3400 BC to 680

Caves and trading ports

People have lived here for tens of thousands of years: a human skull from the Niah Caves in Sarawak is about 40,000 years old, and the Orang Asli of the peninsula descend from some of its earliest inhabitants. From early in the first millennium AD, ports in the Bujang Valley in Kedah trade with India and China, and Hindu and Buddhist shrines rise there.