Sea Nomads Research Articles

Prevalence, serotype distribution, and antimicrobial susceptibility profile of Streptococcus pneumoniae in Sea Nomad children under 5 years of age in Wakatobi, Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia: A cross-sectional study

ObjectiveIndonesia commenced the nationwide introduction of pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) in 2022. Pre-vaccine Streptococcus pneumoniae data from across the country could be critical to enable vaccine impact evaluation in the future. This study evaluates colonization prevalence, factors associated with colonization, serotype distribution, and the antimicrobial susceptibility profile of S. pneumoniae. MethodsChildren under 5 years of age were enrolled from Bajau tribe settlements in Wakatobi, southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia, from October 2018 to February 2019. Nasopharyngeal swab specimens were analysed by culture, and isolates were serotyped using sequential multiplex polymerase chain reaction. Antibiotic susceptibility was performed by the disk diffusion method. Multivariable logistic regression was performed for risk factor analysis. ResultsA total of 499 NP swab specimens were collected; 61.9% were colonized with S. pneumoniae and 48.9% of the isolates were of PCV13-vaccine type. The most common serotypes were 23F, 6B, 19F, and 6A at 13.2%, 9.8%, 8.9%, and 8.0%, respectively. Exposure to cigarette smoke in the household and runny nose were significant risk factors for colonization, with aORs of 1.6 (95% confidence interval: 1.1–2.3) and 2.1 (95% confidence interval: 1.4–3.3), respectively. ConclusionsThe findings of this study may contribute to baseline pre-vaccine data in Indonesia that would be critical for the impact evaluation of vaccines.

Inter-household transfers of material goods among Sama "sea nomads" of the Philippines: Reciprocity, helping, signaling, or something else?

The extent to which humans share with both kin and non-kin is a defining characteristic of our species. Evolutionary research suggests that pervasive reliance on inter-individual transfers of goods and services may have evolved to support a cooperative breeding adaptation in humans. However, while intensive food sharing between individuals and families has frequently been investigated in small-scale human societies, a comprehensive analysis of the daily transfers of all material goods has not been attempted. Likewise, while much previous research on cooperative transfers focused on terrestrial foraging populations, less attention is paid to other small-scale economic modalities traditionally inhabited by humans. Drawing on over three years' worth of interviews and observational data from a community of primarily ethnic Sama people residing along the coast of Southern Mindanao Island in the Philippines, this paper examines the overall transfer patterns of material goods in a marine foraging economy. A quantitative description of resource acquisition is followed by an in-depth exploration of the characteristics of individual households and household dyads who gave and/or received more during the study period. Results indicate that a household's age and income are consistently correlated with increased inflow and outflow of material goods. Results also suggest differential motivations underlie inter-household sharing of food, money, and other goods in the study community. Most importantly, we find that both daily and long-term reciprocity overwhelmingly drive sharing within household dyads in the study community, despite secondary effects of kinship, relative need, and relative household age between household dyads.

Sea Nomads of Southeast Asia: From Past to Present , by Berenice Bellina, Roger Blench, and Jean-Christophe Galipaud (eds).

Sea Nomads of Southeast Asia: From Past to Present , by Berenice Bellina, Roger Blench, and Jean-Christophe Galipaud (eds).

Physical Changes of Occupancy and Spatial of Bajo Tribe Settlement in Jayabakti Village, Pagimana District

The Bajo tribe are traditional fishermen whose lives are completely dependent on the sea, they are often referred to as sea nomads or “sea people”. The Bajo Tribe’s house has a characteristic that is located above sea water and all of them have a regular pattern lined up behind perpendicular to the beach. The condition of the settlements of the Bajo tribe in Jayabakti Village is slowly starting to leave the tradition of living on sea water, they have started to build their houses, some are on land and some are above water, and have even built on land. This study aims to examine the physical and spatial changes of housing and identify the factors that influence it. The research method used is inductive-qualitative with a phenomenological approach. The samples taken are 3 (three) houses, each representing a house on land, in land and sea transitions, and a house completely on the water. The results of the study show changes in houses with an increase in area due to an increase in the number of heads of families and an increase in business to increase household income, Changes in the influence of the development of communication tool technology (internet network) which can see materials for housing that can respond to natural conditions, as well as changes caused by relationships social interaction with local communities with the concept of “Bela” (older brother).

