Far East Kingdoms

Early Burma / Myanmar

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The modern republic of Burma (or 'Myanmar' - the same name through a different translation) in South-East Asia has more recently been under the firm control of a military dictatorship. The country's thousand year-long history though is highly detailed.

The area was first settled around 9000 BC by hunter-gatherers of a Palaeolithic South-East Asian culture known as the Anyathian, after Anyatha, a name for 'Upper Burma'. Little is known of these people but their culture existed alongside the Hoabinhian to its east.

According to 1969 discoveries of cave paintings and stone tools, what became the Shan state also had Palaeolithic and Neolithic groups who were related to the Hoabinhian culture. The nature of the tools indicates the fact that a shift toward agriculture had already begun.

Around 2000 BC, ancient Chinese rice and millet farmers spread southwards into a region which stretched between Vietnam and Burma. There they interbred with local hunter-gatherers in two main pulses, this being the first of those pulses.

A second pulse of migration took place between southern China and a swathe of territory which stretches between Burma and Nam Viet. Farmers here inherited a genetic makeup which differs in some ways from that of the earlier Man Bac migrants who had left southern China around 2000 BC, but still closely resembles the DNA of present-day inhabitants of southern China.

Since trade routes between ancient India and China passed through Burma during the first millennium AD, Indian merchants were able to introduce their culture, religion, and legal systems into the area. These were assimilated into local practices and were thereafter able to gain gradual predominance. By the eleventh century AD, Burma had become one of the earliest South-East Asian regions to adopt Buddhism, particularly Theravada Buddhism.

A team which was being led by Harvard Medical School geneticist, Mark Lipson, concluded in 2017 that these population movements brought agriculture into the region and triggered the spread of Austroasiatic languages which are still spoken in parts of south and South-East Asia.

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(Information by Peter Kessler and John De Cleene, with additional information from the John De Cleene Archive, from Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800-1830, Volume 1, Victor B Lieberman (2003), from Early civilizations of Southeast Asia, Dougald J W O'Reilly (2007), from Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics: Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy, Gustaaf Houtman (1999), from The River of Lost Footsteps: A Personal History of Burma, Myint-U Thant (Faber and Faber, 2008), and from External Links: Myanmar's Royal Legacy (The Diplomat), and Gov.UK, and South China Morning Post, and Myanmar (World Statesmen), and Ancient Chinese farmers sowed literal seeds of change in south-east Asia (Science News), and Burma (Encyclopaedia Britannica).)