Timor
Timor is an island at the southern end of Maritime Southeast Asia, in the north of the Timor Sea. The island is divided between the sovereign states of East Timor on the eastern part and Indonesia on the western part. The Indonesian part, also ...
is an island in
South East Asia
Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical south-eastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of mainland ...
. Geologically considered a
continental crustal fragment, it lies alongside the
Sunda shelf
Geologically, the Sunda Shelf is a south-eastern extension of the continental shelf of Mainland Southeast Asia. Major landmasses on the shelf include the Bali, Borneo, Java, Madura, and Sumatra, as well as their surrounding smaller islands. I ...
, and is the largest in a cluster of islands between
Java
Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mos ...
and
New Guinea
New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the world's second-largest island with an area of . Located in Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Australia by the wide Torr ...
.
European colonialism has shaped Timorese history since 1515 a period when it was divided between the Dutch in the west of the island (now
Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...
n
West Timor
West Timor ( id, Timor Barat) is an area covering the western part of the island of Timor, except for the district of Oecussi-Ambeno (an East Timorese exclave). Administratively, West Timor is part of East Nusa Tenggara Province, Indonesia. The ...
), and the Portuguese in the east (now the independent state of
East Timor
East Timor (), also known as Timor-Leste (), officially the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, is an island country in Southeast Asia. It comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor, the exclave of Oecusse on the island's north-west ...
).
Early history
The island of
Timor
Timor is an island at the southern end of Maritime Southeast Asia, in the north of the Timor Sea. The island is divided between the sovereign states of East Timor on the eastern part and Indonesia on the western part. The Indonesian part, also ...
was populated as part of the human migrations that have shaped Australasia more generally. It is believed that survivors from three waves of migration still live in the country. The first is described by anthropologists as
Vedda people
The Vedda ( si, වැද්දා , ta, வேடர் (''Vēḍar'')), or Wanniyalaeto, are a minority indigenous group of people in Sri Lanka who, among other sub-communities such as Coast Veddas, Anuradhapura Veddas and Bintenne Vedd ...
who arrived from the north and west at least 42,000 years ago. In 2011 evidence was uncovered, at the
Jerimalai
Jerimalai is a limestone cave southeast of Tutuala, on the eastern tip of East Timor. Fish remains and fish hooks excavated in Jerimalai provide evidence for advanced fishing technique by inhabitants of Timor 42,000 years ago.
Jerimalai has the ...
cave site, showing that these early settlers had high-level maritime skills at this time, and by implication the technology needed to make ocean crossings to reach Australia and other islands, as they were catching and consuming large numbers of big deep sea fish such as tuna. These excavations also discovered one of the world’s earliest recorded fish hooks, between 16,000 and 23,000 years old.
Around 3000 BC, a second migration brought
Melanesians
Melanesians are the predominant and indigenous inhabitants of Melanesia, in a wide area from Indonesia's New Guinea to as far East as the islands of Vanuatu and Fiji. Most speak either one of the many languages of the Austronesian language f ...
. The earlier Vedda peoples withdrew at this time to the mountainous interior. Finally, proto-Malays from 2500 BC arrived from south
China and north
Indochina
Mainland Southeast Asia, also known as the Indochinese Peninsula or Indochina, is the continental portion of Southeast Asia. It lies east of the Indian subcontinent and south of Mainland China and is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the west an ...
.
[ Timor Leste History](_blank)
official website
Timorese origin myths tell of ancestors that sailed around the eastern end of Timor arriving on land in the south. Some stories recount Timorese ancestors journeying from
Malay Peninsula or the
Minangkabau Minangkabau may refer to:
* Minangkabau culture, culture of the Minangkabau people
* Minangkabau Culture Documentation and Information Center
* Minangkabau Express, an airport rail link service serving Minangkabau International Airport (''see belo ...
Highlands of
Sumatra.
The Timorese in their region
The later Timorese were not seafarers, rather they were land focused peoples who did not make contact with other islands and peoples by sea. Timor was part of a region of small islands with small populations of similarly land-focused peoples that now make up eastern Indonesia. Contact with the outside world was via networks of foreign seafaring traders from as far as China and India that served the archipelago. Outside products brought to the region included metal goods, rice, fine textiles, and coins exchanged for local spices,
sandalwood
Sandalwood is a class of woods from trees in the genus ''Santalum''. The woods are heavy, yellow, and fine-grained, and, unlike many other aromatic woods, they retain their fragrance for decades. Sandalwood oil is extracted from the woods for us ...
, deer horn, bees' wax, and slaves.
Indianised Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms (3rd century ~ 16th century)
Earlier Buddhist era (3rd century BCE - 7th century)
Indianised Javanese Hindu-Buddhist Srivijaya empire (7th - 12th century)
Oral traditions of people of
Wehali principality of East Timor mention their migration from Sina Mutin Malaka or ''"Chinese White
Malacca"'' (part of
Indianised Hindu-Buddhist
Srivijaya empire) in ancient times.
