- 3 weeks ago
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:01It's quite amazing that it still survived all these years.
00:05200 years on from Raffles' landing,
00:09archaeologists are reshaping what we know about Singapore.
00:14From uncovering evidence of ancient Singapura...
00:18It's been here for 700 years,
00:20and so whatever we find in here will be totally new discoveries.
00:24...to unearthing little-known stories of colonial Singapore.
00:29This is a very nice colonial period item.
00:32...and lingering mysteries of World War II.
00:36This was a scene of complete chaos, mayhem, you know, catastrophe.
00:43New artefacts, new theories, new possibilities.
00:47It does rewrite history, not only of Singapore,
00:50but of all of Southeast Asia.
00:53In this episode, fact and fiction about an ancient kingdom.
01:00The legend goes that Fort Canning was actually the residence of the ruling elite.
01:05Is there truth behind the legends?
01:08Once you look at Singapore over 700 years, it's got a different view.
01:12It's got a different view.
01:31Oh, look at this.
01:32Nice terhua.
01:33Oh, wow.
01:34These artefacts are oozing out of the ground.
01:36Yeah, they're everywhere.
01:38Things get broken, your face or your bowl, you break it and you dump it out.
01:41This shows, you know, signs of habitation or occupation.
01:45This green hill in the heart of the city may have buried secrets about Singapore's ancient past.
01:56To mark the 200th anniversary of Raffles' landing,
01:59teams of archaeologists have been given rare access to excavate various sites.
02:05Based on the survey scatter, I think there could be archaeological deposits here.
02:15What they find could help confirm a theory about the island's earliest settlements.
02:21We're hoping to find material culture from the past.
02:24I get excited just to imagine finding an artefact,
02:28because there's so much mystery about this place.
02:35Fort Canning is steeped in history.
02:39From the arrival of Raffles in 1819,
02:42to events that happened here in World War II.
02:46But archaeologists believe the history here could go much further back.
02:54Hey, put a few pieces of this guy here.
02:58So it's part of a plate, a little dish.
03:01Oh, Erin has found some money.
03:06It's a more than 10 cent coin.
03:08Theoretically, the oldest stuff would be right at the bottom.
03:12Most people are associated with Singapore as a very young country.
03:16It only started with the East India Company in 1819.
03:18But there is a much longer chronology to Singapore.
03:22We have some historical accounts, evidence from the pre-colonial period.
03:26One such account was written in 1822 by John Crawford,
03:32a colonial officer who later became the second resident or governor of Singapore.
03:37Crawford was exploring the young settlement when he discovered ruins of an ancient town.
03:53On the plains of Singapore, I find an ancient wall.
04:07It runs very near a mile from the seacoast, ending in a hill of considerable extent.
04:14On this hill, I discover remains of what I can only imagine to be the foundations of buildings.
04:27Fourteen large blocks of sandstone, which from the hole in each had probably been the pedestals of as many wooden posts that supported a building.
04:37And on the northern declivity of the hill, I find a rude structure.
04:47This is said to have been the burial place of Iskander Shah, king of Singapore.
05:07When John Crawford arrived in 1822, he saw this Kramat here.
05:12A Kramat is a shrine for a holy person.
05:16It's special because the British did not remove it.
05:20It's still a marker for us of 14th century Singapore.
05:24Previous digs in the area found evidence of a settlement.
05:29Hints of its strategic importance.
05:32The legend goes that Fort Canning was actually the residence of the ruling elite.
05:37The entire settlement would have been in view up here on the hill.
05:54What we are seeing here is very different from what John Crawford would have seen back in 1822.
05:59We could have seen the ocean.
06:06So behind that cluster of buildings where the Victoria Concert Hall clock tower is would have been the ancient shoreline.
06:13It would have stretched across the Padang.
06:16Here would have been the ancient walls of Singapore.
06:20A wall would have stretched all the way from the Padang, up Stamford Road, and to the back of Fort Canning.
06:29A protected area ruled by a king.
06:34Archaeologists want to investigate if there is truth in this legend.
06:38Was this an ancient settlement long before 1819?
06:42These are two of my favourite books.
06:57The Malay Annals in English and in Malay.
06:59This is one of the oldest pieces of literature about Singapore written in 1612.
