Early Vietnam - Đông Sơn

The other day, I posted about the dragon lord, Lạc Long Quân, the legendary father of Vietnam. In the post, I mentioned how Lạc Long Quân destroyed a monstrous fish that had plagued the early people of Vietnam. Lạc Long Quân took metal, melted it, molded it into the shape of a man, and threw the hot metal lure into the water. The fish swallowed the burning hot metal, which seared its throat. While it was distracted by the pain, the dragon lord attacked the giant fish with his sword and cut it into three pieces.

It's interesting to note the tremendous role that metal plays in Vietnam's origin myth. The story tells us that power belongs to those who can wield metal. This story belongs to the ancient Vietnamese, called the Lạc Việt. They were named after the dragon lord himself, and were descended from fifty sons that the dragon lord took with him to the coastal plains. The other fifty were sent to the mountains with their mother--I mention this because it will play a role a little later. Today, the people of Vietnam consider the Lạc Việt to be the beginning of Vietnamese culture. The Lạc Việt are believed to have founded a civilization called Văn Lang, sometime around 3000 B.C.E. Their relics are found near Đông Sơn in Northern Vietnam.

The Đông Sơn culture embodied the best of bronze-age technology. Their remains include a variety of iron and bronze tools, weapons, and musical instruments. Most of all, the Đông Sơn are world renowned for their masterful design of bronze drums. Highly embellished and elaborate, these drums were manufactured by lost-wax casting. Although China was a contemporary civilization that shared bronze-casting technology, some scholars believe the ancient Vietnamese borrowed the lost-wax casting technique from the ancient Thais. I'll let the scholars battle it out.

The Lạc Việt kings were called Hùng, their dynasty was the Hồng Bàng, and they are believed to have ruled for more than two and-a-half thousand years. Their rule ended when the Hùng were defeated by and then assimilated into another contemporary Vietnamese civilization, who were the descendants of the remaining fifty sons of the dragon lord. I'll discuss them and the final civilization that coexisted with the Lạc Việt over the next few posts.