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This blog excerpted from Indonesia Survival kit to help anyone who wants to know a little about Indonesia

History of Indonesia - In the Beginning

From the 7th century BC there were well-developed and organized societies in the Indonesian archipelago. The inhabitants knew how to irrigate rice fields, domesticate animals, use copper and bronze, and had some knowledge of sea navigation. There were villages – often permanent ones – where life was linked to the production of rice, the staple crop.

These early Indonesians were animists, believing that all animate ad inanimate objects have their own particular life force, semangat or soul. Certain people had more semangat than others – such as the tribal and village leaders, and the shamans or priests who had magical powers and could control the spirit world. The spirits of the dead had to be honored since their semangat could still help the living; there was a belief in the afterlife and weapons and utensils would be left in tombs fr use in the next world. Supernatural forces were held responsible for natural events, and evil spirits had to be placated by offerings, rites and ceremonies. In a region where earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and torrential rainstorms are common events, a belief in malevolent spirits is hardly surprising.
 Villages, at least in Java, developed into embryonic towns, and small kingdoms (little more than collections of villages subservient to petty chieftains) developed by the 1st century AD, together with their own ethnic and tribal religions. The climate of Java, with its hot, even temperature, plentiful rainfall and volcanic soil, was ideal for the wet-field method of rice cultivation, known as sawah cultivation, and the well organized society it required may explain why the people of Java and Bali developed a more sophisticated civilization than those of the other islands. The dry field or ladang method of rice cultivation is a much simpler form of agriculture and requires no elaborate social structure.

The social and religious duties of the rice-growing communities were gradually refined to form the basis of adat or customary law-a traditional law that was to persist through waves of imported religious beliefs-Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Christianity – and which still remains a force in Indonesia today.
 
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