Moken’s Tactics on the Thai-Myanmar Border Crossing

This paper aims to analyse the cross-border connectivity of the Moken (also known as Sea Nomads or Sea Gypsies), who lived on the islands and coastlines of the Thai-Myanmar borderland. This paper argues on the way the Moken have been negotiating the ongoing presence of a common cross-border ethnic identity, by using these aspects of their existing ethnicity and their enduring cross-border movements within the ethnic circle. They have somehow convinced government officials that they are not breaking the law when crossing the border in this way, even though many of these same officials fail to recognise their right to citizenship, land or fisheries ownership, and other basic human rights.

Sea Nomads of Southeast Asia: From the Past to the Present ed. by Bérénice Bellina, Roger Blench, and Jean-Christophe Galipaud

Reviewed by: Sea Nomads of Southeast Asia: From the Past to the Present ed. by Bérénice Bellina, Roger Blench, and Jean-Christophe Galipaud Carol Warren Bérénice Bellina, Roger Blench, and Jean-Christophe Galipaud, editors. Sea Nomads of Southeast Asia: From the Past to the Present. Singapore: National University of Singapore Pres, 2021. 383. The Sea Nomads of Southeast Asia: From the Past to the Present offers impressive studies from an array of disciplines—archaeology, anthropology, history, linguistics, genomics—to piece together the longue-durée of "sea nomad" cultures in the Southeast Asian region. There is a striking paradox that peoples so central to the deep history of globalization should find their cultures marginalized in the modern era. The collection of essays grapples with the relative "invisibility" of sea nomad cultures despite rich, although scattered, historical records of sightings and engagements from the 16th century among Western explorers and earlier still in Arabic and Chinese sources. Challenging also for interpretation are substantial differences in the socioeconomic status and political relationships reported in historical and contemporary ethnographic accounts. The weight of evidence amassed in this volume goes some way toward revising the image of sea nomad populations as subordinated minorities within nation-states today. The sea nomads of Southeast Asia are shown in these studies to have contributed to linking together a Maritime Silk Road between South and East Asia in the ancient world and are credited with playing an important role in the earliest phases of the globalization of commerce. At the same time, evidence on the subsistence, trading, craft producing, and political arts of the sea peoples of the region in the historical and archaeological record leaves unresolved the questions of direct relationship with currently identified groups. Case studies in the book cover multiple disciplines focused primarily on the main contemporary "sea nomad" populations—the Moken and Orang Laut off the Malay-Thai-Myanmar coasts and the Sama Bajau who inhabit the waters of eastern Indonesia, Malaysian Borneo, and southern Philippines. Yet much of the piecing together of material deposits from prehistory, recorded encounters, and contemporary ethnographies leave the tacit connections between past and present groups practicing a more or less mobile, boat-dwelling way of life an open question: Is this a cultural adaptation that saw groups and individuals move in and out of lives on the sea? Or has it been an enduring lifeway for distinctive groups whose cultural core revolved around maritime resources and relations that represent a largely intangible cultural heritage? The chapter structure follows a roughly chronological trajectory, including early evidence of maritime movements as sea levels rose during the Pleistocene-Holocene transitional period that expanded the potential for this remarkable adaptation to the coastal cultural-ecological niche. The introductory chapter 1 by editors Bérénice Bellina, Roger Blench, and Jean-Christophe Galipaud sets out the themes around which core archaeological, historical, linguistic, genetic, and ethnographic questions are pursued in the following chapters: How should we understand the "sea nomads" and their relation to the wider traditions of maritime migration and exchange of goods, material, and intangible culture across the region? What are the relationships between mobile, [End Page 225] boat-dwelling ethnic groups of island Southeast Asia and land-based groups of the estuaries and hinterlands? What roles have they played in the evolution of state societies and of the trading polities that mediated state-building among the emerging kingdoms that rose and fell across the region? How did they fit into the network of trading relations between state societies and the "stateless" cultures of the less controllable mountains and seas, who were more or less successful in practicing the arts of "not being governed."1 Chapters 2, 3, and 4, tease out the archaeological evidence on sea peoples in painstaking detail. They will be challenging for those outside the field, however. The technical vocabulary is unfortunately taken for granted and would have proved more accessible to scholars of other disciplines if a detailed glossary had been provided. Nonetheless the inferences drawn from assemblages of implements, pottery, and ornaments offer tantalizing interpretations and points of debate in these efforts to reconstruct a partially "invisible" world of seaborne fishers...

