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PRE-HISTORIC MALAYSIA
　

Scientists have found archaeological evidence of human inhabitants in the Niah Caves in Sarawak from about 40,000 years ago. The earliest evidence of inhabitants on the Malay Peninsula that has been found is from about 10,000 years ago. Neolithic culture was well established by 2500-1500 BC. Most scholars believe the earliest settlers on the Malay Peninsula came overland from southern China in small groups over a period of thousands of years. These early inhabitants became the ancestors of the Orang Asli. 

　

　

During the 1000's B.C., new groups of migrants who spoke a language related to Malay came to Malaysia. The ancestors of these people had traveled by sea from south China toTaiwan, and later from Taiwan to Borneo and the Philippines. These people became the ancestors of the Malays and the Orang Laut. The newcomers settled mainly in the coastal areas of the peninsula. 

　

Small Malayan kingdoms existed in the 2nd or 3rd centuries AD, when adventurers from India arrived and initiated more than 1,000 years of Indian influence. About A.D. 1400, a group of Malay-speaking migrants came to the Malay Peninsula from Srivijaya, a trading kingdom on the island of Sumatra (now part of Indonesia). Led by a Sumatran prince called Parameswara, these newly arrived immigrants established a commercial kingdom called Malacca and secured Chinese protection for the city-state.
　

Europeans arrived in what is now Malaysia during the 1500's. Malacca entered a golden age as a commercial and Islamic religious centre but in 1511 it was captured by the Portuguese. When the Dutch captured Malacca in 1641, the port was no longer an important trading center.
　

Golden age of Melaka and Colonialism

         Malaysia is born

         1990's & the new Millennium