Neolithic Age

info"+---++

But the finds in Java also point in another direction. Workshops have been discovered here where highly skilled stone-cutters have apparently been at work, for the same kind of implements are to be found over and over again. The stone-cutters may have carried on their craft here, and the semi-finished pieces brought by means of barter trade to those villages where the hard stone required was unobtainable .



All this enables us, perhaps, to visualize the material culture of 0ie Spiritual life Neolithic era. But it is not so easy to form an adequate picture of spiritual life at that time. The only means of doings-) is by way of analogy. For in our own day communities exist which are still in the Neolithic age. The question remains weather conclusions can be drawn from the spiritual culture of such communities with regard to the Indonesia of the Neolithic period.
Amongst the many stone implements found there were also some which were clearly not used for any immediate economic purpose. These were not only made from magnificent semi-precious stones, but were also not worn a, all, which -indicates that the/, were not in everyday use, but served other purposes of some special kind.

Such beautifully worked implements arc also to be found in Neolithic communities at the present day. They have, as we know. a sacral significant, and are used in religious ceremonies. We may assume that cultures in which implements of this kind apparently served a similar purpose were themselves of a similar type.

But one can go further. There exist in Indonesia groups of people who, up to the latter half of the last century, remained virtually unaffected by the cultural influences which reached Indonesia during the course of the last two thousand years. Amongst these peoples, too; implements for the performance of religious rites were used, and frequently are still in use today, whilst the civilization of these groups resembles that of the Neolithic cultures which still exist.

The significance of this becomes all the more apparent when we consider that the culture of those groups mentioned which remained independent for so many centuries is rooted in the long since extinct Neolithic culture of Indonesia. A strong and persistent tradition has apparently kept alive the characteristics of Neolithic culture as it developed thousands of years ago. The Neolithic cultures which still exist, together with the cultural phenomena of the groups of people referred to above, enable us to obtain a rough idea of the spirit and essence of Neolithic culture e in Indonesia.

Neolithic man formed village communities and lived chiefly from agriculture. Genealogical communities, clans, are to be found in areas where agriculture remained extensive, as was the case wherever ladang cultivation alone was practicable: e., where rice was planted in dry fields, and where hunting and the collection of roots, fruit, etc., still helped to provide the barest neccssities of life. Here the community held together by common descent, or merely supposed common descent, from the same ancestors. On the other hand, territorial communities were formed in areas where the soil was tilled intensively and where rice was planted in artificially irrigated fields. These agrarian communities feel themselves bound by a religious tic to their communal land. In addition