Hidden Treasures at a Dead End

By Anastasia Toufexis

Ban Chiang finds point to a mysterious cradle of civilization

On a hot day in July 1966, Stephen Young was walking through the village of Ban Chiang in northeastern Thailand when he tripped across history. "I stumbled over the root of a kapok tree and ended up spread-eagle in the dirt, and under my face was the rim of a pot," recalls Young, who was then a 20-year-old Harvard student spending the summer researching a political-science thesis.

Once on his feet, he saw that the sloping path was studded with broken pots. Examining some of the fragments, Young, who is now dean of the law school at Hamline University in St. Paul, sensed that he had taken a fortunate fall. "It looked like the kind of pottery kids make in elementary school," he says. "There was no glazing, and the clay was lumpily fused. But there were painted patterns on the clay of a sophisticated design. I had never seen anything like this in Thailand."

Archaeologists were intrigued by the potsherds, some of which have since been dated at 3500 B.C., and they soon discovered even more intriguing objects at Ban Chiang: bronze tools and jewelry, such as anklets and bracelets, fashioned between 2500 and 1500 B.C., and iron implements and ornaments made around 1000 to 500 B.C. Says University of Pennsylvania Archaeologist Joyce White: "Finding these metal objects was completely unexpected. It has caused scientists to rethink traditional theories about the development of civilization in Southeast Asia."

White is curator of an exhibition called "Ban Chiang: Discovery of a Lost Bronze Age" that goes on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City this week. The exhibit, which travels to Los Angeles in March, is sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania and the National Museum of Thailand, both of which organized the major dig at the site in 1974-75. During the excavation, archaeologists and Thai officials battled looting and cave-ins to extract artifacts from the 62-acre mound.

Among the prize finds: three elegant ceramic pots made between 3500 and 2500 B.C., one with incised designs, that were placed atop the legs of a buried body; a large vessel with an intricate scroll pattern, dated 3000 to 2000 B.C., that was used to inter a two-year-old child, and a plain cup found near by that might have contained food for the baby; and two iron spearheads with bronze sockets (to hold wooden handles), dated 800 to 400 B.C., which are among the oldest iron objects found in eastern Asia.

Until the discovery of Ban Chiang, Southeast Asia had been largely dismissed by scholars as a cultural dead end. Rice cultivation was thought to have been introduced to Southeast Asia by way of China or the Near East. Metalworking techniques were said to have come from Mesopotamia or China.

The late Geographer Carl Sauer first challenged those assumptions in 1952 when he suggested that the soil and climate in Southeast Asia were ideal for indigenous agricultural development. Then, in 1966, Archaeologist Donn Bayard unearthed bronze fragments and molds for making axes at Non Nok Tha in northeastern Thailand. Bayard also discovered at Non Nok Tha a puzzling copper tool that is a highlight of the Ban Chiang show. Made around 2500 B.C., it has been nicknamed WOST (world's oldest socketed tool) and might have been used as an ax or for digging. That same year, the late Archaeologist Chester Gorman discovered the remains of what seemed to be cultivated wild plants dating to 9700 B.C. at Spirit Cave in northeastern Thailand. Says Curator White: "That helped change the perception of Southeast Asian hunter-gatherers from poky " primitives to lively experimenters with plant cultivation."

The excavation of Ban Chiang -was one of the largest ever conducted in Southeast Asia. Initial faulty dating suggested Ban Chiang's melalsmiths were working in bronze before 3000 B.C. and in iron before 1600 B.C. If correct, that would have pre-empted the claim of Mesopotamia in the Middle East to the title "cradle of civilization." Hustling local villagers did a brisk business selling pots, at first originals and later fakes. They also peddled bracelets, some of them still attached to the chopped-off arms of skeletons. Nevertheless, scholars sifting through 18 tons of debris salvaged l 1/4 million pottery sherds, 200 intact pots, 2,000 artifacts and the remains of 127 bodies.

One surprising discovery: unlike the Bronze Age sites of the Near East, which were urban and militaristic, Ban Chiang was a rural, peaceful community. According to White, settlers arrived in the Ban Chiang region around 4000 B.C. and grew rice, raised cattle, pigs and chickens, and practiced elaborate funeral rites until about A.D. 200, when the culture mysteriously vanished.

Not all specialists agree with White's assessment of the Ban Chiang discoveries. Harvard Anthropologist Robert Maddin believes that Ban Chiang metalworking techniques were imported. Says he: "Most physical scientists tend to come down in support of diffusion rather than independent invention." Curator White politely demurs: "The Ban Chiang people had a very sophisticated metallurgical tradition that apparently developed independently." On one point, though, all are agreed. Says Archaeologist Bayard: "In Southeast Asia, as elsewhere, prehistoric man was considerably more clever than we tend to acknowledge." --ByAnastasia Toufexis. Reported by Sara White/Boston and James Willwerth/Ban Chiang

With reporting by Sara White, James Willwerth