Relations with Indianised Javanese Hindu empire of Majapahit (12th - 16th century)
Majapahit empire's
Nagarakretagama
The ''Nagarakretagama'' or ''Nagarakṛtāgama'', also known as ''Desawarnana'' or ''Deśavarṇana'', is an Old Javanese eulogy to Hayam Wuruk, a Javanese king of the Majapahit Empire. It was written on lontar as a '' kakawin'' by Mpu Pr ...
chronicles called Timor a tributary,
but as Portuguese chronologist
Tomé Pires
Tomé Pires (1465?–1524 or 1540)Madureira, 150–151. was a Portuguese apothecary from Lisbon who spent 1512 to 1515 in Malacca immediately after the Portuguese conquest, at a time when Europeans were only first arriving in Southeast As ...
wrote in the 16th century, all islands east of Java were called "Timor". Indonesian nationalist used the Majapahit chronicles to claim East Timor as part of Indonesia.
=Chiefdoms or polities
=
Early European explorers report that the island had a number of small chiefdoms or princedoms in the early 16th century. One of the most significant is the
Wehali or
Wehale kingdom in central Timor, to which the
Tetum
, nativename=Tetun
, states= Indonesia East Timor
, speakers=, mostly in Indonesia
, date=2010–2011
, ref=e18
, speakers2=50,000 L2-speakers in Indonesia and East Timor
, familycolor=Austronesian
, fam2=Malayo-Polynesian
, fam3= Central–East ...
,
Bunak
The Bunak (also known as Bunaq, Buna', Bunake) people are an ethnic group that live in the mountainous region of central Timor, split between the political boundary between West Timor, Indonesia, particularly in Lamaknen District and East Timor. ...
and
Kemak ethnic groups were aligned.
[ Precolonial East Timor](_blank)
The account of
Antonio Pigafetta
Antonio Pigafetta (; – c. 1531) was an Venetian scholar and explorer. He joined the expedition to the Spice Islands led by explorer Ferdinand Magellan under the flag of the emperor Charles V and after Magellan's death in the Philippine Islands, ...
of the
Magellan
Ferdinand Magellan ( or ; pt, Fernão de Magalhães, ; es, link=no, Fernando de Magallanes, ; 4 February 1480 – 27 April 1521) was a Portuguese explorer. He is best known for having planned and led the 1519 Spanish expedition to the East ...
expedition, who visited Timor in 1522, confirms the importance of the Wewiku-Wehali kingdom. In the 17th century the ruler of Wehali was described as "an emperor, whom all the kings on the island adhere to with tribute, as being their sovereign". He entertained friendly contacts with the
Muslim kingdom of
Makassar, but his power was checked by devastating invasions by the
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
in 1642 and 1665. Wehali was now brought inside the Portuguese sphere of power but appears to have had limited contact with its colonial suzerain.
=Trade with China
=
Timor is mentioned in the 13th-century Chinese ''
Zhu Fan Zhi
''Zhu Fan Zhi'' (), variously translated as '' A Description of Barbarian Nations'', ''Records of Foreign People'', or other similar titles, is a 13th-century Song Dynasty work by Zhao Rukuo. The work is a collection of descriptions of countri ...
'', where it is called ''Ti-wu'' and is noted for its sandalwood. It is called ''Ti-men'' in the ''
History of Song'' of 1345. Writing towards 1350,
Wang Dayuan Wang Dayuan (, fl. 1311–1350), courtesy name Huanzhang (), was a Chinese traveller of the Yuan dynasty from Quanzhou in the 14th century. He is known for his two major ship voyages.
Wang Dayuan was born around 1311 at Hongzhou (present-day Nan ...
refers to a ''Ku-li Ti-men'', which is a corruption of ''Giri Timor'', meaning island of Timor.
Giri from "mountain" in
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
, thus "mountainous island of Timor".
=Trade with the Philippines
=
Filipinos, known as
Lucoes among Portuguese sailors, were recorded to have visited and settled in East Timor before Spanish colonization of the Philippines. The
Magellan expedition
The Magellan expedition, also known as the Magellan–Elcano expedition, was the first voyage around the world in recorded history. It was a 16th century Spanish expedition initially led by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan to the Moluccas ...
recorded that when they anchored on the island, they witnessed
Lucoes merchants who traded Philippine gold for East Timorese Sandalwood.
[The Mediterranean Connection](_blank)
By William Henry Scott (Published in "Philippine Studies" ran by Ateneo de Manila University Press)
European colonisation and Christianisation (16th century onward)
Beginning in the early sixteenth century, European colonialists—the Dutch in the island's west, and Portuguese in the east—would divide the island, isolating the East Timorese from the histories of the surrounding archipelago.
See also
*
History of East Timor
East Timor is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania known as Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste. The country comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor and the nearby islands of Atauro and Jaco. The first inhabitants are thought ...
*
History of Indonesia
References
{{reflist
History of Timor
History of East Timor
Timor
Timor is an island at the southern end of Maritime Southeast Asia, in the north of the Timor Sea. The island is divided between the sovereign states of East Timor on the eastern part and Indonesia on the western part. The Indonesian part, also ...
History of Southeast Asia
Maritime Southeast Asia