Akar Nusa
A diver reaches the seabed in the cold green light. A heap of bowls lies stacked in rows, still in the shape they were packed in. Nobody has touched them for six hundred years.
The story
The seas around the Peninsula were a busy road. Ships carried goods between China, Southeast Asia and the Middle East. When a ship sank, its cargo stayed in place. Today those wrecks are time capsules, as the director of the National Museum called them.
The oldest story here comes from just south of our waters. In 1998 fishermen found the Belitung wreck in the Gelasa Strait, off Belitung Island, Indonesia. It was an Arab dhow that sank about 830 AD on a return voyage from China. Its hull was about 18 m long and was sewn together with coconut-fibre rope, not pegs or nails. It held about 60,000 items, mostly bowls from Changsha in China. Alongside them were white wares, gold and silver, and spices. The wreck shows a Chinese cargo carried in an Arab-style ship across Southeast Asian seas.
Malaysian waters hold later wrecks. A National Museum exhibition in Kuala Lumpur in 2011 showed finds from several. The Nanyang, a Chinese merchant ship believed to have sunk in 1380, was found in 1995 near Pulau Pemanggil, off Johor, at a depth of 54 m. The Royal Nanhai, a Chinese royal barge believed to have sunk about 1460, lay in international waters about 40 nautical miles off the east coast. Salvors found blue-and-white bowls hidden in a secret compartment, lacquer boxes, ivory sword handles and a bronze stamp of a minister.
Off Terengganu, the Longquan, a Ming-period barge believed to have sunk around 1400, lay at 63 m. At 30 m long it was described as the largest wreck found in the South China Sea. Its ceramics were about 40 percent Chinese, about 20 percent from Sisatchanalai and about 20 percent from Sukhothai, both in what is now Thailand. Another barge, found in 1996 about 60 nautical miles off the Terengganu coast, carried six porcelain pieces marked with the name of Emperor Xuande, who reigned from 1425 to 1436.
Later wrecks tell of other traders. The Diana, found in the Melaka Straits in 1993, carried about 11 tonnes of ceramics, with about 24,000 blue-and-white porcelain pieces and herbs such as green tea and ginseng. The Dutch Nassau, a warship lost near Port Dickson, and the Risdam, a Dutch East India Company ship off Mersing, belong to the age of European ships.
Together the wrecks show that the Straits were a meeting place. Chinese, Thai, Arab and local traders all sent goods through them.
Where you can still see it today
- The National Museum, Kuala Lumpur, which has shown shipwreck treasures.
- The Asian Civilisations Museum, Singapore, which displays the Belitung cargo.
What DNA can tell, and what it cannot
This story has no DNA thread of its own. A ship's cargo cannot tell us who the crew were or what families they came from. Port towns mixed people for centuries, so one person's DNA may carry threads from many shores.
DNA does not decide race, religion or bumiputera status. These ships remind us that Malaysian history is a story of exchange. Please remember also that salvage for sale has cost archaeologists information, a criticism made about the Belitung wreck too.
