History of Bali
Three thousand years ago Bali was covered with a dense emerald green tropical rain forest. Tumbling down from the slopes of the central volcanoes numerous rivers and streams cut deep long gorges that would divide the forest into long narrow strips as they charged down to the sea.
Bali’s jungle was the most eastern home of a rich array of Asian flora and fauna such as the Bali tiger stopped by the Wallace Line, the deep sea trench running between Bali and Lombok, marking the end of Asia and the beginning of Australnesia. Like the bejewelled tail of Asia’s mythological dragon, Bali was destined to sparkle.
We know little of the stone age people that first settled on the island. Around 3000 years ago, however, new immigrants sailing from the north in large ocean going out riggers probably much like those seen in the reliefs of the Borobudur Temple began to arrive. They were an animistic bronze age people who carried with them sophisticated ritual bronze objects as well as knowledge of dry rice cultivation and the art of weaving.
Bali would flourish into an important center of their so called Dong Son culture and the heart shaped faces of their ancestors. Remarkably the largest of the many mysterious prehistoric bronze rain drums found spread throughout Southeast Asia would be cast here. Today it is still considered a sacred object and worshipped by the Balinese in the Pura Penataran Sasih Temple in Pejeng. Legend holds it to be a wheel that fell from the chariot of the goddess of the Moon.