The Bajau as a left-behind group in the context of coastal and marine co-management system in Indonesia

The Bajau are a sea nomad group in Indonesia with the largest proportion of the population living nearby or utilizing marine resources in the fragile pelagic zone. In general, the Bajau have been a left-behind group and thus occupied a peripheral role in coastal and marine management and conservation. In Wakatobi, Southeast Sulawesi Province, the Bajau communities are marginalized in terms of policy recognition and development plan. This paper explores how a co-management system which is a platform to synchronize the community and organization needs in the coastal management and customary practices has failed to recruit the Bajau’s participation. The primary data were collected using multi-sited ethnographic method in five Bajau villages in Wakatobi and using key informant interviews with related stakeholders. The inter-customary controls for coastal and marine management, the issue of social cohesion within the Bajau communities, and the lack of institutional support were investigated as drivers of co-management failure in Wakatobi. The implementation of a co-management system requires multi-sectoral agreement and socio-cultural consideration. Unless the Bajau are acknowledged, accepted, and involved as an important partner in marine management and conservation, the success of the co-management system remains in doubt.

An Erythropoietin-Independent Mechanism of Erythrocytic Precursor Proliferation Underlies Hypoxia Tolerance in Sea Nomads.

The Bajau Sea Nomads were recently demonstrated to have evolved larger spleens as an adaptation to millennia of a marine foraging lifestyle. The large-spleen phenotype appears to derive from increases in thyroid hormone (TH) production as a result of reduced expression of phosphodiesterase 10A (PDE10A), though the exact mechanism remains unknown. Through pharmacological inhibition of PDE10A using the selective inhibitor MP-10 in mice, we were able to mimic the Bajau adaptation and show that treated mice had significantly larger spleens than control animals. This difference appears connected to an excess of early stage erythrocytes and an apparent increase in red blood cell (RBC) precursor proliferation in response to increased TH. However, we determined that the stimulation of RBC production in the mouse model via TH is Erythropoietin (EPO)-independent, unlike in the altitude (chronic hypoxemia) response. We confirmed this using human GWAS data; although the Bajau PDE10A variants are significantly associated with increased TH levels and RBC count, they are not associated with EPO levels, nor are other strongly thyroid-associated SNPs. We therefore suggest that an EPO-independent mechanism of stimulating RBC precursor proliferation via TH upregulation underlies the increase in spleen size observed in Sea Nomad populations.

Forensic and genetic characterizations of diverse southern Thai populations based on 15 autosomal STRs

Southern Thailand is home to various populations; the Moklen, Moken and Urak Lawoi’ sea nomads and Maniq negrito are the minority, while the southern Thai groups (Buddhist and Muslim) are the majority. Although previous studies have generated forensic STR dataset for major groups, such data of the southern Thai minority have not been included; here we generated a regional forensic database of southern Thailand. We newly genotyped common 15 autosomal STRs in 184 unrelated southern Thais, including all minorities and majorities. When combined with previously published data of major southern Thais, this provides a total of 334 southern Thai samples. The forensic parameter results show appropriate values for personal identification and paternity testing; the probability of excluding paternity is 0.99999622, and the combined discrimination power is 0.999999999999999. Probably driven by genetic drift and/or isolation with small census size, we found genetic distinction of the Maniq and sea nomads from the major groups, which were closer to the Malay and central Thais than the other Thai groups. The allelic frequency results can strength the regional forensic database in southern Thailand and also provide useful information for anthropological perspective.

