In 1965 Chester Gorman, who was working on his PH.D, arrived in Thailand hoping to find archaeological evidence to support Carl Sauer’s hypothesis of plant domestication by the Hoabinhiam people. On the side of a limestone outcropping overlooking a small stream in northern Thailand near the Burmese border, he found his evidence in Spirit Cave. Thousands of years ago a semi-permanent settlement of hunter-gatherers made tools from wood and stone and supplemented their hunting by gathering plants and, perhaps, by planting their own.
As Gorman excavated the floor of Spirit Cave, he made several surprising discoveries. Amongst the dirt and stone lay the remains of several plant species including two probable beans, a possible pea, a pepper, a Chinese water chestnut, betel seeds, and bits of bottle gourd and cucumber. Carbon-14 dating of these remains placed them between 9000 and 6000 BC. Some of these plants could not be distinguished from wild varieties, but others such as gourds, water chestnuts, and betel seeds had probably been domesticated. The early dates of these plant remains places the domestication of plant life in Southeast Asia at least as early as the domestication in the Middle East and possibly earlier.
In the midst of these remains lay Hoabinhian stone tools and the remains of animal bones. These bones had been chopped into small pieces but had not been burned suggesting that instead of roasting their meat on or in a fire, the people of Spirit Cave had stewed their meat, probably in a container of green bamboo as is still done in Southeast Asia today.
In a layer dated to approximately 6600 BC, well-developed pottery, stone tools, and small slate knives were found. The pottery was burnished and marked by the woven cords used to make it and many of the pots had plant fibers used as a temper to reduce breakability and improve workability. The stone tools, called adzes, were rectangular and partially polished. These tools challenged the then accepted theory that the Chinese introduced polishing to their more primitive neighbors in Southeast Asia in 3000 BC. The stone tools found at Spirit Cave, some dated as early as 7000 BC, predate discoveries from northern China by several millennium. This lead Gorman to hypothesize that the Chinese may have learned stone polishing techniques from the Southeast Asians and not the other way around. The discovery of these tools also supported the hypothesis of an early agricultural society as similiar tools were used elsewhere to harvest rice.
The sophistication of the pottery and stone tools found lead Dr. Wilhem Solheim II of the University of Hawaii to speculate that earlier, cruder forms of these implements must have been developed at least 3000 years before.
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“CSP – ‘The Lost Civilizations of the Stone Age’ by Richard Rudgley.” http://www.csp.org/chrestomathy/lost_civilizations.html 21 October 2000
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“Untitled.” University of Kansas http://www.ukans.edu/~hoopes/110-h3.htm 21 October 2000
By, Tim Anderson