Pyu City-states - Background

Background

Based on limited archaeological evidence, it is inferred that the earliest cultures existed in Burma as early as 11,000 BCE, mainly in the central dry zone close to the Irrawaddy. The Anyathian, Burma's Stone Age, existed around the same time as the lower and middle Paleolithic eras in Europe. Three caves located near Taunggyi at the foothills of the Shan Hills have yielded Neolithic or New Stone Age artifacts dated to 10,000 to 6000 BCE. About 1500 BCE, people in the region were turning copper into bronze, growing rice, and domesticating chickens and pigs; they were among the first people in the world to do so. By 500 BCE, iron-working settlements emerged in an area south of present-day Mandalay. Bronze-decorated coffins and burial sites filled with earthenware remains have been excavated. Archaeological evidence at Samon Valley south of Mandalay suggests rice growing settlements that traded with China between 500 BCE and 200 CE.

Circa 2nd century BCE, the Tibeto-Burman-speaking Pyu began to enter the Irrawaddy valley from present-day Yunnan via Tapain and Shweli rivers. The original home of the Pyu is reconstructed to be Kokonor Lake in present-day Qinghai and Gansu provinces. The Pyu, the earliest inhabitants of Burma of whom records are extant, went on to found settlements throughout the plains region centered around the confluence of the Irrawaddy and Chindwin rivers that has been inhabited since the Paleolithic age. The Pyu realm was longer than wide, stretching from Sri Ksetra in the south to Halin in the north, Binnaka and Maingmaw to the east and probably Ayadawkye to the west. The Tang Chinese records report 18 Pyu states (nine of which were walled cities), covering 298 districts. Archaeological surveys have actually so far unearthed 12 walled cities, including five large walled cities, and several smaller non-fortified settlements, located at or near the three most important irrigated regions of precolonial Burma: the Mu valley in the north, the Kyaukse plains in center, and the Minbu region in the south and west of the former two. The city-states were contemporary to Funan (Cambodia) and (perhaps) Champa (southern Vietnam), Dvaravati (Thailand), Tambralinga and Takuapa near the Isthmus of Kra, and Sri Vijaya (southeast Sumatra). All these statelets foreshadowed the rise of the "classical kingdoms" of Southeast Asia in the second millennium CE.