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Museum Bali, the Pre-historical Period

Published 1 year, 9 months ago in Guides by ablteam | 3,762 Views

The ground floor of Denpasar Building displays various pre-historical and historical collections of Bali consisting of relics and artifacts. Those collections are displayed in accordance with their periodization as follows:

1. The Pre-historical Period
This period is classified into four sub-periods, namely:

A. The hunting and early food gathering (Paleolithicum)
1,000,000 - 200,000 B.C.

The people in this period lived in wondering and always moved from one place to another to get a more fertile soil. Their equipments that were used for hunting or cutting things made from stone, still very simple in shape and coarse, called kapak genggam and kapak perimbas (hand axe). These collections have been found at Sembiran and Trunyan villages.

B. Hunting period and advanced food gathering (Mesolithicum)
200,000 - 3,000 B.C.

During this period, people had begun settling in caves as their temporary homes such as Selonding Cave and Karang Boma Cave that have been found in Pecatu hill of Badung regency. In those caves archaeologists found remains of tools of animal and fish bones which were used as the point of a lance and an arrow, known by the name of a muduk point or lancipan muduk, and also some tools fosil from deer’s horn and sea shells.

C. Cultivation period (Neolithicum)
3,000 - 600 B.C.

In this period, the standard of life was a step ahead than that of the hunting period. Stone tools were made more smooth and much sharper. They had begun to clear forests and jungles for cultivation, to make houses as their permanent settlement and living in a group. Besides cultivation, they had also made some plaited crafts, earthen ware and had been able to make a small traditional boat to be used for sailing and trading with a barter system. Some of the stone tools such as : the pick axes (belincung, beliung atap), serut (a plane), pahat (a chisel), etc, have been found in different places almost all over Bali.

Nowadays such objects are still used by the people in villages as a kind of amulet for curing cattle diseases and are often called gigin kilap (literally: thunder’s teeth).

D. The Palaeometallic (Perundagian) period
600 BC - 800 AD

Remains from this period had shown a remarkable progress of human’s life such as the discovery of bronze artifacts made by metal melting and moulding techniques to produce some kinds of home tools, sharp weapons like: axe, point of a lance, cooking pot, jewelry such as : wrist bracelet, ankle bracelet, earrings, necklace and ring; and the most interesting thing is the finding of a nekara (huge bronze drum) which is now kept in Penataran Sasih Temple at Pejeng village known by the name of Bulan Pejeng (pejeng moon). The community in that age had adhered a belief of animism especially the worship towards their ancestors that could be seen from the burial system by using a sarkophag (stone coffin), and earthen pot.