Coastal heritage: exploring caves and associated indigenous knowledge in the Lanta Bay (Southern Thailand)

This article presents the preliminary results of community-based archaeological and ethnographic research on the maritime heritage landscape along the Lanta Bay involving the Urak Lawoi sea nomads and with a focus on caves and rock art. It documents several newly-discovered rock art sites as well as the relationships local groups entertain, or not, with these caves. By doing so, it wishes to investigate the various social groups direct or indirect involvement in regional network through time: merchants, sea nomads, fishermen, estuarine and inland forest groups, etc. In a matter of fact, until now, research has mostly focused on lowland riverine ports, foreign merchants and to long-distance connections. In comparison, much less attention has been paid to the many other local groups for whom offshore or coastal caves, islands and mangrove forest in estuaries constituted places for resource procurement, homes, landmarks, temporary shelters or ritual places. This project intends aims to document these groups’ contribution of all to maritime history and the landscape heritage.

Sea Nomads of Southeast Asia: From the Past to the Present ed. by Bérénice Bellina, Roger Blench and Jean-Christoph Galipaud (review)

Reviewed by: Sea Nomads of Southeast Asia: From the Past to the Present ed. by Bérénice Bellina, Roger Blench and Jean-Christoph Galipaud Anton O. Zakharov Sea Nomads of Southeast Asia: From the Past to the Present. By Bérénice Bellina, Roger Blench and Jean-Christoph Galipaud (eds.) Singapore: NUS Press, 2021. Pp. xv, 383, ill. ISBN 978-981-325-125-0 (paperback) Sea nomads of Southeast Asia are vital actors in the history of the region and its neighbours. Sea nomads have had long histories and played crucial roles in forming seascapes and transmitting goods and ideas throughout Southeast Asia and/or the Indian Ocean. The first European accounts of sea nomads and their piratical activities date from the sixteenth century but sea nomadism is still underrated as a field of scientific, especially archaeological research. An international team of scholars under the baton of Bérénice Bellina, Roger Blench and Jean-Christoph Galipaud aims to show a huge potential of examining sea nomads from archaeological, genetic, linguistic and historical points of view. Now there are three principal areas inhabited by sea nomads in Southeast Asia: the Mergui Archipelago, the Riau islands and Sumatra, and the area between Borneo, the Sulu Archipelago and northwest Papua (p.11). Bellina, Blench and Galipaud in the introductory chapter 'Sea Nomadism from the Past to Present' (pp.1–27) emphasize various types of sea nomads and difficulties in applying a strict definition of sea nomadism. 'Sea nomadism can be defined by the suite of subsistence strategies of populations based on the exchange of patchy maritime resources, staples and trade goods' (p. 4). The scholars connect the forms of sea nomadism with 'the rise of trading states or trading polities' (p. 6). The first firm evidence of links between sea nomads and a thalassocracy is the seventh-century Malay trading polity of Srivijaya. Bellina, Blench and Galipaud offer three main stages of sea nomadism development in terms of archaeology. The first is movements and circulations between the islands of the Pacific during the Paleolithic times. The second is the epoch of Austronesian expansion and Austronesian 'fisher-foragers'. The third is the time of early trade since 3000 BP (pp. 7–8). The dissemination of Dong Son drums throughout mainland and island Southeast Asia may be connected with the sea nomads. 'To summarise, sea nomads were probably originally coastal forager-traders, characterized by their adaptive capacities' (p. 9). The scholars stress the need of three main types of archaeological evidence for sea nomadism, i.e., material, locational/spatial and physical/biological (p. 10). Sue O'Connor, Christian Reepmeyer, Mahirta, Michelle C. Langley and Elena Piotto discuss 'Communities of Practice in a Maritime World: Shared Shell Technology and Obsidian Exchange in the Lesser Sunda Islands, Wallacea' (pp. 28–50). There are many shell fish hooks, beads and pendants, as well as obsidian artefacts excavated in Timor, Roti and Alor. These shell finds 'shared norms of personal adornment and/or craft production which were remarkably stable through time in terms of the items made, choice of shell taxa, the methods of manufacture and the accompanying use of hematite' (pp. 45–46). The beads were made of shells of Oliva spp., Nassarius spp., and Nautilus pompilius. The almost identical shape of hooks dated to the terminal Pleistocene and found in Alor Island, Indonesia, and Timor-Leste as well as 'their absence in MSEA [Mainland Southeast Asia] and other parts of ISEA [Island Southeast Asia] at [End Page 220] this early date refuted any suggestion of diffusion as the cause of the appearance of these hooks…' (p. 44). The shape of these hooks is a functional adaptation to similar ecological conditions. David Bulbeck examines 'Late Pleistocene to Mid-Holocene Maritime Exchange Networks in Island Southeast Asia' (pp. 51–101). He offers a synthesis of data concerning early habitation of anatomically modern humans in the region since 45,000 BP to middle Holocene. These data include maps and tables showing various sites, artefacts and practices. Artefacts include Pleistocene rock art, early osseous objects, worked marine shells. Bulbeck summarizes mortuary practices of early Island Southeast Asia, including flexed inhumation, cremation and burials as well as Neolithic extended inhumation...

