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00:00These artifacts are oozing out of the ground.
00:05It's quite amazing that it still survived all these years.
00:10200 years on from Raffles' landing,
00:14archaeologists are reshaping what we know about Singapore.
00:19From uncovering evidence of ancient Singapura...
00:23It's been here for 700 years,
00:25and so whatever we find in here will be totally new discoveries.
00:29...to unearthing little-known stories of colonial Singapore.
00:34This is a very nice colonial period item.
00:37...and lingering mysteries of World War II.
00:41This was a scene of complete chaos, mayhem, catastrophe.
00:48New artifacts, new theories, new possibilities.
00:52It does rewrite history, not only of Singapore,
00:55but of all of Southeast Asia.
00:59In this episode, fact and fiction about an ancient kingdom.
01:05The legend goes that Fort Canning was actually the residence of the ruling elite.
01:09Is there truth behind the legends?
01:13Once you look at Singapore over 700 years, it's got a different view.
01:17It's got a different view.
01:18It's got a different view.
01:19It's got a different view.
01:24There's a very different view.
01:25I think they're very good about thehalten of the taxation.
01:26It's got a different view.
01:27I think they're very good.
01:28It's got a different view.
01:29I think that they're very good.
01:30I think that they're very good.
01:31The 움-infeledjamry If they're very good,
01:32are the delicious one of the sisters.
01:33Correct.
01:35Do you see that?
01:36You're very good.
01:37Oh, look at this.
01:38Nice terwha.
01:39Oh, wow.
01:40Well, these artifacts are oozing out on the ground.
01:41Ha-ha, yeah.
01:42They're everywhere.
01:43Things get broken.
01:44Your face or your bow,
01:45you break it and you dump it out.
01:47and it shows signs of habitation or occupation.
01:54This green hill in the heart of the city
01:57may have buried secrets about Singapore's ancient past.
02:01To mark the 200th anniversary of Raffles' landing,
02:05teams of archaeologists have been given rare access
02:08to excavate various sites.
02:11Based on the survey scatter,
02:16I think there could be archaeological deposits here.
02:20What they find could help confirm a theory
02:23about the island's earliest settlements.
02:26We're hoping to find material culture from the past.
02:29I get excited just to imagine finding an artefact
02:33because there's so much mystery about this place.
02:41Fort Canning is steeped in history,
02:44from the arrival of Raffles in 1819
02:47to events that happened here in World War II.
02:51But archaeologists believe the history here
02:54could go much further back.
02:59Hey, put a few pieces of this guy here.
03:03So it's part of a plate, a little dish.
03:07Oh, Aaron has found some money.
03:10It's a more than 10 cent coin.
03:13Theoretically, the oldest stuff would be right at the bottom.
03:17Most people are associated with Singapore
03:19as a very young country.
03:21It only started with the East India Company in 1819.
03:23But there is a much longer chronology to Singapore.
03:27We have some historical accounts,
03:29evidence from the pre-colonial period.
03:33One such account was written in 1822 by John Crawford,
03:37a colonial officer who later became the second resident
03:40or governor of Singapore.
03:42Crawford was exploring the young settlement
03:45when he discovered ruins of an ancient town.
03:47On the plains of Singapore, I find an ancient wall.
03:50It runs very near a mile from the seacoast.
03:53ending in a hill of considerable extent.
03:54It runs very near a mile from the seacoast,
03:56ending in a hill of considerable extent.
03:57On this hill, I discover remains of where he discovered ruins
04:00and he discovered ruins of an ancient town.
04:04of what I can only imagine to be the foundations of buildings.
04:07Fourteen large blocks of sand.
04:08of sand.
04:09I find an ancient wall.
04:10It runs very near a mile from the seacoast,
04:12ending in a hill of considerable extent.
04:13On this hill, I discover remains of what I can only imagine
04:15to be the foundations of buildings.
04:17Fourteen large blocks of sandstone, which from the hole in each had probably been the pedestals
04:30of as many wooden posts that supported a building.
04:34And on the northern declivity of the hill, I find a rude structure.
