Java

A major island of Indonesia, best known for its remains of Homo erectus dating from 1,000,000-500,000 BP. Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures are known. The colonization of Java apparently took place from mainland Southeast Asia, and domestic agriculture is known to have been practiced there as early as 2500 BC. Indian traders began arriving in Java from about the 1st century AD, and the resulting Hindu Indian influence developed in the kingdom of Mataram in the 8th century AD.

Prehistory. A major island of Indonesia, best known for its remains of Homo erectus (2,000,000 bc to c300,000 bc). Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures are known but still poorly understood. See Gua Lawa, Pacitanian, Sambungmacan, Sangiran, Solo, Trinil. Classical. From the 5th century ad a number of Indianized kingdoms, both Hinduist and Buddhist, developed in Their power eventually extended over large parts of the Indonesian archipelago and at times even to the mainland of South East Asia. The Buddhist Sailendra dynasty, the builders of the Borobudur, became in the late 8th century the suzerain of Cambodia, while the predominantly Hindu kingdoms of MatarAm and Kadiri which followed the Sailendras in Java looked to the east, to Bali. The kingdom of Kadiri was succeeded in 1222 by that of SinghasAri, which completed the conquest of Bali and also reached westward, establishing Javanese suzerainty over parts of Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula. It came to an end at the hands of the Mongol expedition in 1293, but its successor state Majapahit expanded Javanese power even further in all directions, uniting most of the archipelago under one empire for the first time. When Islam advanced in Java in the 15th and 16th centuries, Hindu-Javanese culture took refuge in Bali, where it is preserved to this day. See also Borneo, Celebes, Chenla, Loro SrIvijaya, Sumatra, YAvadvipa.