History of Bali
Bali has been inhabited for a long time. Sembiran, a village in the north of Bali, was believed to have the help of the people of the Ice Age, proven by the discovery of stone axes and adzes.Further discoveries of more sophisticated stone tools, agricultural techniques and basic pottery at Cekik in Bali’s far west, point to the people of the Neolithic. At Cekik, there is evidence of a settlement with the burial sites of about a hundred people thought to be from the Neolithic through the Bronze Age. The massive drums of the Bronze Age, with their stone forms were discovered in the whole Indonesia, including the most famous and largest drum in South-Eastern Asia, from Pejeng the moon, nearly two meters wide, is now housed in a temple in the east Ubud . In East Java and Bali, there is a concentration of carved stone sarcophagi, which we can see in the Bali Museum in Denpasar and Purbakala museum in Pejeng.
Bali was busy with the trade as early as 200 BC. The prasasti or metal inscriptions Bali’s earliest written records from the ninth century AD, shows a significant Buddhist and Hindu influences, especially in the statues, bronze and rock-cut caves around the Mount Kawi and West Cave. Balinese society was a bit sophisticated by about 900 AD. Their wedding portrait of the Balinese King Udayana to East Java’s Princess Mahendratta is contained in a stone carving in the Korah Tegipan Pura Batur in the area. Their son, Erlangga born around 991 AD, who later succeeded to the throne of the Javanese kingdom and brought Java and Bali together until his death in 1049.