04:51This is said to have been the burial place of Iskander Shah, king of Singapore.
05:04When John Crawford arrived in 1822, he saw this kramat here.
05:17A kramat is a shrine for a holy person.
05:21It's special because the British did not remove it.
05:24It's still a marker for us of 14th century Singapore.
05:29Previous digs in the area found evidence of a settlement.
05:33Hints of its strategic importance.
05:37The legend goes that Fort Canning was actually the residence of the ruling elite.
05:42The entire settlement would have been in view up here on the hill.
05:59What we are seeing here is very different from what John Crawford would have seen.
06:02Back in 1822, we could have seen the ocean.
06:10So behind that cluster of buildings where the Victoria Concert Hall clock tower is, would have been the ancient shoreline.
06:17It would have stretched across the Padang.
06:19Here would have been the ancient walls of Singapore.
06:21A wall would have stretched all the way from the Padang, up Stamford Road, and to the back of Fort Canning.
06:33A protected area ruled by a king.
06:39Archaeologists want to investigate if there is truth in this legend.
06:42Was this an ancient settlement long before 1819?
07:00This is one of my favourite books, the Malay Annals in English and in Malay.
07:05This is one of the oldest pieces of literature about Singapore, written in 1612.
07:10To most Singaporeans, the Malay Annals is best known as a collection of fables, with stories of great warriors and heroic kings from ancient Singapore.
07:20It tells us the whole story of the first five kings of Singapore who lived between 1299 and about 1396.
07:27And this gives us the founding of Singapore, with the coming of the first king, Sang Nilo Utama.
07:33To the island of Tamasek.
07:48To the island of Tamasek.
07:49American citizens.
07:50To the island of Namasteerg.
07:51To the island of Tamasek.
07:52To the island of Tamasek.
07:53It's not a good thing.
07:55It's not a good thing.
08:17According to legend, while hunting,
08:20the king gazed upon an animal.
08:22Its body was red and its breast white,
08:26and it moved with great agility and strength.
08:32Historically, the singer, or lion,
08:35was described in the same manner.
08:41And so sang Nila Utama, the prince of Palambang,
08:45settled on the island and named it Singapura.
08:53The annals also describe how the last king was deposed,
08:56marking the end of Singapura.
08:58Javanese vessels swarmed Singapura.
09:02People were slaughtered.
09:03Blood stained the land.
09:04Javanese vessels swarmed Singapura.
09:09People were slaughtered.
09:10Blood stained the land.
09:12Javanese vessels swarmed Singapura.
09:18People were slaughtered.
09:19Blood stained the land.
09:21It was believed that Sultan Iskander Shah,
09:28the fifth king of Singapura, saved himself and fled.
09:31Singaporeans probably think of it as being a romantic fairy tale.
09:34The raffles picked up the first known copy of this,
09:36and he believed it was literally true.
09:37Nobody else really thought he was correct.
09:38But he came to Singapore in 1819.
09:39But he came to Singapore in 1819.
09:40Based on his reading of the Millianelles,
09:41and it turned out that he was right all along.
09:44it's really a rather camouflaged version of genuine history.
09:47But he came to Singapore in 1819,
09:50based on his reading of the Millianelles.
09:51And it turned out, yeah, well, he was right all along.
09:56It's really a rather camouflaged version of genuine history.
09:59literally true. Nobody else really thought he was correct but he came to
10:02Singapore 1819 based on his reading of the Millianelles and it turned out
10:07that he was right all along. It's really a rather camouflaged version of
10:13genuine history.
10:17Professor Mixik is heading to the Fort Canning dig site to look for artifacts
10:21that could reveal more about Singapore's ancient kingdom.
10:29Hi. Hello. So 14th century starts there, as you know, should be a lot of artifacts in here.
10:43Professor John Mixik was the first archaeologist to excavate Singapore's soil.
10:49Discoveries made here 35 years ago have changed what is known about Singapore's history.