07:06To most Singaporeans, the Malay Annals is best known as a collection of fables, with stories of great warriors and heroic kings from ancient Singapore.
07:15It tells us the whole story of the first five kings of Singapore who lived between 1299 and about 1396.
07:21And this gives us the founding of Singapore, with the coming of the first king, Sang Nilo Utama.
07:28To the island of Tamasek.
07:42The island of Tamasek.
07:43The island of Tamasek.
07:44The island of Tamasek.
07:49The island of Tamasek.
07:52The island of Tamasek.
07:54The island of Tamasek.
07:57The island of Tamasek.
07:59The island of Tamasek.
08:00According to legend, while hunting, the king gazed upon an animal.
08:04According to legend, while hunting the king gazed upon an animal. Its body was red and
08:19its breast white. And it moved with great agility and strength. Historically, the singer
08:29or lion was described in the same manner. And so Sang Nila Utama, the Prince of Palambang,
08:41settled on the island and named it Singapura. The annals also describe how the last king
08:50was deposed, marking the end of Singapura.
09:05Javanese vessels swarmed Singapura. People were slaughtered. Blood stained the land.
09:20It was believed that Sultan Iskander Shah, the fifth king of Singapura, saved himself
09:39and fled.
09:41Singaporeans probably think of it as being a romantic fairy tale. Raffles picked up the
09:51first known copy of this, and he believed it was literally true. Nobody else really thought
09:56he was correct. But he came to Singapore, 1819, based on his reading of the Malayanels. And
10:01it turned out, yeah, well, he was right all along. It's really a rather camouflaged version
10:07of genuine history.
10:12Professor Miksek is heading to the Fort Canning dig site to look for artefacts that could reveal
10:17more about Singapore's ancient kingdom.
10:26Hi. Hello. So, 14th century starts there, as you know. Should be a lot of artefacts in here.
10:32Professor John Miksek was the first archaeologist to excavate Singapore's soil.
10:44Discoveries made here 35 years ago have changed what is known about Singapore's history.
10:51When we first started digging at Fort Canning, I didn't expect to find anything.
10:56And then we kept on digging, and then we started finding a few pieces of Chinese porcelain.
11:01And they looked to me like they were 14th century. And we kept on digging, we found a few hundred,
11:07like within a week. And I said, this is really going to surprise a lot of people.
11:13Here we got early 20th century bricks. And then below this layer, we usually get this thick layer,
11:19which has no artefacts. And then below here, this is maybe up to 50 centimetres thick, really dense artefacts.
11:28It's here, a metre under the soil, where archaeologists find their treasure.
11:34Here's a nice green one. There's one here, here. These might all be pieces of the same.
11:40Green bowl, standard 14th century kind of Chinese porcelain that we find up here.
11:46So it seems like all the artefacts from here to here seem to have been deposited between 1300 and 1400.
11:53The artefacts proved there was life here during ancient times.
11:58Archaeological analysis also showed that the relics were from the same period described in the Malay annals.
12:05This wasn't just a legend anymore.
12:08We can't say, you know, whether a guy named Sangnilu Utama actually lived here.
12:13But the period of the Malay annals describing their reigns is precisely what we would predict based on the remains we've discovered in this layer.
12:21For the last 17 years the site has been left untouched as a public exhibition.
12:36But the bicentennial commemoration has given the archaeologists a rare opportunity to study the site again.
12:42Like Professor Miksik, Dr Go-Giok-Yen is excited to return to this hill.
12:51I have a particular attachment to Fort Canning. It was my first experience in archaeology.
12:58It was the first site that I learned how to use a trowel.
13:02Is it right at the edge with that?
13:04By finding artefacts, it gives us an opportunity to reflect about the larger picture.
13:09But I find increasingly that there's a lot that we can learn about my own country.
13:13The team are digging a fresh area at the site.
13:31See that? That's a brick. That's a modern brick. It's not an ancient brick.
13:36But things do not look promising.
13:39The team are finding telltale signs of construction disturbance from decades of development on Fort Canning.
13:50So this is probably disturbed already.
13:53We're not too sure whether we will find a 14th century layer at this point.
14:00So that is a white porcelain from 14th century and that's a piece of stone, bath stoneware.
14:05And there's also 1920th century Europeanware.
14:10But these are all backfill, most likely.
14:18I don't think there's...
14:20The team try another area.
