The history of Indonesia has been shaped by its geographic position, its natural resources, a series of human migrations and contacts, wars and conquests, as well as by trade, economics and politics. Indonesia is an archipelagic country of 17,000 to 18,000 islands (8,844 named and 922 permanently inhabited) stretching along the equator in South East Asia. The country's strategic sea-lane position fostered inter-island and international trade; trade has since fundamentally shaped Indonesian history. The area of Indonesia is populated by peoples of various migrations, creating a diversity of cultures, ethnicities, and languages. The archipelago's landforms and climate significantly influenced agriculture and trade, and the formation of states. The boundaries of the state of Indonesia match the 20th-century borders of the Dutch East Indies.
Fossilised remains of Homo erectus and his tools, popularly known as the "Java Man", suggest the Indonesian archipelago was inhabited by at least 1.5 million years ago. Austronesian people, who form the majority of the modern population, are thought to have originally been from Taiwan and arrived in Indonesia around 2000 BCE. From the 7th century CE, the powerful Srivijaya naval kingdom flourished bringing Hindu and Buddhist influences with it. The agricultural Buddhist Sailendra and Hindu Mataram dynasties subsequently thrived and declined in inland Java. The last significant non-Muslim kingdom, the Hindu Majapahit kingdom, flourished from the late 13th century, and its influence stretched over much of Indonesia. The earliest evidence of Islamised populations in Indonesia dates to the 13th century in northern Sumatra; other Indonesian areas gradually adopted Islam, which became the dominant religion in Java and Sumatra by the end of the 16th century. For the most part, Islam overlaid and mixed with existing cultural and religious influences.
Europeans such as the Portuguese arrived in Indonesia from the 16th century seeking to monopolise the sources of valuable nutmeg, cloves, and cubeb pepper in Maluku. In 1602, the Dutch established the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and became the dominant European power by 1610. Following bankruptcy, the VOC was formally dissolved in 1800, and the government of the Netherlands established the Dutch East Indies under government control. By the early 20th century, Dutch dominance extended to the current boundaries. The Japanese invasion and subsequent occupation in 1942–45 during WWII ended Dutch rule, and encouraged the previously suppressed Indonesian independence movement. Two days after the surrender of Japan in August 1945, nationalist leader Sukarno declared independence and became president. The Netherlands tried to reestablish its rule, but a bitter armed and diplomatic struggle ended in December 1949, when in the face of international pressure, the Dutch formally recognised Indonesian independence.
An attempted coup in 1965 led to a violent army-led anti-communist purge in which over half a million people were killed. General Suharto politically outmanoeuvred President Sukarno, and became president in March 1968. His New Order administration garnered the favour of the West, whose investment in Indonesia was a major factor in the subsequent three decades of substantial economic growth. In the late 1990s, however, Indonesia was the country hardest hit by the East Asian Financial Crisis, which led to popular protests and Suharto's resignation on 21 May 1998. The Reformasi era following Suharto's resignation, has led to a strengthening of democratic processes, including a regional autonomy program, the secession of East Timor, and the first direct presidential election in 2004. Political and economic instability, social unrest, corruption, natural disasters, and terrorism have slowed progress. Although relations among different religious and ethnic groups are largely harmonious, acute sectarian discontent and violence remain problems in some areas.