10:55When we first started digging at Fort Canning, I didn't expect to find anything. Then we kept
11:02on digging and then we started finding a few pieces of Chinese porcelain and they looked to me like they
11:08were 14th century. If we kept on digging we found a few hundred like within a week and I said this is
11:15really going to surprise a lot of people. Here we got early 20th century bricks and then below this
11:22layer we usually get this thick layer which has no artifacts and then below here this is maybe up to
11:2950 centimeters thick really the dense artifacts. It's here a meter under the soil where archaeologists
11:37find their treasure. Here's a nice green one. There's one here, here. These might all be pieces of the same
11:45green and bold standard 14th century kind of Chinese porcelain that we find up here. So it seems like all
11:53the artifacts from here to here seem to have been deposited between 1300 and 1400. The artifacts proved
12:00there was life here during ancient times. Archaeological analysis also showed that the relics were from the same
12:08period described in the Malay annals. This wasn't just a legend anymore. We can't say you know whether
12:15a guy named Sangnila Utama actually lived here but the period of the Malay annals describing their
12:23reigns is precisely what we would predict based on the remains we've discovered in this layer.
12:27For the last 17 years the site has been left untouched as a public exhibition.
12:42But the bicentennial commemoration has given the archaeologists a rare opportunity to study the site
12:48again. I want to string it up from here to here, Hollywood. Like Professor Miksik, Dr. Go-Giok-Yen is
12:56excited to return to this hill. I have a particular attachment to Fort Canning. It was my first
13:01experience in archaeology. It was the first site that I learned how to use a trowel.
13:08Is it right at the edge with that? By finding artifacts it gives us the opportunity to reflect
13:13about the larger picture. But I find increasingly that there's a lot that I can learn about my own country.
13:28The team are digging a fresh area at the site.
13:37See that? That's a brick. That's a modern brick. That's not an ancient brick.
13:43But things do not look promising.
13:47The team are finding telltale signs of construction disturbance from decades of development on Fort
13:52Canning.
13:56So this is probably disturbed already. We're not too sure whether we'll find a 14th century layer at this point.
14:06So that is a white porcelain from 14th century and that's a piece of stone, bath stoneware.
14:12And there's also 19th, 20th century European ware. But these are all backfield most likely.
14:24I don't think there's...
14:27The team try another area.
14:30Once again, the soil turns up a mixture of artifacts from different centuries.
14:35Not what they're looking for.
14:38So, because we're going to...
14:38I think I can stop.
14:39I think I can quit.
14:40I don't think there's anything here.
14:41No, yeah, no.
14:41Yeah.
14:42It's good.
14:43Stop.
14:43Stop.
14:43Stop.
14:45No, I don't think I'm disappointed.
14:47Because otherwise, right, we wouldn't know.
14:49And so it was good that it only took a few hours and not the whole day.
14:53So we should be happy in a sense.
14:54Yeah.
14:55Actually, in my experience, as an archaeologist, nine times out of ten we fail.
15:01So in the end, it's just persistence. You've got to be willing to fail nine times out of ten.
15:06Fort Canning Park is a place of legends.
15:21It is said that 700 years ago, a king ruled from a palace atop the hill.
15:31Teams of archaeologists are digging for more evidence.
15:34To show that this island's pre-colonial history was far richer than previously imagined.
15:46Chen, is that a 14th century artifact?
15:51It's only made, I think, during the late Song Dynasty, Yen Dynasty period.
15:55Well, but this is still faith stuff, but we're not there yet.
15:59We know that Fort Canning was an important place in the 14th century,
16:03but the little day-to-day things about how did people live their life, what did they do?
16:07These things we're still trying to uncover.
16:12If they're lucky, these answers could lie just beneath their feet.
16:16You never know what you find, right? It's almost like a tickum-tickum, right? It's a luck of the draw type of thing.
16:30Further up the hill, a second team of archaeologists, led by Professor John Miksik and Dr. Go Gyok Yan,
16:37have been given a rare opportunity to study an old dig site. One that has been off-limits for the past 17 years.
16:47So this is an area we haven't excavated yet, that's been here for 700 years.
16:51And so whatever we find in here will be totally new discoveries.
16:55But archaeology is also destructive.