14:24Once again, the soil turns up a mixture of artefacts from different centuries.
14:30Not what they're looking for.
14:33I think they can stop.
14:35I don't think there's anything here.
14:37Stop.
14:39No, I don't think I'm disappointed.
14:42Because otherwise, right, we wouldn't know.
14:44And so it was good that only took a few hours and not the whole day.
14:48So we should be happy in a sense.
14:50Actually, in my experience as an archaeologist, nine times out of ten we fail.
14:54So in the end, it's just persistence.
14:57You've got to be willing to fail nine times out of ten.
15:10Fort Canning Park is a place of legends.
15:14It is said that 700 years ago, a king ruled from a palace atop the hill.
15:25Teams of archaeologists are digging for more evidence.
15:29To show that this island's pre-colonial history was far richer than previously imagined.
15:34Chen, is there a 14th century artifact?
15:44Ah, here's a coping.
15:46It's only made, I think, during the late Song Dynasty, Yen Dynasty period.
15:50Well, but this is still face tough. We're not there yet.
15:53We know that Fort Canning was an important place in the 14th century.
15:56But the little day-to-day things about how did people live their life?
16:00What did they do?
16:02These things we're still trying to uncover.
16:06If they're lucky, these answers could lie just beneath their feet.
16:13You never know what you find, right?
16:15It's almost like a tikam tikam, right?
16:17It's a luck of the draw type of thing.
16:20Further up the hill, a second team of archaeologists, led by Professor John Miksik and Dr. Go-Georg Yan,
16:32have been given a rare opportunity to study an old dig site.
16:36One that has been off-limits for the past 17 years.
16:40So this is an area we haven't excavated yet.
16:44It's been here for 700 years.
16:46And so whatever we find in here will be totally new discoveries.
16:50But archaeology is also destructive.
16:56Once a site has been dug, it cannot be re-excavated for more information.
17:02We should never dig a whole site.
17:04Because then we'll lose a lot of opportunities for using new methods in the future
17:08that will get a lot more information out of the same dirt.
17:11But, well, I'm always curious.
17:14Because every time we do dig, we do find something new that we couldn't have imagined before.
17:17Got kind of torn both ways.
17:20Don't want to dig, but I'm curious to find out.
17:25What was that?
17:26Oh, yeah. Definitely.
17:2714th century Chinese and...
17:30Something else.
17:3114th century Chinese jar rim.
17:34So, we're getting the 14th century now.
17:37We're on the borderline now.
17:39So this is where we're going to stop digging.
17:41And then brush it off.
17:43And then start using hand tools.
17:45The 14th century was when the five kings were said to have ruled this island.
17:52New discoveries here could help inform researchers about how developed this society was.
17:57700 years ago.
18:00Every artifact you find has the potential to set you off on a new train of thought.
18:08It's always a thrill because everything you find is one more piece of human identity which has been saved from oblivion.
18:16It's right inside the square, so we should probably plot it.
18:23These are kind of preserved memories, frozen in artifact form.
18:27And every time something is discovered, it's one more thing we reclaim that could have been lost.
18:32Back at the Lewin Terrace dig site.
18:44Is this sandstone?
18:46Yeah, that's sandstone.
18:48You see how it's very powdery, right?
18:51This is probably the original layer of Fort Canning.
18:54The hill itself is made of sandstone.
18:57There's no 14th century layer.
18:58Yeah.
18:59I think that cut over there is when they were excavating for this terrace.
19:04It's too bad.
19:06So there was a bit of excavation.
19:08You can see it was a very nice cut where they removed part of the hill to build some sort of structure here which is no longer there.
19:15So we have stopped here already?
19:17Yeah, we stopped here.
19:18Just clean up a little and then we can do the recording.
19:20Okay.
19:21Draw the profiles.
19:24The team didn't find any new relics today.
19:27But each dig helps create an overall archaeological map of the hill for future reference.
19:33So today I'm here in the National Museum of Singapore and I'm here to study the Singapore inscription stone.
19:52My name is Hunter Watson and my specialization is inscriptions and so I look at ancient written records especially on stone.
20:00The Singapore stone is one of Singapore's oldest and most treasured artifacts.
20:05It's a 74 centimeter fragment of sandstone believed to be at least 700 years old.
20:12Hunter is fluent in multiple Asian languages including Thai, Sanskrit and Khmer.
