Long-lost 'Island of Gold' resurfaces in Indonesian river
In this aerial view the Musi River glistens gold in South Sumatra, Indonesia. (Image credit: Rio Helmi/LightRocket via Getty Images)The remnants of the long-lost "Island of Gold" — where tales describe man-eating snakes, fire-belching volcanoes and Hindi-speaking parrots — may have been found in the Musi River near Palembang, Indonesia. And of course, there is gold, oozing from the river bottom.
Divers probing the muddy river bottom have hauled up hundreds of figurines, temple bells, tools, mirrors, coins and ceramics. They have found golden sword hilts and gold-and-ruby rings, carved jars and wine jugs and flutes shaped like peacocks.
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Long-lost 'Island of Gold' resurfaces in Indonesian river | Live Science
This map shows the extent of Srivijaya around the eighth century.
This site could be related to the peninsular region of Southeast Asia that was historically referred to as the 'Golden Chersonese'.
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Golden Chersonese
The earliest references to a fabulous land of gold that could be interpreted as places in South East Asia may be found in Indian literature. In Ramayana, there are mentions of Suvarnabhumi (Land of Gold) and Suvarnadvipa (the Golden Island or Peninsula, where dvipa might refer to either a peninsula or an island)[2][3] Greek knowledge of lands further to their east improved after the conquests of Alexander the Great, but specific references to places in South East Asia did not appear until after the rise of the Roman Empire. Greek and Roman geographers Eratosthenes, Dionysius Periegetes, and Pomponius Mela had written about a Golden Isle (Khrysē, Chryse Insula),[4][5] which some in modern times argued to mean Sumatra while excluding the Malay Peninsula.[6][7] Pliny in Natural History, however, referred to Chryse as both a promontory and an island.[8]
Ptolemy's Geography, based on the work by Marinus of Tyre, contains the best-known and perhaps the earliest reference to the Golden Chersonese.[9] However, Geography includes information added by later geographers, and the first specific mention of the Golden Chersonese may be in the work of Marcian of Heraclea.[10] Chersonese means peninsula in Greek, and although a few early scholars had attempted to link the Golden Chersonese with Lower Burma, the term is now generally accepted to mean the Malay Peninsula. The Malay Peninsula is thought to have been a producer of gold in ancient times, and gold mines in Patani and Pahang were still mentioned in the 17th century by the Malay-Portuguese writer Godinho de Erédia.[1] Although gold is now not a major product of modern-day Malaysia, it is still being mined, for example in Raub in Pahang.[1
