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Prehistoric cultures of Vietnam
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| Paleolithic Age |
| Sơn Vi Culture (20,000-12,000 BC) |
| Mesolithic Age |
| Hòa Bình Culture (12,000-10,000 BC) |
| Neolithic Age |
| Bắc Sơn Culture (10,000-8,000 BC) |
| Quỳnh Văn Culture (8,000-6,000 BC) |
| Đa Bút Culture (6,000-5,000 BC) |
| Bronze Age |
| Phùng Nguyên Culture (5,000-4,000 BC) |
| Đồng Đậu Culture (4,000-2,500 BC) |
| Gò Mun Culture (2,500-2,000 BC) |
| Iron Age |
| Đông Sơn Culture (2,000 BC-200 AD) |
| Sa Huỳnh Culture (1,000 BC-200 AD) |
| Óc Eo Culture (1-630 AD) |
Óc Eo is an archaeological site proposed to be named by the French archaeologist site Louis Mallaret in southern An Giang Province, Vietnam, in Mekong River Delta region of Vietnam. This site may have been a busy port of the kingdom of Funan between the 1st and 7th centuries AD. The excavation of the site began on February 10, 1942 after the French archaeologist had discovered this site with aerial photographing. The excavation covers 450 ha and contains in it many artifacts of the Funan kingdom. The Vietnamese historian Ha Van Tan has questioned whether the vestiges excavated at Oc Eo belonged to the Funan kingdom, in view of the complete lack of any Khmer records relating to a kingdom of this name: he argues that Oc Eo gradually emerged as an economic and cultural centre of the Mekong Delta and, with an important position on the Southeast Asian sea routes, became a meeting place for craftsmen and traders, which provided adequate conditions for urbanization, receiving foreign influences which in turn stimulated internal development.1
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Oc Eo as the Kattigara of Ptolemy
Óc Eo may have been the port known to the Romans as Kattigara. Kattigara was the name given by the 2nd century AD Alexandrian geographer Claudius Ptolemy to the land on the easternmost shore of the Mare Indicum at (due to a scribal error) eight and a half degrees South of the Equator. Scholarship has now determined that Ptolemy's Kattigara was at eight and a half degrees North of the Equator, and was the forerunner of Saigon. It was the principal port of the ancient pre-Angkor kingdom referred to by its Chinese name of Fu Nan (扶南, from the Khmer, “Phnom”, “mountain”) in the delta of the Mekong (Ptolemy’s River Cottiaris), located at a site now called Oc Eo.2 John Caverhill deduced in 1767 that Cattigara was the Mekong Delta port Banteaymeas (now Hà Tiên), not far from Óc Eo. The name Kattigara was probably derived from the Sanskrit Kirti-nagara “Renowned City” or Kotti-nagara “Strong City”. The “father of Early South-East Asian History”, George Coedès, has said: “By the middle of the 3rd century Fu-nan had already established relations with China and India, and it is doubtless on the west coast of the Gulf of Siam that the furthest point reached by Hellenistic navigators is to be found, that is the harbour of Kattigara mentioned by Ptolemy”. 3
Guided by Ptolemy, the discoverers of the New World were initially trying to find their way to Kattigara. On the 1489 map of the world made by Henricus Martellus Germanus, based on Ptolemy’s work, Asia terminated in its southeastern point in a cape, the Cape of Cattigara. Writing of his 1499 voyage, Amerigo Vespucci said he had hoped to reach Malacca (Melaka) by sailing westward from Spain across the Western Ocean (the Atlantic) around the Cape of Cattigara into the Sinus Magnus, the Great Gulf that lay to the East of the Golden Chersonese (Malay Peninsula), of which the Cape of Cattigara formed the southeastern point. The Sinus Magnus, or Great Gulf, was the actual Gulf of Thailand (Herrmann 1938).
Columbus' search for Ciamba
Christopher Columbus, on his fourth and last voyage of 1502-1503, planned to follow the coast of Champa southward around the Cape of Cattigara and sail through the strait separating Cattigara from the New World, into the Sinus Magnus to Malacca. This was the route he thought Marco Polo had gone from China to India. Columbus planned to meet up with the expedition sent at the same time from Portugal around the Cape of Good Hope under Vasco da Gama, and carried letters of credence from the Spanish monarchs to present to da Gama. On reaching Cariay on the coast of Costa Rica, Columbus thought he was close the gold mines of Champa. On July 7, 1503, he wrote from Jamaica: “I reached the land of Cariay…Here I received news of the gold mines of Ciamba [Champa] which I was seeking”.
References
- ^ Ha Van Tan, "Oc Eo: Endogenous and Exogenous Elements", Viet Nam Social Sciences, 1-2 (7-8), 1986, pp. 91-101.
- ^ Albert Herrmann, “Der Magnus Sinus und Cattigara nach Ptolemaeus”, Comptes Rendus du 15me Congrès International de Géographie, Amsterdam, 1938, Leiden, Brill, 1938, tome II, sect. IV, Géographie Historique et Histoire de la Géographie, pp.123-8; Louis Malleret, L’Archéologie du delta du Mékong, Tome Troisiéme, La culture du Fu-nan, Paris, 1962, chap.XXV, “Oc-Èo et Kattigara”, pp.421-54.}}
- ^ George Coedès, “Some Problems in the Ancient History of the Hinduized States of South-East Asia”, Journal of Southeast Asian History, vol.5, no.2, September 1964, pp.1-14.
Sources
- Albert Herrmann, “Der Magnus Sinus und Cattigara nach Ptolemaeus”, Comptes Rendus du 15me Congrès International de Géographie, Amsterdam, 1938, Leiden, Brill, 1938, tome II, sect. IV, Géographie Historique et Histoire de la Géographie, pp.123-8.
- Louis Malleret, L’Archéologie du delta du Mékong, Tome Troisiéme, La culture du Fu-nan, Paris, 1962, chap.XXV, “Oc-Èo et Kattigara”, pp.421-54.
- John Caverhill, “Some Attempts to ascertain the utmost Extent of the Knowledge of the Ancients in the East Indies”, Philosophical Transactions, vol.57, 1767, pp.155-174.
- Adhir K. Chakravarti, “Early Sino-Indian Maritime Trade and Fu-Nan”, D.C. Sircar (ed.), Early Indian Trade and Industry, Calcutta, University of Calcutta Centre of Advanced Study in Ancient Indian History and Culture, Lectures and Seminars, no.VIII-A, part I, 1972, pp.101-117.
- George Cœdès, “Fouilles en Cochinchine: Le Site de Go Oc Eo, Ancien Port du Royaume de Fou-nan”, Artibus Asiae, vol.10, no.3, 1947, pp.193-199.
- J.W. McCrindle, Ancient India as described by Ptolemy, London, Trubner, 1885, revised edition by Ramachandra Jain, New Delhi, Today & Tomorrow’s Printers & Publishers, 1974, p.204:
- George E. Nunn, ‘The Three Maplets attributed to Bartholomew Columbus’, Imago Mundi, 9 (1952), 12-22, page 15; and Helen Wallis, ‘What Columbus Knew’, History Today, 42 (May 1992), 17-23.
- Quoted in J.M. Cohen (ed.), The Four Voyages of Christopher Columbus, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1969, p.287.
- Ha Van Tan, "Oc Eo: Endogenous and Exogenous Elements", Viet Nam Social Sciences, 1-2 (7-8), 1986, pp.91-101.
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