Geologically the area of modern Indonesia appeared sometime around the Pleistocene period, when it was still linked with the Asian mainland. The archipelago formed during the thaw after the latest ice age. Fossilised remains of Homo erectus, popularly known as the "Java Man", suggest the Indonesian archipelago was inhabited two million to 500,000 years ago. Homo sapiens reached the region by around 45,000 years ago. Recent discoveries on the island of Flores were dubbed "Flores Man" (Homo floresiensis), a miniature hominoid that grew only three feet tall, although whether this constitutes a separate species is still in dispute. Flores Man seems to have shared some islands with Java Man until only 10,000 years ago, when they became extinct.
Austronesian people form the majority of the modern population. They may have arrived in Indonesia around 2000 BCE. Dong Son culture spread to Indonesia bringing with it techniques of wet-field rice cultivation, ritual buffalo sacrifice, bronze casting, megalithic practises, and ikat weaving methods. Some of these practices remain in areas including the Batak areas of Sumatra, Toraja in Sulawesi, and several islands in Nusa Tenggara. Early Indonesians were animists who honoured the spirits of the dead as their souls or life force could still help the living.
Ideal agricultural conditions, and the mastering of wet-field rice cultivation as early as the 8th century BCE, allowed villages, towns, and small kingdoms to flourish by the 1st century CE. These kingdoms (little more than collections of villages subservient to petty chieftains) evolved with their own ethnic and tribal religions. Java's hot and even temperature, abundant rain and volcanic soil, was perfect for wet rice cultivation. Such agriculture required a well organised society in contrast to dry-field rice is a much simpler form of cultivation that doesn't require an elaborate social structure to support it.
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