In 2007, an analysis of cut marks on two bovid bones found in Sangiran, showed them to have been made 1.5 to 1.6 million years ago by clamshell tools. This is the oldest evidence for the presence of early humans in Indonesia. Fossilised remains of Homo erectus in Indonesia, popularly known as the "Java Man" were first discovered by the Dutch anatomist Eugène Dubois at Trinil in 1891, and are at least 700,000 years old. Other H. erectus fossils of a similar age were found at Sangiran in the 1930s by the anthropologist Gustav Heinrich Ralph von Koenigswald, who in the same time period also uncovered fossils at Ngandong alongside more advanced tools, re-dated in 2011 to between 550,000 and 143,000 years old.[1][2][3][4] In 1977 another H. erectus skull was discovered at Sambungmacan.[5] In 2010, stone tools were discovered on Flores, dating from 1 million years ago. These are the earliest remains implying human seafaring technology.[6] The earliest evidence of artistic activity ever found, in the form of diagonal etchings made with the use of a shark's tooth, was detected in 2014 on a 500,000-year-old fossil of a clam found in Java in the 1890s, associated with H. erectus.[7]
In 2003, on the island of Flores, fossils of a 1.1 m (3 ft 7 in) tall hominid dated between 74,000 and 13,000 years old were discovered, much to the surprise of the scientific community. This newly discovered hominid was named the "Flores Man", or Homo floresiensis.[8][9] A phylogenetic analysis published in 2017 suggests that H. floresiensis was descended from the same ancestor as Homo habilis.[10] H. floresiensis would thus represent a previously unknown and very early migration out of Africa. The Homo floresiensis skeletal material is dated from 60,000 to 100,000 years ago; stone tools recovered alongside the skeletal remains were from archaeological horizons ranging from 50,000 to 190,000 years ago.[11]
The Indonesian archipelago was formed during the thaw after the Last Glacial Maximum. Early humans travelled by sea and spread from mainland Asia eastward to New Guinea and Australia. Homo sapiens reached the region by around 45,000 years ago.[12] In 2011, evidence was uncovered in neighbouring East Timor, showing that 42,000 years ago, these early settlers had high-level maritime skills, and by implication the technology needed to make ocean crossings to reach Australia and other islands, as they were catching and consuming large numbers of big deep sea fish such as tuna.[13]
An elaborate 4.5 m long rock art panel in a limestone cave at Leang Bulu’ in Sulawesi is currently considered the earliest figurative artwork in the world.[14] It portrays several figures hunting wild pigs and dwarf bovids. This rock art was dated to at least 43.9 ka on the basis of uranium-series analysis of overlying speleothems. A painted hand stencil from Leang Timpuseng, which has a minimum age of 39.9 kyr, is now the oldest known hand stencil in the world.[15]
Austronesian people form the majority of the modern population. They may have arrived in Indonesia around 2000 BCE and are thought to have originated in Taiwan.[16] During this period, parts of Indonesia participated in the Maritime Jade Road, which existed for 3,000 years between 2000 BC to 1000 AD.[17][18][19][20] Dong Son culture spread to Indonesia bringing with it techniques of wet-field rice cultivation, ritual buffalo sacrifice, bronze casting, megalithic practises, and ikat weaving methods. Some of these practices remain in areas including the Batak areas of Sumatra, Toraja in Sulawesi, and several islands in Nusa Tenggara. Early Indonesians were animists who honoured the spirits of the dead believing their souls or life force could still help the living.
Ideal agricultural conditions, and the mastering of wet-field rice cultivation as early as the 8th century BCE,[21] allowed villages, towns, and small kingdoms to flourish by the 1st century CE. These kingdoms (little more than collections of villages subservient to petty chieftains) evolved with their own ethnic and tribal religions. Java's hot and even temperature, abundant rain and volcanic soil, was perfect for wet rice cultivation. Such agriculture required a well-organized society, in contrast to the society based on dry-field rice, which is a much simpler form of cultivation that does not require an elaborate social structure to support it.
Buni culture clay pottery flourished in coastal northern West Java and Banten around 400 BCE to 100 CE.[22] The Buni culture was probably the predecessor of the Tarumanagara kingdom, one of the earliest Hindu kingdoms in Indonesia, producing numerous inscriptions and marking the beginning of the historical period in Java.
