Sundaland: The History of the Asian Landmass that Started Sinking After the Ice Age

By the time the Pleistocene Epoch ended around 12,000 years ago, Homo sapiens had become one of the most significant species on the planet. It was also near the end of that period of time that modern humans began to gradually populate what would become Europe, Asia, and the Americas, eventually becoming the inheritors of the Paleolithic era and the only human species to make it into the Neolithic era. The process was long and difficult, and the survival of the species only happened through a combination of human tenacity and a fair amount of luck. As much as humans evolved during the Pleistocene, the topography, geography, and environment changed even more.

The cold Pleistocene temperatures lowered water levels across the planet, exposing land that was not there before or after the period. At the same time, significant regions of the planet were very different during the Pleistocene, including Southeast Asia, particularly the modern islands of Bali, Borneo, Sumatra, and the Malay Peninsula, roughly equivalent to parts of Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Thailand. This region, which modern scholars refer to as Sunda or Sundaland, was unique because all of it was connected by land, meaning today’s islands were once part of a contiguous subcontinent, and in terms of the people, flora, and fauna, it was very different than it is today. If a modern traveler could somehow transport back to the Pleistocene, Sundaland would look nothing like modern Southeast Asia and would resemble as much of a lost world as something out of a science fiction novel. 

Although much is still unknown about Sundaland, researchers have uncovered plenty of evidence bringing this lost world to life. As anthropologists and archaeologists developed new models and discovered ancient material culture, they learned that Sundaland played a significant role in the development of Neolithic Southeast Asia in many ways.