Review: The role of local belief and wisdom of the Bajo community in marine conservation efforts

Abstract. Maulidyna A, Hartawan BS, Agustin HN, Irfan AN, Septiasari A, Utina R, Setyawan AD. 2019. Review: The role of local belief and wisdom of the Bajo Community in marine conservation efforts. Intl J Bonorowo Wetlands 11: 48-63. The Bajo tribe are originally sea nomads, living in eastern Indonesia, South Philippines and North Borneo. They are identified by their marine culture and sama language. They have similarities with the Orang Laut tribe in western Indonesia and the Moken tribe in the Mergui Archipelago in terms of exploring the seas. Today, most Bajo ethnic groups no longer wander on houseboat and live in a certain place, although they still preserve maritime culture, they have similar social and cultural features, including shared shipbuilding and fishing, traditions, beliefs and myths. The Bajo tribe who live from marine natural resources have a close relationship with the marine and coastal environment, so that it raises the values of environmental concern in maintaining the sea and coast. This study aims to determine the environmental conservation of the Bajo tribe based on their beliefs. The Bajo tribe is one of the tribal communities that manage, maintain and utilize marine biological resources based on cultural norms and values that have been institutionalized and attached to the Bajo community, and are maintained through social control based on their belief system. This belief brings the Bajo people to fear breaking the taboo or pamali that has existed since their ancestors orally and from generation to generation. The Bajo people have wisdom to protect the marine environment, namely corals, mangroves, and marine resources. They have a high concern for preserving coral reefs as a buffer for the underwater ecosystem, and they are very aware of the need to preserve the sources that are the basis of their livelihood fulfillment.

Eastern Africa and the Early Indian Ocean: Understanding Mobility in a Globalising World

Abstract This paper situates Eastern Africa in the early maritime trade of the Indian Ocean, reviewing evidence for connections from Egypt and Red Sea, the Gulf, and Southeast Asia from prehistory to the Islamic Period. The region played a pivotal role in developing global networks, but we argue that it has become the “forgotten south” in an era of emerging empires. One reason for this is a lack of understanding of maritime mobility around the rim of the Indian Ocean, often undertaken by small scale or specialist groups, including sea nomads. These groups are characterised as marginalised and victimised during globalisation, yet dualising into categories—such as “exploiter” and “exploiting”—oversimplifies what was almost certainly in reality a complex array of roles and activities, both in the context of East Africa and elsewhere around the Indian Ocean. Through modern scientific-based excavation and analysis, we can now begin to more fully understand these interactions.

