This open access book presents multidisciplinary research on the cultural history, ethnic connectivity, and oceanic transportation of the ancient Indigenous Bai Yue (百越) in the prehistoric maritime region of southeast China and southeast Asia. In this maritime Frontier of China, historical documents demonstrate the development of the "barbarian" Bai Yue and Island Yi (岛夷) and their cultural interaction with the northern Huaxia (华夏) in early Chinese civilization within the geopolitical order of the "Central State-Four Peripheries Barbarians-Four Seas". Archaeological typologies of the prehistoric remains reveal a unique cultural tradition dominantly originating from the local Paleolithic age and continuing to early Neolithization across this border region. Further analysis of material culture from the Neolithic to the Early Iron Age proves the stability and resilience of the indigenous cultures even with the migratory expansion of Huaxia and Han (汉) from north to south. Ethnographical investigations of aboriginal heritage highlight their native cultural context, seafaring technology and navigation techniques, and their interaction with Austronesian and other foreign maritime ethnicities. In a word, this manuscript presents a new perspective on the unique cultural landscape of indigenous ethnicities in southeast China with thousands of years' stable tradition, a remarkable maritime orientation and overseas cultural hybridization in the coastal region of southeast China.

About the Author: ​Chunming Wu, Doctorate of Maritime History, Xiamen University. Faculty of the South China Sea Institute, researcher of the Center for Maritime Archaeology and the Belt and Road Institute, Xiamen University. He was the professor of Humanity College of Xiamen University, and visiting scholarship of ACLS & Luce Foundation at University of Hawaii at Manoa, Harvard-Yenching Institute of Harvard University. Wu works on maritime archaeology, and prehistoric archaeology of early aboriginal cultures of southeast China and southeast Asia. He published monograph books as Archaeological Research to the History and Cultures of Prehistoric Aboriginals in Southeast China (1999), The Shipwreck Archaeology in Seas Surrounding China (2003), The Maritime Cultural Interaction between Indigenous Yue and Austronesian (2012), The Archaeological and Historical Research on the Maritime Cultural Heritage (2016), co-edited books as Archaeological Study on Southeast China (1996,1999,2003,2010), The Shipwreck Archaeology at Dinghai Bay of Lianjiang County, Fujian (2011), Journal of Bai Yue Studies (2007, 2011,2012,2015), Early Navigation in the Asia-Pacific Region (2016), Prehistoric Maritime Culture and Seafaring in East Asia(2019), Archaeology of Manila Galleon Seaports and Early Maritime Globalization(2019), and more than 150 papers.