One More Time—Where Are The Ruins of Cities and Roads, the Forts and Fortresses?

In earlier posts, we quoted Ralph Olsen on his Malay Peninsula Theory for the Land of Promise, as saying: “The civilization dates to the proper time period, and has had chariots, iron, silk, etc.”

By proper time period, we would need to have a settlement there about 2200 B.C. of the Jaredites, and another settlement of about 600 B.C. of the Lehi Colony. However, regarding the archaeological and anthropological record of the Malay Peninsula, it was first settled around 40,000 years ago by Negritos. In later times, the land was called Malacca or Tanah Malayu (Malay Land). The first settlers in near prehistoric times were the Orang Benua, aborigines—though the first inhabitants and the indigenous people of Malay, other than who some anthropologists believe the original settlers of the peninsula were a negroid people from Melanesia—sometimes called Semang and Sakei. The language of these two groups is said to be comparable to the Philippines.

The earliest of the inhabitants of Malaysia are the Orang Asli of the Peninsula and people such as the Penan of Sarawak and the Rungus of Sabah, many of whom still pursue a largely nomadic way of life. Their presence in the country probably dates back to over 3000 B.C. These early settlers were the pioneers of the movement of peoples southward from China and Tibet through Mainland Southeast Asia and the Malay Peninsula to the Indonesian Archipelago and beyond. The next arrivals to the country, the Malays, represented the second and third wave of this movement. Chinese writers in the Marong Mahawangsa recount the arrival of the Indians (people of India) in the course of the first centuries A.D.

However, the Malay peninsula possesses no historic traditions earlier than the 13th century A.D. According to the native writers the first settlement was made at Singa-pura, or the "Lion City," about 1250 A.D. by emigrants from the banks of a river Maláyu in Sumatra. Expelled from Singapore by the Javanese king Majapáhit, the colonists founded the city of Malacca on the southwest coast of the mainland in 1253 A.D. The history of this entire peninsula is one of “piracy and lawlessness,” and historically subject to invasion from the Celebes, from Siam (Thailand), from Sumatra, and from China.

For more than a thousand years, the inhabitants of all these states belong to three distinct stocks—the Tai (Siamese). Malay, and Negrito. The Siamese of pure blood occupy the extreme north with scattered communities as far south as the town of Sengora. A mixed Malayo-Siamese people, commonly known as Samsams, form the bulk of the population in the lower parts of Ligor and Sengora, and in the north of Kedah. Although entirely assimilated to the Siamese in speech, customs, and religion, these Samsarns appear to be allied physically much more to the Malay than to the Tai stock.

In brief, the history of the Malay Peninsula was that the first people to live there were Stone Age hunter-gatherers. They arrived as early as 8,000 B.C. Later Stone Age farmers came to Malaysia and displaced them. (The hunter-gatherers continued to exist but they retreated into remote areas). The farmers practiced slash and burn agriculture. After 1,000 B.C. metal-using farmers came to Malaysia. They made tools from bronze and iron and they settled along the coast and along rivers. They lived partly by fishing, partly by growing crops. In the 2nd and 3rd centuries A.D. centralized states arose in Malaysia. The greatest was Kedah in the North. The Malaysians became highly civilized. Malaysian civilization was heavily influenced by India. Malaysian laws and writing show Indian influence, and the religions of Buddhism and Hinduism were also introduced into Malaysia at that time. In the 7th and 8th centuries B.C., the state of Srivijaya of Palembang in Sumatra rose to dominate much of Malaysia. Srivijaya controlled the coasts of Java, the Malay Peninsula and part of Borneo. However the Srivijayans only really controlled the coast. Their influence did not extend far inland.

The course of Malaysian history has been determined by its strategic position at one of the world's major crossroads, its tropical climate, the surrounding environment and the regime of the north-east and south-west monsoons. This position and other geographical circumstances made the country a natural meeting place for traders from the East and the West since earliest B.C. times. The lush tropical forest and the abundance of life existing in it and in the surrounding water made Malaysia an easy place for the settlement and sustenance of small, self-supporting human communities. At the same time the thick jungle and mountainous terrain of the interior inhibited communication, while the absence of broad, flood-prone river valleys and deltas precluded the development of elaborate systems of water control such as those upon which the civilizations of Java and the Southeast Asian mainland came to be based. In contrast Malaysia's development has come from the sea. Its inhabitants quickly acquired a skill and reputation as sailors and navigators. Subsequent trading contacts have been responsible for the waves of outside influences that have modified their way of life.

So far, none of this matches anything in the scriptural record of the Land of Promise in the Book of Mormon.

(See the next post, “Where Are The Ruins of Cities and Roads, the Forts and Fortresses? – Part II, for more information on how the Malay Peninsula simply does not match scripture)