17:02Once a site has been dug, it cannot be re-excavated for more information.
17:08We should never dig a whole site, because then we'll lose a lot of opportunities for
17:12using new methods in the future that will get a lot more information out of the same dirt.
17:16But well, I'm always curious, because every time we do dig, we do find something new that we
17:22couldn't have imagined before. Got kind of torn both ways. Don't want to dig, but I'm curious to find out.
17:30What was that? Oh yeah, definitely 14th century Chinese and 14th century Chinese jar rim.
17:39So starting, we're getting the 14th century now.
17:42We're on the borderline now, so this is where we're going to stop digging,
17:47and then brush it off, and then start using hand towels.
17:52The 14th century was when the five kings were said to have ruled this island.
17:58New discoveries here could help inform researchers about how developed this society was, 700 years ago.
18:05Every artifact you find has the potential to set you off on a new train of thought.
18:16It's always a thrill, because everything you find is one more piece of human identity,
18:21which has been saved from oblivion. It's right inside the square, so we should probably plot it.
18:27Yeah. These are kind of preserved memories, frozen in artifact form. And every time something is discovered,
18:35it's one more thing we reclaim that could have been lost.
18:43Back at the Lewin Terrace dig site.
18:45Is this sandstone?
18:52Yeah, that's sandstone. You see how is it very powdery, right?
18:57This is probably the original layer of Fort Canning. The hill itself is made of sandstone.
19:02There's no 40th century layer.
19:03Yeah. I think the cut over there, it's when they were excavating for this terrace.
19:09It's too bad.
19:10So there's a bit of excavation. You can see it, it's a very nice cut, where they removed part of the hill
19:17to build some sort of structure here, which is no longer there.
19:21So we'll stop here already, yeah?
19:23Yeah, we'll stop here.
19:23Just clean up a little and then we can do the recording, draw the profiles.
19:29The team didn't find any new relics today.
19:33But each dig helps create an overall archaeological map of the hill, for future reference.
19:40So today I'm here in the National Museum of Singapore, and I'm here to study the Singapore
19:57inscription stone. My name is Hunter Watson and my specialisation is inscriptions,
20:02and so I look at ancient written records, especially on stone.
20:05The Singapore stone is one of Singapore's oldest and most treasured artefacts.
20:12It's a 74 centimetre fragment of sandstone, believed to be at least 700 years old.
20:19Hunter is fluent in multiple Asian languages, including Thai, Sanskrit and Khmer.
20:25Skills he hopes will help him decipher what's written on the stone.
20:28Many others have made the attempt before him.
20:35Like John Crawford back in 1822.
20:47On the stony point which forms the western side, on which the modern town of Singapore is building,
20:58there was discovered a block of sandstone with an inscription upon it.
21:02Here and there a few letters seem distinct enough.
21:13The characters are rather round than square.
21:17But the writing, perhaps from time, was so much obliterated as to be quite illegible as a composition.
21:30It's the same.
21:32Over the years, scholars have debated over the language used in the inscription.
21:40Some think it's Sanskrit, others have suggested Tamil.
21:45But no one can be sure.
21:52In 1843, there was a pause in the debate.
21:57When the colonialists decided to widen the mouth of the Singapore River.
22:14Only three fragments remain today.
22:18And this is one of them.
22:22I'm interested in these inscriptions because it's kind of a mystery what's written in them.
22:26Most other archaeologists don't study it.
22:29And to me, that makes it kind of something special.
22:32I'm going to try to take some photographs of it.
22:34And I'll set up some light and see if I can cast shadow onto the letters and make them more visible.
22:39Let's see if I shift the position of the light around.
22:53It can help make some of the letters stand out.
22:57By taking several different shots, it will possibly be easier to identify more letters on the inscription.
23:05The Singapore stone is significant because it's the only inscription stone that we have from Singapore.
23:09And so it's really the only source of information about ancient Singapore.
23:16Hunter will study the images for clues to crack the inscription.
23:21Realistically, the Singapore stone is quite eroded.
23:25Dr. Goh is leading a young team of volunteers interested in the excavation process.
