000 years ago

The negritos are the first people around asia, now they live around philipines and indonesia.

Dna evidence links them to people groups like south indians, malaesians, papuans.

But theres no evidence of their presence but they are probably the first human beings in this neighbouhood

But theres a later, a larger scale significant migration of people groups..
This is linguistic evidence.

The malay language can be traced back to a group called malayanpolenesian.

Austronesian dispersal

Is different from the negritos arrival that came from a different time period.

This is consider one of the greatest dispersal on record since Africa.

- Settle

- Group

- Political centralisation, exchange and trade network,

Funan is the earliest pre figuring of singapore.

Contact and movement was not just about trade, the notion of 'transshipment'

This also brought religion such as buddism.

Buddism is the first religion to show that it moves from being an pioneer in agricultural to a promoter of commerce.

Buddhism's emphasis on accumulation of wealth made it popular among traders. 

- Srivijaya existence as a trade port in 4th century

It might be another prefiguring of singapore.

However, there is no trace of human activity in singapore.

The very first evidence of life, the singapore stone. However, we still cannot decipher it.

Prequel to tutorial 1:

Imagine yourself on a sea vessel

Remind yourself of the singapore stone's orginal location

Would you have notice it?

-> No, i would have been a coolie and too tired to do anything

Everything is merely just giving an educated guess.

The lack of information marks much of human existence.

We need to be comfortable with large amount of ambiguity and uncertainty.

Summary:
Human activity may stretch beyong 700 years and the world is connected by trade and religion and language
These connection is called sil roads

"Is this past, particularly pre-1800,part of singapore's or part of singapura's story?"

Today we celebrate 700 years but how we know that we are not stealing a memory and calling it ours.
Is there anyone in this place, who is connected to everything tthat happen 700 years ago?
-> Why are we calling it  ours just because we came after it
Cultural theft

Theres a difference in saying there is a history of this island having human activity and a difference between in saying that singapore have a 700 year history.