[JimSEA]

The discovery of wooden artifact several hundred years old would seem is mean that people actively preserved the wood as is the common practice in the rest of Southeast Asia. I know of several temples where the collections include wooden objects that they claim up to 1,800 years of age which would match the earliest Dvaravati Cultures. 800 Year old Dvaravati wooden Buddhas images are on display in the temple museum in Lamphuin where that age is consistent with the Stupa and laterite foundation as well as written record in the Chiang Mai and Nan Chronicles. The Buddhist are great preservers of ancients writings and objects related to Buddhism but are understandably reluctant to allow destructive testing (even of the smallest amount).

The diversity of languages, as you have said before, is not surprising as the cultures today survived the ancient flooding of the subcontinental shelf where most of the earliest cultures originated. The lack of early high cultures and then the "explosion" of highly developed Ban Chiang and Vietnamese Don Song Cultures between 3,500 and 5,000 years ago point to possible multiple centers of early civilization. Just now, the University of Pennsylvania is expanding their study of the Ban Chiang Culture to include Mekong sites going back 10,000 years. Along the great rivers and under the ocean seem the be the locations of the oldest peoples -- as one would expect.

Even the Chinese are -- reluctantly -- moving away from their dogmatic insistence on a Yellow River origin of all Eastern Cultures. They are pushed by the Southwest China discoveries -- Sichuan and Yunnan.

[blam]

Thanks for your inputs.

"...the University of Pennsylvania is expanding their study of the Ban Chiang Culture to include Mekong sites going back 10,000 years. "

The Ban Chiang Culture will have some more suprises.

Wasn't it in a Ban Chiang site that the oldest bronze smeltering in the world was found?