23:46And there is no better place than the Fort Canning site, known for its rich archaeological finds.
23:53So we pour some of this in to soak and get the water turned on.
24:03Why are we doing all this?
24:04We're sifting the soil because we want to ensure that we get all the artifacts in it.
24:10When I first got into teaching, most Singaporeans feel that Singapore has such a short history,
24:14so they want to study somewhere else.
24:16So hopefully we'll find something in this.
24:19Once you look at Singapore over 700 years, it's got a different view.
24:23Especially when you're thinking about 14th century.
24:25To see all our connections to the Southeast Asian region, there's a larger hole.
24:31So we just rub the soil against the sift until we find anything in it.
24:38Dr. Goh and her students are sifting through every pail of soil that's been dug up.
24:44It's tedious work, but important clues to Singapore's past could surface in this process.
24:51One can describe archaeologists as being like a detective that looks at various artifacts
24:57and try to reconstruct what was happening at a particular site.
25:00Oh, look, that bead.
25:04That's a bead, yellow bead.
25:09Over 11,000 glass artifacts have been discovered at Fort Canning over the years.
25:15Building on the idea that pre-colonial Singapore was much more prosperous than previously thought.
25:21I would say the finding glass on Fort Canning is extremely significant.
25:28We did chemical analysis on it.
25:30So we know that it has high barium content.
25:33And that is a signature of Chinese-made glass.
25:37There's some preference for it, for the elites.
25:40They're using it.
25:41They're deliberately importing them.
25:43So we have some nice green features, bases mostly, green porcelain.
26:04An archaeological team are hoping that their latest dig at Fort Canning
26:09will produce new evidence of life in ancient Singapore.
26:13Now that we've dug up these artifacts, the next thing we do is to start
26:17entering them into the database.
26:19And so we will measure them, weigh them and photograph them.
26:24The post-excavations process can actually show us how different parts of Singapore have been used
26:32or utilized, like whether it's a marketplace, whether it's a residential area.
26:37So it gives us a good idea about how 14th century Singaporeans live.
26:47Over the years, archaeologists have excavated over five tons of artifacts across various sites.
26:54We found some extremely rare items that had never been discovered before.
26:59A pair of earrings and a gold armlet, adorned with the likeness of the Hindu goddess Kala.
27:05These pieces were worn exclusively by Javanese kings in the 14th century.
27:12A porcelain compass, the only one ever found in the world.
27:16And fragments of a porcelain pillow, never before found outside of China.
27:25I've only seen pictures of about five of these in China.
27:29So whoever lived on Fort Canning had a really rare and very elaborate item.
27:33These finds offer a different narrative about pre-colonial Singapore.
27:42The people of Singapore were connoisseurs. They knew what was really good quality.
27:47All the stuff we found shows that there was a really unusual place.
27:50The people on the hill were among the wealthiest probably in Southeast Asia at this time.
27:56So they were rich, sophisticated, and they enjoyed a very luxurious lifestyle.
28:00And they were very well aware of what was going on all around Asia.
28:03Contrary to the colonial narrative, Singapore was not just a fishing village.
28:10700 years ago, it was a wealthy kingdom.
28:14A powerful settlement that traded with places as far away as China.
28:19How many people told me how happy they were to realize that Singapore has this long history?
28:25I mean, if you do a job only for yourself, what's the good of it?
28:29But if you actually feel like you made a lot of people happy
28:31by doing what you like to do anyway, then that means you feel like what you did was worth something.
28:37Its extraordinary wealth suggests that Singapore might have been an important trading hub
28:43at the center of an extensive maritime network.
28:46But little is known about trade in ancient Singapore.
28:52To investigate this, one archaeologist is searching underwater.
28:56I've done shipwreck surveys many times, but I haven't yet done one in Singapore.
29:03Ideally, I'm hoping to find a 14th century shipwreck, but any shipwreck will do.
29:10Maritime archaeologist Dr Michael Flecker has been a surveyor of shipwrecks in Southeast Asia for over 25 years.
29:18You are traveling back in time. Every dive you're going down.
