Trade routes and trade centres
These four pieces were all remained of a gold belt pulled up by a boy while fishing in a tributary of the Sungai Merbok, Kedah, in 1914.
The locations of many early Malaysian trade centres have yet to be identified. No doubt, many sites still exist and will eventually be discovered, although some may already have been destroyed by recent development without being recognized or recorded. It is probable that the expansion of trade during the first centuries CE, and the routes used to reach the main overseas markets in India and China, had some effect on the patterns of settlement which formed at this time.
- Information in the full article includes
- The impotance of transpeninsular routes
- West coast trade centres
- East coast trade centres