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History
of Bali
Prehistoric Bali
The first wave of
visitors hit the beaches of Bali around three to four
thousand years ago. These seafaring Austronesians made their
way through the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific,
eventually landing on Bali's silvery shores. Migrating
inwards from the coasts, they spread across the island,
leaving rough stone tools and several burial sites for later
generations to find.
The picture of Bali’s
prehistoric past is still incomplete, for only a few clues
have been found by archaeologists. But from what evidence
has been unearthed, we know that by the first centuries A.D.
the people who populated the island already possessed many
of the cultural traits that distinguish today’s Balinese.
They grew rice in both dry fields and irrigated paddies;
they harnessed water buffalo to the plow, and they kept pigs
and chickens for food. They structured their society into
small villages and held community meetings using large stone
ceremonial platforms. Their religion appeared to have
combined ancestor worship with a fertility cult centered
around the rice goddess, now known as Dewi Sri. Tantalizing
glimpses into Bali's long-ago past are available to history
buffs at a number of spots around the island. Denpasar's
Bali Museum boasts among its collections a number of
artifacts from the Bronze Age and before, including stone
sarcophagi used in ancient Bali to bury the dead and metal
and stone implements and ornaments.
In the village of Pejeng in
Gianyar lies one of Bali's most famous ancient objects: The
Moon of Pejeng, a huge bronze kettle-gong thought to be
around 2,000 years old and renowned as the largest of its
kind in all of Asia. Measuring 1.5 meters wide and almost 2
meters tall, this beautiful item, carved with stylized
frogs, faces and geometric designs, is still considered to
possess great power, and is kept safe in the village temple.
Archaeologists are unsure as to its exact age and origin,
but stories are still told by the villagers to explain it.
Some say it's an earring dropped by a mythical giant or the
goddess of the moon, while others say it's a wheel that fell
off the chariot of the moon god. Its greenish color is
thought to be the result of an unfortunate incident in which
a would-be thief, angered by its radiance, urinated on the
gong to put out its glow. As the scoundrel's stream hit the
metal it lost its sheen, but the thief lost his life as
punishment for his evil deed -- a lesson to all on how to
treat holy objects. Other fascinating finds -- less magical
perhaps but no less wondrous to behold -- can be found in
the Archaelogical Museum in the same village, including huge
turtle-shaped sarcophagi dating back to Bali's Megalithic
Age.
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