SE Asia’s earliest Maritime Silk Road ports found in Myanmar

The Franco-Myanmar project ‘Thanintaryi and the Maritime Silk Roads’ reveals the unique role of south Myanmar in the world’s oldest maritime commercial route, which spanned 10,000 kilometers from Rome to China over 2,000 years ago.

Test pits accross one of the city walls 
[Credit: Myanmar Times]

The maritime Silk Road is one of the most ancient trans-continental trading routes in the world, with different sections connecting to meet the demands of cities, elites, and merchants from China to Rome. These roads have played a defining role in world history, and are responsible for historical interactions, including the spread of Buddhism from its birth in North East India to South East Asia and into China, to the black pest.

To investigate the matter, the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) collaborated with Myanmar’s Department of Archaeology with funding from the French Foreign Ministry.

Now, a piece of this South-East Asian puzzle is on the way of being solved by the Franco-Myanmar team of archaeologists which also courts Thai, American, Japanese and European members. “The Thai-Malay Peninsula, where Thanintaryi region lays, was always a key part of the Maritime Silk Road,” says Dr. Berenice Bellina, head of the mission. “It plays a pivotal role right between the Indian and the Pacific Oceans. It was a trading point between two worlds for the exchange of goods and ideas and provided riverine ports for wary navigators to rest and replenish their supplies”.

Myanmar at the crossroads

How exactly both worlds connected was not well known until Dr. Bellina started working in Thailand on the archaeological past of the Kra Isthmus, the narrowest strip of land on the peninsula, over 15 years ago. There, her team uncovered a network of city-states constellating the Thai coast since the 4th century BC, linking navigators to rich inland resources.

Excavating a ditch rich in broken ceramic at Maliwan
[Credit: Myanmar Times]

The next logical step was to look to the other side of the border, into Myanmar. In 2017 and 2018 the mission excavated the sites of Aw Gyi and Maliwan at the south of Thanintaryi region. These are the first ever Silk Road ports to be researched in Myanmar, and they are amongst the oldest in South-East Asia, with occupations from the 4th to the 2nd century BC. They show rich cultural influence from both sides of the peninsula, with pottery styles which can also be found in India’s Tamil Nadu region and Bengal, and cornelian beads which raw material was most likely imported from the Deccan plateaus.

“These are the signs of one of the worlds’ most ancient exchange routes,” says Dr. Bellina, “where not only objects but also ideas were exchanged. We can already see the signs of a shift in symbolism towards Indic cosmology, with certain inscriptions in Brahmi for example, mixing with local rituals and beliefs”.

The mission’s many challenges

The sites are extremely difficult to access. For anyone who has travelled to Thanintaryi, even making it to Dawei and choosing between a 13-hour bus or an expensive plane seems a hassle. But conducting archaeological research at Myanmar’s southernmost point is a different kettle of fish. While Maliwan is accessible through road, Aw Gyi can only be reached through boat at high tide in the morning, and the archaeological team must be careful to make it out in time, otherwise a low tide keeps them marooned on the site. The other option involved walking through leech-infested swamps.

It is worth it though: “These are amongst the most important port settlements from the easternmost part of the Maritime Silk Road,” comments Dr. Kalayar Htwe, a lecturer at Mandalay University and partner to the mission. The riverine site of Maliwan in particular has imposing outside city walls and a water management system.  There is an emergency to protect these remote sites as they are destroyed by regular pillaging for beads and other artifacts. Looting is one of the challenges of archaeology in the area, says Dr. Kalayar Htwe, with materials being moved over to other countries illegally, in Thai black markets especially.

Burial 28 excavated in 2015 at the cemetery of Oakaie 1 in the Sagaing Division, believed
to date to the Late Neolithic (c. 12th-8th cent. BC) [Credit: Myanmar Times]

When asked about what makes these sites along the peninsula truly unique, Dr. Bellina pauses and answers: “Plans to build a canal joining the Bay of Bengal and the Sea of China go as far back as the 17th century”. And indeed, still today China is exploring possibilities of a regional equivalent to the Panama or Suez canals to consolidate its plans of a modern Maritime Silk Road. “But in fact,” points the archaeologist, “river and land routes across the peninsula through the Tenasserim Mountains have long been used to join both seas together and shorten the commercial travels by a few months”.

The contemporary relevance of the site does not stop there. The mission’s shift from Thailand to Myanmar was welcomed by the French Embassy in Myanmar, which administers support to the Franco-Myanmar mission from Yangon and grasps the cultural-historical importance of the Thanintaryi region.

“This is a rare opportunity for two important pieces of research to converge and complement each other,” says Cyprien Francois, head of Myanmar’s French Institute and Cultural Counselor of the Ambassador.

By that, he means the interdisciplinary work with the marine nomads of the Mergui Archipelago known as the Moken, a group which traditionally lived almost year-round on wooden boats and thought to have migrated to the area around 4,000 years ago. “We are creating links with other French researchers, anthropologists who have lived with the Moken and have shown us how they have mastered those seas better than anyone over millennia. But their maritime existence is endangered, which is why we are creating a network of museums around the different islands of the archipelago, to engage with the material culture and the oral history of these populations”.

It is likely that their existence was directly linked to that of the maritime Silk Road, mentions Dr. Bellina. “With their deep, probably unparalleled knowledge of those waters, they must have served as intermediaries for those looking to trade or traverse the peninsula”.

Author: Etienne Berges | Source: Myanmar Times [May 25, 2019]