| Abstract: |
This chapter highlights the enormous importance of the Neolithic era in creating the peoples and languages who inhabit the greater part of Island Southeast Asia today. It introduces the western Neolithic stream in Island Southeast Asia by continuing the Niah sequence. Pottery traditions in Indonesia and East Malaysia suggest that at least two cultural streams, western and eastern streams, might have been involved in the movement southwards from the Philippines. Between 2500 and 1500 BCE, human populations migrated into Southeast Asia from southern China and Taiwan, bringing new modes of sedentary settlement and a broad range of material culture. The relative social and economic importance of domestic animals in the Neolithic of Island Southeast Asia is partly reflected in the comparative frequencies of occurrence in the zooarchaeological record and in the way animals were treated before and after death.
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