20:18Skills he hopes will help him decipher what's written on the stone.
20:23Many others have made the attempt before him like John Crawford back in 1822.
20:33On the stony point which forms the western side on which the modern town of Singapore is building there was discovered a block of sandstone with an inscription upon it.
20:56Here and there a few letters seem distinct enough.
21:06The characters are rather round than square.
21:09But the writing perhaps from time was so much obliterated as to be quite illegible as a composition.
21:17Over the years scholars have debated over the language used in the inscription.
21:35Some think it's Sanskrit.
21:37Others have suggested Tamil.
21:40But no one can be sure.
21:45But no one can be sure.
21:47In 1843, there was a pause in the debate.
21:52When the colonialists decided to widen the mouth of the Singapore River.
22:08Only three fragments remain today.
22:12And this is one of them.
22:16I'm interested in these inscriptions because it's kind of a mystery what's written in them.
22:21Most other archaeologists don't study it.
22:23And to me that makes it kind of something special.
22:26I'm going to try to take some photographs of it.
22:28And I'll set up some light and see if I can cast shadow onto the letters and make them more visible.
22:34See if I shift the position of the light around, it can help make some of the letters stand out.
22:51By taking several different shots, it will possibly be easier to identify more letters on the inscription.
22:58The Singapore stone is significant because it's the only inscription stone that we have from Singapore.
23:04And so it's really the only source of information about ancient Singapore.
23:10Hunter will study the images for clues to crack the inscription.
23:14Realistically, the Singapore stone is quite eroded.
23:20I'm not sure what will happen, but we'll take a look and find out.
23:23Dr. Goh is leading a young team of volunteers interested in the excavation process.
23:40And there is no better place than the Fort Canning site, known for its rich archaeological finds.
23:47So we pour some of this in to soak and get the water turned on.
23:57Why are we doing all this?
23:58We're sifting the soil because we want to ensure that we get all the artefacts in it.
24:04When I first got into teaching, most Singaporeans feel like Singapore has such a short history,
24:08so they want to study somewhere else.
24:10So hopefully we'll find something in this.
24:13Once you look at Singapore over 700 years, it's got a different view,
24:17especially when you're thinking about 14th century,
24:19to see all our connections to the Southeast Asian region as a larger hole.
24:25So we just rub the soil against the sift until we find anything in it.
24:33Dr. Goh and her students are sifting through every pail of soil that's been dug up.
24:38It's tedious work, but important clues to Singapore's past could surface in this process.
24:45One can describe archaeologists as being like a detective that looks at various artefacts
24:51and try to reconstruct what was happening at a particular site.
24:56Oh, look, that bead. That's a bead, a yellow bead.
25:01Over 11,000 glass artefacts have been discovered at Fort Canning over the years,
25:10building on the idea that pre-colonial Singapore was much more prosperous than previously thought.
25:16I would say that finding glass on Fort Canning is extremely significant.
25:22We did chemical analysis on it, so we know that it has high barium content,
25:28and that is a signature of Chinese-made glass.
25:31There's some preference for it, for the elites.
25:35They're using it. They're deliberately importing them.
25:38Here we go.
25:39Here we go.
25:40Hi.
25:41Hi.
25:42You got some stuff for me to order?
25:43So we have some nice green features, bases mostly, green porcelain.
25:59An archaeological team are hoping that their latest dig at Fort Canning
26:03will produce new evidence of life in ancient Singapore.
26:08Now that we've dug up these artefacts,
26:10the next thing we do is to start entering them into the database.
26:13And so we will measure them, weigh them, and photograph them.
26:21The post-excavation process can actually show us
26:24how different parts of Singapore have been used or utilised,
26:27like whether it's a marketplace, whether it's a residential area.
26:31So it gives us a good idea about how 14th century Singaporeans live.
26:41Over the years, archaeologists have excavated over five tonnes of artefacts
26:46across various sites.
26:48We found some extremely rare items that had never been discovered before.
26:53A pair of earrings and a gold armlet,
26:56adorned with the likeness of the Hindu goddess Kala.
26:59These pieces were worn exclusively by Javanese kings in the 14th century.
27:06A porcelain compass, the only one ever found in the world.
27:14And fragments of a porcelain pillow, never before found outside of China.
