Ancient Vietnam - Prehistory

Prehistory

Archaeological excavations revealed the existence of human on Vietnamese territory as early as the Paleolithic age. The presence of Homo erectus around 500,000 BC was found in caves of Lang Son and Nghe An provinces in North Vietnam. Other early human fossils from are of Middle Pleistocene age. They include mostly isolated teeth from northern Vietnam at Tham Om (250-140 kyr), and Hang Hum (140-80 kyr). Teeth attributed to Homo sapiens are also known from the Late Pleistocene of Vietnam at Dong Can (16 kyr) and from the Early Holocene at Mai Da Dieu/Mai Da Nuoc (8.2 kyr), Lang Gao and Lang Cuom (6.44 ± 0.5 kyr).

There are some caves with Paleolithic remains typified by the Nguom industry and the Son Vi culture, dating from 28,000 BC to 8,000 BC. The most important event in Vietnamese prehistory is the appearance of Hoa Binh and Bac Son cultures - the most typical cave cultures in Southeast Asia. Archeological excavations in Thailand (Spirit Cave, Non Nok Tha) and northern Vietnam (Dong Son, Hoa Binh) revealed a major surprise: the first Southeast Asians had agriculture and pottery at the same time as the city-states of ancient Mesopotamia. The finds of the fossils of Homo erectus, Homo sapiens and Homo sapiens sapiens in the cave sites in North Vietnam have confirmed that the evolution of human formation took place the most dramatically in the karst topology, from the late Pleistocene to Holocene.