Antimicrobial resistance profile of Streptococcus pneumoniae in children

Antimicrobial resistance profile of Streptococcus pneumoniae in children <5 years of age in sea nomads population in Indonesia

Southeast Asian early Maritime Silk Road trading polities’ hinterland and the sea-nomads of the Isthmus of Kra

In Southeast Asia, archaeological research has recently shown that the earliest centralised polities qualifying as incipient States emerged by the late 5th and early 4th c. BCE (Kim, 2013; Stark, 2015; Bellina, 2017, 2018). Understanding of their hinterland is still very limited. This essay presents the results of a regional study conducted since 2005 in the Isthmus of Kra in the Thai-Malay Peninsula, a narrow piece of land located between the Bay of Bengal and the South China Sea. It argues that in this region, Maritime Silk Road incipient trading states’ emergence went along economic specialisation, cultural differentiation and cooperation between different groups participating in local and long-distance networks. Amongst these so-called “marginal” groups emerge “sea nomads”. Like those described in historical and ethnographic sources some of which are referred to here, these early sea nomads appeared to have already played a crucial economic and political role as part of these maritime trading polities hinterland. Along with an archaeology of sea nomadism, this study opens perspectives on reconstructing a more complete narrative of Southeast Asia and beyond of the Maritime Silk Road, a narrative that integrates marginal groups.

Physiological and Genetic Adaptations to Diving in Sea Nomads

Understanding the physiology and genetics of human hypoxia tolerance has important medical implications, but this phenomenon has thus far only been investigated in high-altitude human populations. Another system, yet to be explored, is humans who engage in breath-hold diving. The indigenous Bajau people ("Sea Nomads") of Southeast Asia live a subsistence lifestyle based on breath-hold diving and are renowned for their extraordinary breath-holding abilities. However, it is unknown whether this has a genetic basis. Using a comparative genomic study, we show that natural selection on genetic variants in the PDE10A gene have increased spleen size in the Bajau, providing them with a larger reservoir of oxygenated red blood cells. We also find evidence of strong selection specific to the Bajau on BDKRB2, a gene affecting the human diving reflex. Thus, the Bajau, and possibly other diving populations, provide a new opportunity to study human adaptation to hypoxia tolerance. VIDEO ABSTRACT.

The last sea nomads of the Indonesian archipelago: genomic origins and dispersal

The Bajo, the world’s largest remaining sea nomad group, are scattered across hundreds of recently settled communities in Island Southeast Asia, along the coasts of Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. With a significant role in historical trading, the Bajo lived until recently as nomads, spending their entire lives on houseboats while moving long distances to fish and trade. Along the routes they traveled, the Bajo settled and intermarried with local land-based groups, leading to ‘maritime creolization’, a process whereby Bajo communities retained their culture, but assimilated – and frequently married into – local groups. The origins of the Bajo have remained unclear despite several hypotheses from oral tradition, culture and language, all currently without supporting genetic evidence. Here, we report genome-wide SNP analyses on 73 Bajo individuals from three communities across Indonesia – the Derawan of Northeast Borneo, the Kotabaru of Southeast Borneo and the Kendari of Southeast Sulawesi, with 87 new samples from three populations surrounding the area where these Bajo peoples live. The Bajo likely share a common connection with Southern Sulawesi, but crucially, each Bajo community also exhibits unique genetic contributions from neighboring populations.

SANG PELAUT DARI BELITUNG: DAMPAK TINGGAL DI DARAT TERHADAP KEHIDUPAN SOSIALBUDAYA SUKU SAWANG (1936-2012)

This study aimed to describe the dynamics life of Sawang People as a Sea Nomads in Belitung Island. In 1936, since Sawang People start to be employed in Dutch minning, until the relocation policy by Indonesian government that carried out the relocation from the sea to the land from 1970 to 2012, already have some positive and negative impact against the sustainability of maritime culture of Sawang People as they began settled on land. The Positive impact is force Sawang People to adapt with the age of development and mingle with the Belitung community on land. The Negative impact caused some positive maritime culture of Sawang became nearly extinct like the language of Sawang, art, traditional knowledge, and maritime values in line with decreasing of native Sawang People on Belitung Island.