29:23And a lot of the time we're finding things that have never been seen before.
29:27It's a very unique experience, and I've been lucky enough to have it quite a few times.
29:34Even when you see the whole seabed covered in material you're familiar with.
29:37As you're excavating through, you're turning up individual artifacts and personal possessions,
29:42so there's always something exciting.
29:45Good morning. Good morning. Mike, good to meet you.
29:48Hi. This is the captain.
29:49Morning, Cap. How are you?
29:51The team hopes to learn more about trade between Southeast Asia and China in the 14th century
29:57by finding a shipwreck in Singapore waters.
29:59They have identified some potential locations, but it will take a lot of work and patience.
30:06Roughly how long would it take to finish that survey?
30:08Roughly the whole area, we'll think about four hours.
30:11I see just on the chart here, there's a shipwreck sign just off to the side.
30:14All right. So we might actually pick it up.
30:16We're going to go out to our survey area, which is just next to Raffles Lighthouse,
30:20and we've chosen that because this is the old Governor's Strait,
30:23which would have been, in my opinion, the main shipping route right back from the 14th century.
30:30The Governor's Strait, now known as Phillips Channel,
30:33is a deep water passage to Singapore's south.
30:36It is the narrowest section of the Singapore Strait, making it a navigational hazard.
30:43But this gives Dr. Flecker a greater chance of finding a wreck.
30:47So this that they're deploying now is called a multi-beam sonar.
30:53It gives us a very clear, multi-coloured picture of the seabed.
30:57And there she goes.
31:03There have been a lot of excavations done on the land, but it's just showing one aspect,
31:08and it's very difficult to distinguish what was for local use and what was for re-export.
31:18If you're getting a ship coming in with a particular cargo and you're getting a ship leaving with
31:22another cargo, then you're getting a very good idea of what's for use
31:25by the multinational community living in Singapore and what is being loaded on other ships to trade elsewhere.
31:31If the team is lucky, they might find sunken cargo down below that will fill gaps in Singapore's trade history.
31:40It would be precious physical evidence, since there is only one eyewitness record about trade in ancient Singapore.
31:46From a Chinese trader, Wang Daiguan.
31:56On the hill, indigenous products include very fine hornbill ivory, good quality lacquer wood, and cotton.
32:08And the goods used in trading are lengths of iron, gold, porcelain, and such like.
32:16By custom and disposition, the inhabitants are honest.
32:27But near the two peaks which look like dragon's teeth are where the local pirates live.
32:34When junks sail out to the western ocean, the pirates allow them to pass unharmed.
32:40But when on their way back, the sailors from the junks need prepare their armor.
32:51For certainly, some two or three hundred pirate parahu will set out to attack them.
33:03Sometimes the junks are fortunate enough to escape with a favoring wind.
33:08Otherwise, the crews are butchered, and the merchandise are made off with in quick time.
33:14The benefit of looking at shipwreck sites is that when we find these new objects, quite often they're intact.
33:36Whereas on the land sites, by definition, the stuff that's been thrown out has been broken before it was thrown out.
33:41With the equipment deployed, the sonar is systematically scanning the seabed, one small section at a time.
33:52So you can see from the color of this one, this is the side of the beam.
33:55That's where you are getting a deeper water here.
33:58At the moment, it seems to be relatively flat, which is good.
34:02So the flatter it is, the easier it is to see a small discrepancy.
34:05The survey will take a few more hours before they can actually start analyzing the data for signs of a shipwreck.
34:16They're running the scan like this is a very tedious affair. There's no getting around it.
34:20There's no getting around it.
34:28While Dr. Flecker continues his search, archaeologists on land have in fact uncovered something that comes pretty close.
34:36So this is a piece of timber from our excavations near the riverbank.
34:52This looks like a piece of ordinary discarded plank.
34:55But it's very, very significant because we are seeing potentially the very first evidence of a maritime vessel itself.
35:01So you can see obviously this has been shaped, it's been worked.
35:07So it's not a piece of natural driftwood, but someone worked on it.