27:19I've only seen pictures of about five of these in China.
27:24So whoever lived on Fort Canning had a really rare and very elaborate item.
27:29These finds offer a different narrative about pre-colonial Singapore.
27:34The people of Singapore were connoisseurs.
27:38They knew what was really good quality.
27:41All the stuff we found shows that there was a really unusual place.
27:44The people on the hill were among the wealthiest probably in Southeast Asia at this time.
27:50So they were rich, sophisticated, and they enjoyed a very luxurious lifestyle.
27:54And they were very well aware of what was going on all around Asia.
28:00Contrary to the colonial narrative, Singapore was not just a fishing village.
28:05700 years ago, it was a wealthy kingdom.
28:09A powerful settlement that traded with places as far away as China.
28:13Many people told me how happy they were to realize that Singapore has this long history.
28:19I mean, if you do a job only for yourself, what's the good of it?
28:23But if you actually feel like you made a lot of people happy by doing what you like to do anyway,
28:28then that makes you feel like what you did was worth something.
28:31Its extraordinary wealth suggests that Singapore might have been an important trading hub
28:38at the centre of an extensive maritime network.
28:40But little is known about trade in ancient Singapore.
28:46To investigate this, one archaeologist is searching underwater.
28:51I've done shipwreck surveys many times, but I haven't yet done one in Singapore.
28:57Ideally, I'm hoping to find a 14th century shipwreck, but any shipwreck will do.
29:01Maritime archaeologist Dr Michael Flecker has been a surveyor of shipwrecks in Southeast Asia for over 25 years.
29:13You are travelling back in time every dive you're going down.
29:17And a lot of the time we're finding things that have never been seen before.
29:20It's a very unique experience, and I've been lucky enough to have it quite a few times.
29:28Even when you see the whole seabed covered in material you're familiar with.
29:32As you're excavating through, you're turning up individual artefacts and personal possessions,
29:37so there's always something exciting.
29:39Good morning.
29:40Mike, good to meet you.
29:43This is Captain.
29:45The team hopes to learn more about trade between Southeast Asia and China in the 14th century
29:51by finding a shipwreck in Singapore waters.
29:54They have identified some potential locations, but it will take a lot of work and patience.
30:01Roughly how long would it take to finish that survey?
30:03The whole area would take about four hours.
30:04I see just on the chart here there's a shipwreck sign just off to the side, so we might actually pick it up.
30:11We're going to go out to our survey area, which is just next to Raffles Lighthouse,
30:15and we've chosen that because this is the old Governor's Strait,
30:18which would have been, in my opinion, the main shipping route right back from the 14th century.
30:23The Governor's Strait, now known as Phillips Channel, is a deepwater passage to Singapore's south.
30:30It is the narrowest section of the Singapore Strait, making it a navigational hazard.
30:37But this gives Dr. Flecker a greater chance of finding a wreck.
30:44So this that they're deploying now is called a multi-beam sonar.
30:48It gives us a very clear, multi-coloured picture of the seabed.
30:52And there she goes.
30:53There have been a lot of excavations done on the land, but it's just showing one aspect.
31:03And it's very difficult to distinguish what was for local use and what was for re-export.
31:11If you're getting a ship coming in with a particular cargo and you're getting a ship leaving with another cargo,
31:17then you're getting a very good idea of what's for use by the multi-national community living in Singapore
31:23and what is being loaded on other ships to trade elsewhere.
31:26If the team is lucky, they might find sunken cargo down below that will fill gaps in Singapore's trade history.
31:33It would be precious physical evidence, since there is only one eyewitness record about trade in ancient Singapore.
31:41From a Chinese trader, Wang Dagwen.
31:50On the hill, indigenous products include very fine hornbill ivory, good quality lacquer wood and cotton.
31:58And the goods used in trading are lengths of iron, gold, porcelain and such like.
32:12By custom and disposition, the inhabitants are honest.
32:21But near the two peaks which look like dragon's teeth are where the local pirates live.
32:29When 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.
32:46For certainly, some two or three hundred pirate Parahu will set out to attack them.
32:51Sometimes the junks are fortunate enough to escape with a favor in wind.
33:02Otherwise, the crews are butchered and the merchandise are made off with in quick time.
33:08The benefit of looking at shipwreck sites is that when we find these new objects, quite often they're intact.