Епоха вікінгів у Східній Європі: слов’янсько-сканди- навські зв’язки в період формування ранніх слов’янських держав

Background : The problem of Slavic–Scandinavian relations in the Viking era is debatable in historiography. The research has traditionally been limited to exploring the impact of Scandinavians on the development of Slavic states. In doing so, researchers studying the activities of the Normans in the east of the European continent rarely resort to analogies and comparisons with Western Europe where the Viking era is well reflected in the sources and is better studied. Purpose : To establish the patterns and specific features of the initial stage of the Viking era in the West and East of the European continent; to find out the level of economic and political development of the Slavic nations of Central and Eastern Europe on the eve of the Viking era and in its initial phase; the nature of the contacts of the Slavs and Scandinavians in the VIII–IX centuries and their role in the international Baltic trade, as well as in the trade between the Arabian East and Byzantium which took place in the Caspian and Black Seas. Results : The study of the Viking era in the east of the European continent proves its universal character: at its first stage in the VIII–IX centuries, here as well as in Western Europe, the activities of the Normans were limited to short–term plunder raids on coastal settlements. According to Scandinavian sources, at that time the "sea nomads" were mainly attracted to the rich monasteries and churches of the West European coast, especially the British islands. In Central and Eastern Europe large state formations of the Slavs were formed before the beginning of the Viking Age (IV–VIII centuries): the Union of Ants, the Dolyubian–Volynian Union, Great Croatia, the state of Samo. In the Baltic region unions of ruyans, obodrits, lutych–viltst (state of velets), pomoryan were also formed. In this region where the most intensive Slavic – Scandinavian contacts took place there is clear influence of the Slavs on the development of crafts and trade of Scandinavians since in the VIII–IX centuries Slavs dominated on the southern coast of the Baltic region and in Baltic trade. Their cities such as Veligrad–Rerik, Starigrad, Volyn, Arkon and others served as international trade transits that united the Frankish kingdoms with the Arabian East. Only in the second half of the IX century Scandinavian cities such as the Danish Hedeby and the Swedish Birka began to play a prominent role in the Baltic trade. Slavic–Scandinavian contacts at that time also included mutual plunders, military–political alliances and dynastic ties, military mercenaries. The Slavic Rus with its center in Kyiv emerged on the European scene at the end of the VIII – the first half of the IX century, conducting maritime trade and plunder raids on the Caspian and Black Seas, trade with the Arabian East and Byzantium, establishing embassies in Byzantium and the Frankish kingdom. Sources indicate that its more or less regular contacts with the Normans began not earlier than in the Xth century. Therefore information and contemporary interpretations of the sources about the nature of Slavic–Scandinavian contacts in the VIII–IX centuries do not give grounds for concluding that at that time Scandinavians dominated in the Baltics and in international trade, and about their allegedly crucial influence on the formation of the early Slavic states. Key words : Viking Era, Normans, early states of the Slavs, Rus, Slavic–Scandinavian relations, Norman theory.

”HOPELESS AT SEA, LANDLESS ON SHORE”: CONTEXTUALISING THE SEA NOMADS’ DILEMMA IN THAILAND

Since the beginning of 2016 – once again after a series of post-tsunami coverage – the plight of several sea nomad or Chao Lay groups in Thailand has found its way into national newspaper headlines and television news coverage. The persistent land disputes and other critical problems require an investigation beyond the conflict and dichotomy between indigenous communities and private businesses. By analysing contemporary dilemmas of sea nomads in Thailand this working paper seeks to throw light on the lives and circumstances of indigenous peoples in the context of a capitalist economy facilitated by a nationalist bureaucratic state.