A Synthetic Analysis of the Neolithic Origins of Eastern and Southeastern Asia’s Maritime Silk Road

Abstract

The “Silk Road” is a focus of historical and archaeological research that explores the ancient routes of transportation between the East and West. Most academic scholars in the last few decades have assumed that the Maritime Silk Road emerged much later than the one on land and was part of the Silk Road’s broader geographic shift from land to sea. However, according to recent investigations of southeast China’s cultural heritage in prehistoric archaeology and ethno-archaeology, the maritime transportation known as the “Four Oceans” Navigation system has in fact existed since the Neolithic Age, when the prehistoric ancestors of indigenous Yi (夷) and Yue (越) peoples of coastal China began navigating between mainland and offshore islands. Thus, the development of the maritime Silk Road in the southeast of China and Asia occurred no later than the land Silk Road of the inland northwest areas of China and inner Asia. The prehistoric Yue ethnicity and proto-Austronesian peoples in mainland southeastern China initiated first nautical techniques with simple sailing devices, compound canoes and celestial navigation. These developments thousands years ago became the fundamental building blocks for the development of the Maritime Silk Road during the late historical period. As a result, the Maritime Silk Road was not, as previously assumed, the product of cultural change in the land Silk Road or the shift of ancient China’s economic center from north to south.