35:11And there are five, one, two, three, four, five dowel mugs on each side of the plank.
35:17And here as well, it's a part of the joinery.
35:20So this appears to be a plank from possibly from a boat or ship.
35:25Or minimally, whoever that worked on this piece of wood had knowledge about shipbuilding.
35:29But remarkably, the timber plank was found below 14th century artefacts,
35:37which means that it could be older than the Kingdom of Singapura.
35:43Could Singapore have already been a trading port before Sung Nila Utama?
35:50Chan Hsien is hoping for some answers.
35:52So the next step of our work will be trying to identify the species of the wood.
36:00And also perhaps we'll try to get a date from it and see how old this piece of wood is.
36:09So any moment now we should start to come across a nice big image of a wreck.
36:14And we might go right on the top of it and be hit in the middle there.
36:19Back on the survey boat, Dr. Michael Flecker and the crew are scanning the final section on the charts,
36:25where a shipwreck is marked.
36:28Our wreck could be somewhere in that.
36:29Yes, it's showing down there about 34 metres.
36:32Yes, it's showing up here.
36:41With the scan complete, they can begin processing the data.
36:46So this is actually where we try to look for the wreck.
36:48Yeah.
36:49And there's a couple of four-line stages.
36:52There we go.
36:53And so that's quite radical.
36:54There's big valleys and underwater mountains going on through there.
36:58We've got the processed data on the screen on the left.
37:02And what could have potentially been a shipwreck?
37:05You can actually see there's a valley and then there's a rocky cliff.
37:10So it's not man-made. That's all natural.
37:15As it turns out, what was marked as a shipwreck is merely a geological feature.
37:24Well, today we didn't find a shipwreck.
37:27A little bit disappointed.
37:28I think if we find one, just that one is going to make a huge difference.
37:33So it will be almost equivalent to several excavations on the land.
37:36But never mind.
37:37It's all part of the game.
37:39The Singapore stone is one of Singapore's enduring mysteries.
37:53A piece of sandstone with an unknown language carved on its surface.
38:01PhD candidate Hunter Watson hopes to make a breakthrough.
38:05They're not all completely legible, but by jumping between the different photos,
38:14it becomes a little bit clear.
38:16I think I see this letter clearly.
38:18This one seems clear enough.
38:21For many people, for Singaporeans, they want to know, what does it say?
38:25Can you translate it?
38:25And you have to realize that from my perspective, there's not a high likelihood that we'll be able
38:34to translate it simply because it's so damaged and eroded already.
38:38For me, if we could determine perhaps the date and which language it was written in,
38:44those two things alone to me would be a great breakthrough.
38:47Hunter thinks the writing style on the stone might be the ancient Javanese script called Kawi.
38:54Some of the letters that I see, it looks very similar to inscriptions in like Sumatra and Java
38:59about a thousand years ago. Some of them are quite obvious, like here we see this is an H,
39:05this is a P, this is the sound NG. This letter is probably, this one I'm not sure,
39:11I'm still debating this one.
39:12The problem is I'm not seeing any entire words jump out. And so imagine I take a piece of paper
39:18and I write a letter to you in ink and it gets rained on. I could have written it in German or
39:23French or English or Italian and if you only have a few letters, you, you can't read the message
39:28and you can't even necessarily determine what language it's written in.
39:33Hunter is consulting literature for clues from those who have studied the stone before him.
39:38This was published in 1848 shortly after the Singapore stone had been destroyed. The bottom
39:46one here is today in the National Museum of Singapore and in this one he attempts to provide a reading.
39:53Down here he reads it Yadalama. So here on the drawing what he has shown does correspond to Yadalama.
40:02But neither the reading nor the illustration matches any of the photos he's taken.
40:09I can see the L and the M clearly but the D I disagree with. To me it looks more like an H.
40:15And the Y I cannot tell because it's too eroded. I'm still a little bit suspicious how much he might have made guesses.
40:23It seems the Singapore stone will continue to remain a mystery as it has for the past 200 years.
40:33I think that there's still a possibility that we might be able to identify the language in the future.
