Resailing ancient mariners' wake from Indonesia to Madagascar<\/p>\n
Chisato Hara, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta<\/p>\n
The Phantom Voyagers: Evidence of Indonesian Settlement in Africa
\nin Ancient Times<\/p>\n
Robert Dick-Read<\/p>\n
Thurlton Publishing, 2005<\/p>\n
252 pp.<\/p>\n
Many armchair historians may be familiar with the established
\ntheory that mariners of ancient Indonesia -- or Austronesians --
\nwere among the first settlers who arrived on the shores of
\nMadagascar, but even for the uninitiate (like this reviewer), The
\nPhantom Voyagers: Evidence of Indonesian Settlement in Africa in
\nAncient Times is a fascinating, multifaceted illustration of this
\nthread that connects peoples across the Indian Ocean.<\/p>\n
Its author, Robert Dick-Read, admits he is no professional
\nacademic -- his brush with formal scholarship in this area
\nappears only to have been an extended seminar in 1959 at London
\nUniversity's School of Oriental and African Studies -- but he is
\nno stranger to Africa.<\/p>\n
Born in 1930, Dick-Read's first exposure to the African
\ncontinent came at the age of 21, when he traveled through South
\nAfrica. Over the next two years, he worked in the tobacco
\nindustry in Zimbabwe and founded African Art in Kenya, dealing in
\nlocal curios and art, and in 1959, established an ethnographic
\nmuseum for the colonial Nigerian government. In the early 1960s,
\nDick-Read produced documentaries for the BBC on Ethiopia and for
\nEncyclopaedia Britannica Films on Sudan and Egypt.<\/p>\n
It was on an art-collecting safari through the northern
\nregions of the continent, he relates in the Preface, that he
\nfirst heard of the outrigger seamen of Madagascar who spoke an
\nAustronesian language, which gave breath to his \"life-long hobby\"
\n-- as Dick-Read dubs his quest to uncover the Indonesian-
\nMadagascan connection.<\/p>\n
The Phantom Voyagers may span a mere 209 pages in actual text,
\nbut it is a dense volume that traverses the fields of marine
\nethnography, maritime history, anthropomusicology, archeology,
\netymology and toponymy, among other specializations. At the same
\ntime, it travels across thousands of years through the
\ncivilizations of Southeast Asia, China, South Asia, the Middle
\nEast, the Mediterranean and South America, and back again.<\/p>\n
Dick-Read's revelations of the \"footprints and fingerprints\"
\nthese unknown mariners left behind are surprising in the variety
\nof tangible evidence unearthed, from cinnamon to plantains, from
\nxylophones to bronze ware, from glass beads to cowrie shells and
\nfrom phallic worship to divination systems -- even the trans-
\noceanic transmission of elephantiasis.<\/p>\n
Those familiar with Indonesian culture will take delight in
\nmention of congklak, the popular shell game, and its presence in
\nAfrican culture. In addition, one of the keys to unlocking this
\nmystery is engraved at the Borobudur temple, in a bas-relief of a
\nship -- a replica of which was built and sailed to Ghana in 2004.<\/p>\n
Dick-Read thus maps a fine web of evidence that spreads out
\nfrom Indonesia, and he posits, through a comparative study of
\ndouble-outrigger designs on both sides of the Indian Ocean, that
\nthis web was spun by the nomadic, ancient sea-faring tribes of
\nSulawesi.<\/p>\n
More astonishingly, Dick-Read suggests that, instead of the
\ncommonly accepted estimation that the Austronesian influence
\narrived in Africa in the first millennium A.D., this occurred in
\nthe first millennium B.C.; furthermore, that this was not
\nrestricted to Madagascar and the coastal settlements of eastern
\nAfrica, and that these voyagers sailed around the Cape of Good
\nHope to land in western Africa.<\/p>\n
As to the quality of his research and analysis, while Stephen
\nEllis, editor of African Affairs -- the journal of the London-
\nbased Royal African Society -- notes some academic oversights and
\nomissions, he acknowledges unequivocally the necessity of
\ninterdisciplinary study in this area. \"A challenge has been
\nissued,\" Ellis concludes.<\/p>\n
This self-published title could certainly be improved upon
\nwith the assistance of a copyeditor and the inclusion of a
\ncomprehensive bibliography, a more detailed index and a
\ncomparative time line of civilizations it explores.<\/p>\n
More than this, however, the lack of a separate concluding
\nchapter leaves an anticlimactic aftertaste that does not do
\njustice to Dick-Read's work, which not only addresses, but also
\nattempts to bridge, the \"apparent ... gulf of understanding
\nbetween specialists on Africa ... and specialists on Southeast
\nAsia and Oceania,\" as implied by Ellis.<\/p>\n
Even so, it is clear that The Phantom Voyagers is driven by a
\npassionate, intuitive and generous mind that can venture beyond
\nthe bounds of \"established\" scholarship; and it is this that
\nlures readers to follow the ghostly trail, perhaps toward further
\nproof of our intersecting origins and thus, a reassurance that
\n\"no man is an island\".<\/p>\n
The Phantom Voyagers is available exclusively at Limma
\nBookshop & Library, Jl. Bangka XI-A, No. 1A, Kemang, South
\nJakarta. Contact: Tel (021) 7193039; Fax (021) 7180388;
\ninquiry@limma.co.id; or www.limma.co.id. It is also available
\nthrough Limma in the museum shop at the Borobudur Temple, Central
\nJava.<\/p>",
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"sponsor": "Okusi Associates",
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