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The Dong Son culture, Dongsonian culture, or the Lạc Việt culture (named for modern village Đông Sơn, a village in Thanh Hóa, Vietnam) was a Bronze Age culture in ancient Vietnam centred at the Red River Valley of northern Vietnam from 1000 BC until the first century AD. Vietnamese historians attribute the culture to the states of Văn Lang and Âu Lạc. Its influence spread to other parts of Southeast Asia, including Maritime Southeast Asia, from about 1000 BC to 1 BC.

The Dong Son people were skilled at cultivating rice, keeping water buffalos and pigs, fishing and sailing in long dugout canoes. They also were skilled bronze casters, which is evidenced by the Dong Son drum found widely throughout northern Vietnam and Guangxi in China.

To the south of the Dong Son culture was the Sa Huỳnh culture of the proto-Chams.

Identity

The Dongsonians spoke either Austroasiatic or Northern Tai languages; or were Austroasiatic-speakers with significant contact and admixture with Tai-speakers.

Archaeogenetics have demonstrated that before the Dong Son period, the Red River Delta's inhabitants were predominantly Austroasiatic. Genetic data from Vietnam's Phùng Nguyên culture's Mán Bạc burial site demonstrated close proximity to modern Austroasiatic speakers such as the Khmer and Mlabri; meanwhile, "mixed genetics" from Đông Sơn culture's Núi Nấp site showed affinity to "Dai from China, Tai-Kadai speakers from Thailand, and Austroasiatic speakers from Vietnam, including the Việt".

Ferlus (2009) showed that the inventions of pestle, oar, and a pan to cook sticky rice, which is the main characteristic of the Đông Sơn culture, correspond to the creation of new lexicons for these inventions in Northern Vietic (Việt–Mường) and Central Vietic (Cuoi-Toum). The new vocabularies to denote these inventions were proven to be derivatives from original verbs rather than borrowed lexical items. The current distribution of Northern Vietic also correspond to the area of Dong Son culture. Thus, Ferlus conclude that the Dongsonian culture was of Vietic origin and they were the direct ancestors of modern Vietnamese people.

Origins

The origins of Dong Son culture may be traced back to ancient bronze castings. Scholars traditionally traced the origins of bronze-casting technology to China but during the 1970s archaeological discoveries in Isan, Thailand found that the casting of bronze either began in Southeast Asia first then spread into China, or that it developed the practise independently from China. The Dong Son bronze industry therefore has a local origin in Southeast Asia rather than being introduced by migrations out of China. The Gò Mun culture gave rise to the Dong Son culture; the Dong Son was the culmination of the Bronze Age and the opening stage of the Iron Age.

The bronze drums were used for war, "the chief summons the warriors of the tribe by beating the drum", when mourning, and during feasts. "The scenes cast onto the drums would inform us that the Dong Son leaders had access to bronze founders of remarkable skill." Lost-wax casting was based on Chinese founders, but the scenes are local, including drummers and other musicians, warriors, rice processing, birds, deer, war vessels, and geometric designs.

The bronze drums were made in significant proportions in northern Vietnam, Laos and parts of Yunnan. The Dong Son bronze drums exhibit "remarkable skill". The Cổ Loa drum weighs 72 kilograms (159 lb) and would have required the smelting of between 1 and 7 tonnes (1.1 and 7.7 tons) of copper ore.

Displays of the Đông Sơn drum surface can be seen in some of Vietnam's cultural institutions.

Some of Dong Son bronze daggers closely resemble Scytho-Siberian styles.

See also

• Lạc Việt
• Dong Son drum
• Austronesia
• Nanyue
• Âu Lạc
• Baiyue

References

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5. Nola Cooke, Tana Li, James Anderson - The Tongking Gulf Through History - Page 46 2011 -"Nishimura actually suggested the Đông Sơn phase belonged in the late metal age, and some other Japanese scholars argued that, contrary to the conventional belief that the Han invasion ended Đông Sơn culture, Đông Sơn artifacts, ..."
6. Vietnam Fine Arts Museum 2000 "... the bronze cylindrical jars, drums, Weapons and tools which were sophistically carved and belonged to the World famous Đông Sơn culture dating from thousands of years; the Sculptures in the round, the ornamental architectural Sculptures...."
7. SOLHEIM, WILHELM G. (1988). "A Brief History of the Dongson Concept". Asian Perspectives. 28 (1): 23–30. ISSN 0066-8435. JSTOR 42928186.
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13. Alves 2019.
14. Lipson, Mark; Cheronet, Olivia; Mallick, Swapan; Rohland, Nadin; Oxenham, Marc; Pietrusewsky, Michael; Pryce, Thomas Oliver; Willis, Anna; Matsumura, Hirofumi; Buckley, Hallie; Domett, Kate; Hai, Nguyen Giang; Hiep, Trinh Hoang; Kyaw, Aung Aung; Win, Tin Tin; Pradier, Baptiste; Broomandkhoshbacht, Nasreen; Candilio, Francesca; Changmai, Piya; Fernandes, Daniel; Ferry, Matthew; Gamarra, Beatriz; Harney, Eadaoin; Kampuansai, Jatupol; Kutanan, Wibhu; Michel, Megan; Novak, Mario; Oppenheimer, Jonas; Sirak, Kendra; Stewardson, Kristin; Zhang, Zhao; Flegontov, Pavel; Pinhasi, Ron; Reich, David (2018-05-17). "Ancient genomes document multiple waves of migration in Southeast Asian prehistory". Science. 361 (6397). American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS): 92–95. Bibcode:2018Sci...361...92L. bioRxiv 10.1101/278374. doi:10.1126/science.aat3188. ISSN 0036-8075. PMC 6476732. PMID 29773666.
15. Corny, Julien, et al. 2017. "Dental phenotypic shape variation supports a multiple dispersal model for anatomically modern humans in Southeast Asia." Journal of Human Evolution 112 (2017):41-56. cited in Alves 2019.
16. McColl et al. 2018. "Ancient Genomics Reveals Four Prehistoric Migration Waves into Southeast Asia". Preprint. Published in Science. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/278374v1 cited in Alves 2019.
17. ^ Ferlus, Michael (2009). "A Layer of Dongsonian Vocabulary in Vietnamese" (PDF). Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society. 1: 95–108.
18. Taylor, Keith W. (1991). The Birth of Vietnam. University of California Press. p. 313. ISBN 0-520-07417-3.
19. VietnamPlus (2021-10-26). "38th and 39th ASEAN Summits open | World | Vietnam+ (VietnamPlus)". VietnamPlus. Retrieved 2021-10-27.

Bibliography

• Alves, Mark (2019-05-10). Data from Multiple Disciplines Connecting Vietic with the Dong Son Culture. Contact Zones and Colonialism in Southeast Asia and China's South (~221 BCE - 1700 CE). doi:10.13140/RG.2.2.32110.05446.

External links

• Đông Sơn culture (photo collection)
• Drums from Selayar (photo collection) Archived 2016-11-10 at the Wayback Machine

• Đông Sơn culture
• Ancient Vietnam
• Prehistoric Thailand
• Archaeological cultures of Southeast Asia
• Archaeological cultures in Vietnam
• Bronze Age cultures of Asia
• 1st millennium BC in Vietnam