40:39But from where we stand after just today there's nothing conclusive that we can prove at this point.
40:44At the Singapore Botanic Gardens archaeologist Lim Chan Hsien hopes to have better luck with his own mystery.
41:00OK. This is what we excavated from Empress Police. So this is one of the timber feature that we found.
41:08He has sent samples of the timber for analysis and is about to find out what species the wood may be.
41:18So we got a report from our colleagues in the UK and now I'm going to find out a bit more from the
41:22specialists here about this report. The report identifies the wood as part of the Loreci family.
41:30But the problem is there's 2,700 species of this and it stretches from everywhere in Southeast Asia and Brazil.
41:36So the Loreci are generally not used very widely and the reason is the wood is not durable.
41:44There is one exception however, there's this species called bilian.
41:48We know that boats made of bilian parts can last for more than 100 years.
41:52Wow. Of all these 2,700 species, bilian is the only one that is used for.
41:58Yeah, it's found in Borneo and South Sumatra.
42:02And there used to be pure sense of bilian in Palembang.
42:05Oh, OK.
42:07The report dates the timber to the early 13th century, just before Singapura was said to have been founded
42:14by Sang Nila Utama, the prince from Palembang.
42:19And the wood can be found in this very region.
42:21Do you know what's the earliest that people have been using it for shipbuilding?
42:27Well, we have records of the colonial administrators who mentioned that the indigenous people
42:36use this timber for boat making.
42:39So it probably stretched even before that period.
42:41Right, so from generation to generation.
42:43Yeah.
42:43All these little things that we've been talking about are starting to tie in very nicely for my little piece of wood.
42:48A rogue prince from Palembang came to found Singapore.
42:52And here we have the wood.
42:53It's nice to fantasize that he brought this piece of wood over.
42:56I wish, right?
42:57But archaeology is not quite like that.
42:59But the data today, there's a level of confidence that we can say,
43:02yeah, potentially this is a maritime hub.
43:05And this is the type of wood that would have been used for shipbuilding.
43:10Because of the work done by archaeologists,
43:13so much more is now known about Singapore's past.
43:23Where Singapore stands today, it's not about basically raffles only.
43:28It's not about 14th century Singapore.
43:31It is about everything in one giant stretch of time.
43:35And where we place ourselves personally, or how we think about the country within this whole long period.
43:43It's not about what we think about the world.
43:45It's not about what we think about the world.
43:49Archaeologists have helped establish that Singapore was once a small but vibrant kingdom.
43:58Thousands would have lived and worked on the lower plains below Fort Canning.
44:04And on the top of the hill would have stood the palace.
44:07Skilled artisans would have worked nearby, making jewelry and ornaments for their king.
44:25And when things broke, the settlers would have discarded them.
44:31Slowly forgotten by time and history.
44:37When Crawford arrived and toured the area 500 years later,
44:45the kingdom would have been weathered beyond recognition.
44:49And these pieces of history would have remained buried underground.
44:55Only for us to unearth them today.
44:58I hope it's a realization that Singapore is worth doing.
45:03The British came here, they were a kind of a catalyst.
45:05But all the ingredients had to be here already for it to work.
45:08It doesn't mean the founding of the country.
45:11It doesn't mean the founding of an identity.
45:13So that's one legacy I'd like to leave.
45:15Both by seeing Singapore as a respectable field of study in itself.
45:19And also thinking of Singapore in a broader context.
45:21And you would really appreciate the importance of what you've got.
45:33It doesn't mean the energy that lived in this country's world and in India's world.
45:38The British' world is a fundamental part of the country.
45:39The British' world is a liberal arts music and local handmade art.
45:40The British' world was a popular part of the country's world.
45:43The British' world is a liberal arts music and social and social engineering.
45:45And we've been making a difference.
45:46And we're especially true for each other.
45:48And we're very niștipum, we're very niștipum,
45:50the British' world of the British' world knows the�m,
45:51and we're very much more connected than the British' world for the country.
45:55And we're so niștipum.
45:56The British' world is a foreign plant of time for this country,
45:58which isn't really much connected to me in the North America.
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