33:30Whereas on the land sites, by definition, the stuff that's been thrown out has been broken before it was thrown out.
33:35With the equipment deployed, the sonar is systematically scanning the seabed, one small section at a time.
33:44So you can see from the color of this one, this is the side of the beam that you are getting a deeper water here.
33:52At the moment, it seems to be relatively flat, which is good.
33:56So the flatter it is, the easier it is to see a small discrepancy.
33:59The survey will take a few more hours before they can actually start analyzing the data for signs of a shipwreck.
34:10They're running the scan like this is a very tedious affair. There's no getting around it.
34:14While Dr. Flecker continues his search, archaeologists on land have in fact uncovered something that comes pretty close.
34:30So this is a piece of timber from our excavations near the riverbank.
34:47This looks like a piece of ordinary discarded plank, but it's very, very significant because we are seeing potentially the very first evidence of a maritime vessel itself.
34:56So you can see obviously this has been shaped, it's been worked, so it's not a piece of natural driftwood, but someone worked on it.
35:05And there are five, one, two, three, four, five dowel mugs on each side of the plank.
35:11And here as well, it's a part of the joinery.
35:14So this appears to be a plank from possibly from a boat or ship.
35:19Or minimally, whoever that worked on this piece of wood had knowledge about shipbuilding.
35:26But remarkably, the timber plank was found below 14th century artifacts, which means that it could be older than the Kingdom of Singapura.
35:37Could Singapore have already been a trading port before Sung Nila Utama?
35:41Chan Hsien is hoping for some answers.
35:47The next step of our work will be trying to identify the species of the wood.
35:54And also perhaps we'll try to get a date from it and see how old this piece of wood is.
35:58So any moment now we should start to come across a nice big image of a wreck and we might go right on the top of it and be hit in the middle there.
36:12Back on the survey boat, Dr. Michael Flecker and the crew are scanning the final section on the charts where a shipwreck is marked.
36:20Our wreck could be somewhere in that.
36:24Yes, it's showing down there about 34 metres.
36:35With a scan complete, they can begin processing the data.
36:38So this is actually where we try to look for the wreck.
36:42Yeah.
36:43It is a couple of four-line stages.
36:46There we go.
36:47And so that's quite radical.
36:48There's big valleys and underwater mountains going on through there.
36:52We've got the processed data on the screen on the left and what could have potentially been a shipwreck.
36:58You can actually see there's a valley and then there's a rocky cliff.
37:04So it's not man-made.
37:07That's all natural.
37:09As it turns out, what was marked as a shipwreck is merely a geological feature.
37:18Well, today we didn't find a shipwreck.
37:21A little bit disappointed.
37:23I think if we find one, just that one is going to make a huge difference.
37:27So it will be almost equivalent to several excavations on the land.
37:31But never mind.
37:32It's all part of the game.
37:42The Singapore stone is one of Singapore's enduring mysteries.
37:47A piece of sandstone with an unknown language carved on its surface.
37:52Ph.D. candidate Hunter Watson hopes to make a breakthrough.
38:00They're not all completely legible, but by jumping between the different photos, it becomes a little bit clear.
38:09I think I see this letter clearly.
38:12This one seems clear enough.
38:15For many people, for Singaporeans, they want to know, what does it say?
38:19Can you translate it?
38:21And you have to realize that, from my perspective, there's not a high likelihood that we'll be able to translate it, simply because it's so damaged and eroded already.
38:32For me, if we could determine perhaps the date and which language it was written in, those two things alone, to me, would be a great breakthrough.
38:42Hunter thinks the writing style on the stone might be the ancient Javanese script, called Kawi.
38:47Some of the letters that I see looks very similar to inscriptions in, like, Sumatra and Java, about a thousand years ago.
38:55Some of them are quite obvious, like, here we see this is an H, this is a P, this is the sound NG.
39:02This letter is probably, um, this one I'm not sure. I'm still debating this one.
39:07The problem is, I'm not seeing any entire words jump out.
39:10And so, imagine I take a piece of paper and I write a letter to you in ink, and it gets rained on.
39:16I could have written it in German or French or English or Italian, and if you only have a few letters, you can't read the message,
39:23and you can't even necessarily determine what language it's written in.
39:27Hunter is consulting literature for clues from those who have studied the stone before him.
