Friday, August 5, 2011

Early Vietnam - Sa Huỳnh

The union of the Âu Việt and Lạc Việt cultures led to the rise of the Âu Lạc civilization. This merger marked a significant era in early Vietnamese history, because Âu Lạc is considered to be the first civilization that eventually became Vietnam. However, another civilization existed during the same time period in what is now southern Vietnam. This contemporaneous culture was the Sa Huỳnh. It preceeded Âu Lạc by about 800 years, and lasted half a millenium longer.

Artifacts of the Sa Huỳnh culture were found in the Mekong Delta region. These include glass and jade jewelry, particularly double-headed-animal earrings, as well as weapons and tools made of iron. Sealed jars with cremated ashes and offerings inside give us a clue as to how the Sa Huỳnh interred their dead.

The Sa Huỳnh culture had tremendous influence on Vietnamese history. Not only was it a trade center that drew Chinese traders through early Vietnam, they were also a channel for directing early Vietnamese products such as the bronze drums of the Đông Sơn throughout Southeast Asia. However, the Sa Huỳnh's most major contribution to Vietnamese history was its successors, the Champa. Vietnam's conflicts with the Champa lasted throughout the centuries, and the Champa's eventual defeat and assimilation shaped Vietnam's past and demography--a subject to be discussed at a later time.

As significant as Sa Huỳnh and its legacy was, no civilization shaped the course of Vietnamese history, or the nature of its society, as much as its northern neighbor. By the time Âu Lạc was only a few decades old, China had witnessed its most dramatic political and geographic change of all time. The first Chinese emperor brought all of the ancient states under a single authoritative power. With the establishment of a unified China, the Qin emperor's attention turned to conquering the trade routes and agriculturally productive lands to the south beyond the limits of his empire, and a new era in Vietnamese hisory began.

We'll leave history alone for now, and pick it up again in a few days.

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