On 11 December 2019, a team of researchers led by Dr. Maxime Aubert announced the discovery of the oldest hunting scenes in prehistoric art in the world which is more than 44,000 years old from the limestone cave of Leang Bulu’ Sipong 4. Archaeologists determined the age of the depiction of hunting a pig and buffalo thanks to the calcite ‘popcorn’, different isotope levels of radioactive uranium and thorium.[23][24][25][26]
Indonesia like much of Southeast Asia was influenced by Indian culture.[27] From the 2nd century, through the Indian dynasties like the Pallava, Gupta, Pala and Chola in the succeeding centuries up to the 12th century, Indian culture spread across all of Southeast Asia.[27]
References to the Dvipantara or Yawadvipa, a Hindu kingdom in Java and Sumatra appear in Sanskrit writings from 200 BCE. In India's earliest epic, the Ramayana, Sugriva, the chief of Rama's army dispatched his men to Yawadvipa, the island of Java, in search of Sita.[28] According to the ancient Tamil text Manimekalai Java had a kingdom with a capital called Nagapuram.[29][30][31] The earliest archaeological relic discovered in Indonesia is from the Ujung Kulon National Park, West Java, where an early Hindu statue of Ganesha estimated from the 1st century CE was found on the summit of Mount Raksa in Panaitan island. There is also archaeological evidence of Sunda Kingdom in West Java dating from the 2nd-century, and Jiwa Temple in Batujaya, Karawang, West Java was probably built around this time. South Indian culture was spread to Southeast Asia by the south Indian Pallava dynasty in the 4th and 5th centuries.[32] and by the 5th century, stone inscriptions written in Pallava scripts were found in Java and Borneo.
A number of Hindu and Buddhist states flourished and then declined across Indonesia. Seven rough plinths dating from the beginning of the 4th century CE were found in Kutai, East Kalimantan, near the Mahakam River known as the Yupa inscription or "Mulavarman Inscription" believed to be one of the earliest Sanskrit inscriptions of Indonesia, the plinths were written by Brahmins in the Sanskrit language using the Pallava script of India recalling of a generous king by the name of Mulavarman who donated a huge amount of alms to Brahmin priests in his kingdom, the kingdom was known as the Kutai Martadipura Kingdom located in present East Kalimantan Province, believed to be the oldest and first Hindu kingdom of Indonesia.[33]
One such early kingdom was Tarumanagara, which flourished between 358 and 669 CE. Located in West Java close to modern-day Jakarta, its 5th-century king, Purnawarman, established the earliest known inscriptions in Java, the Ciaruteun inscription located near Bogor. And other inscriptions called the Pasir Awi inscription and the Muncul inscription. On this monument, King Purnawarman inscribed his name and made an imprint of his footprints, as well as his elephant's footprints. The accompanying inscription reads, "Here are the footprints of King Purnavarman, the heroic conqueror of the world". This inscription is written in Pallava script and in Sanskrit and is still clear after 1500 years. Purnawarman apparently built a canal that changed the course of the Cakung River, and drained a coastal area for agriculture and settlement purpose. In his stone inscriptions, Purnawarman associated himself with Vishnu, and Brahmins ritually secured the hydraulic project.[34]
Around the same period, in the 6th to 7th centuries(around 700 - 800 CE), the Kalingga Kingdom was established in Central Java northern coast, mentioned in Chinese account.[35] The name of this kingdom was derived from ancient Indian kingdom of Kalinga, which suggest the ancient link between India and Indonesia.
The political history of Indonesian archipelago during the 7th to 11th (800 - 1200 CE) around centuries was dominated by Srivijaya based in Sumatra and Sailendra that dominated southeast Asia based in Java and constructed Borobudur, the largest Buddhist monument in the world. The history prior of the 14th and 15th centuries (1500 - 1600 CE) is not well known due to the scarcity of evidence. By the 15th century (1600 CE), two major states dominated this period; Majapahit in East Java, the greatest of the pre-Islamic Indonesian states, and Malacca on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula, arguably one of the greatest of the Muslim trading empires,[36] this marked the rise of Muslim states in the Indonesian archipelago.