39:32This was published in 1848, shortly after the Singapore stone had been destroyed.
39:40The bottom one here is today in the National Museum of Singapore.
39:44And in this one, he attempts to provide a reading.
39:48Down here, he reads it, Ya Da Lama.
39:51So here on the drawing, what he has shown does correspond to Ya Da Lama.
39:57But neither the reading nor the illustration matches any of the photos he's taken.
40:04I can see the L and the M clearly, but the D I disagree with.
40:07To me, it looks more like an H. And the Y, I cannot tell because it's too eroded.
40:13I'm still a little bit suspicious how much he might have made guesses.
40:19It seems the Singapore stone will continue to remain a mystery, as it has for the past 200 years.
40:27I think that there's still a possibility that we might be able to identify the language in the future.
40:34But from where we stand after just today, there's nothing conclusive that we can prove at this point.
40:38At the Singapore Botanic Gardens, archaeologist Lim Chan Hsien hopes to have better luck with his own mystery.
40:55OK, this is what we excavated from Empress Place.
40:59So this is one of the timber feature that we found.
41:04He has sent samples of the timber for analysis, and is about to find out what species the wood may be.
41:12So we got a report from our colleagues in the UK, and now I'm going to find out a bit more from the specialist here about this report.
41:18The report identifies the wood as part of the Loraceae family.
41:24But the problem is there's 2,700 species of this, and it stretches from everywhere in Southeast Asia and Brazil.
41:30So the Loraceae are generally not used very widely, and the reason is the wood is not durable.
41:39There is one exception, however. There is this species called bilian.
41:43We know that boats made of bilian parts can last for more than 100 years.
41:46Wow. Of all these 2,700 species, bilian is the only one that is used for.
41:53Yeah, it's found in Borneo and South Sumatra, and there used to be pure stents of bilian in Palembang.
42:00Oh, OK.
42:02The report dates the timber to the early 13th century, just before Singapura was said to have been founded by Sang Nila Utama, the prince from Palembang.
42:12Fantastic.
42:13And the wood can be found in this very region.
42:17Do you know what's the earliest that people will be using it for shipbuilding?
42:21Well, we have records of the colonial administrators who mentioned that the indigenous people use this timber for wood making.
42:33So it probably stretched even before that period.
42:35Right, so from generation to generation.
42:37Yeah.
42:38All these little things that we've been talking about are starting to tie in very nicely for my little piece of wood.
42:43The rogue prince from Palembang came to found Singapore.
42:46And here we have the wood.
42:47It's nice to fantasise that he brought this piece of wood over.
42:50I wish, right, but archaeology is not quite like that.
42:54But the data today, there's a level of confidence that we can say, yeah, potentially this is a maritime hub,
42:59and this is the type of wood that would have been used for shipbuilding.
43:05Because of the work done by archaeologists, so much more is now known about Singapore's past.
43:12Where Singapore stands today, it's not about basically raffles only.
43:22It's not about 14th century Singapore.
43:25It is about everything in one giant stretch of time.
43:29And where we place ourselves personally, or how we think about the country within this whole long period.
43:36Archaeologists have helped establish that Singapore was once a small but vibrant kingdom.
43:52Thousands would have lived and worked on the lower plains below Fort Canning.
43:59And on the top of the hill would have stood the palace.
44:06Skilled artisans would have worked nearby, making jewellery and ornaments for their king.
44:20And when things broke, the settlers would have discarded them.
44:25Slowly forgotten by time and history.
44:29When Crawford arrived and toured the area 500 years later, the kingdom would have been weathered beyond recognition.
44:43And these pieces of history would have remained buried underground.
44:49Only for us to unearth them today.
44:53I hope it's a realization that Singapore is worth doing.
44:56The British came here, they were a kind of a catalyst.
44:59But all the ingredients had to be here already for it to work.
45:03It doesn't mean the founding of the country.
45:05It doesn't mean the founding of an identity.
45:07So that's one legacy I'd like to leave.
45:09Both by seeing Singapore as a respectable field of study in itself.
45:13And also thinking of Singapore in a broader context.
45:16You would really appreciate the importance of what you've got.
45:19Trees to read all the different places of what you've got.
45:20Trees to watch all the different places of what you've got.
45:22Transcription by CastingWords
45:52CastingWords
Be the first to comment