page_title: Riau
section_title: Pre-historic era
hierarchical_section_title: Riau / History / Pre-historic era
caption_attribution_description: Muara Takus temple, Sumatra, Indonesia
context_page_description: Riau is a province of Indonesia. It is located in the central eastern coast of Sumatra along the Strait of Malacca. Until 2004 the province included the offshore Riau Islands, a large group of small islands located east of Sumatra Island and south of Singapore, before these islands were split off as a province in July 2004. The provincial capital and the largest city of Riau is Pekanbaru. The province shares land borders with North Sumatra to the northwest, West Sumatra to the west, and Jambi to the south. The total area for Riau province is 87,023.66 square kilometres, which stretches from the slopes of the Bukit Barisan to the Strait of Malacca. Riau has a wet tropical climate with average rainfall ranging between 2000 and 3000 millimeters per year, and the average rainfall per year is about 160 days. Riau is currently one of the richest provinces in Indonesia and is rich in natural resources, particularly petroleum, natural gas, rubber, palm oil and fibre plantations. Extensive logging and plantation development in has led to a massive decline in forest cover Riau, and associated fires have contributed to haze across the larger region.
context_section_description: Riau is thought to have been inhabited since the time between 10,000–40,000 BC. This conclusion was taken after the discovery of tools from the Pleistocene era in the Sengingi River area in Kuantan Singingi Regency in August 2009. Stone tools were found, among others, ax, axle, drawstring, shale and core stone axes which are the basic ingredients of making drawstring tools and shale. The research team also found some wood fossils predicted to be older than the stone tools. It is suspected the one who use these tools are the pithecanthropus erectus as they have been found in Sangiran, Central Java. The discovery of this evidence proves that there is an older life in Riau which has always referred to the discovery of the Muara Takus Temple in Kampar as its starting point.
  The Malay kingdoms in Riau was at first based on the Buddhist Srivijaya Empire. This is proof of the discovery of the Muara Takus Temple which is thought to be the center of the Srivijaya government in Riau, which architecturally resembles those temples that can be found in India. In addition, French historian George Cœdès also discovered the similarity of the Srivijaya governmental structure and the Malay sultanates of the 15th century. The earliest text that deals with the Malay world is Sulalatus Salatin or known as the Malay Annals by Tun Sri Lanang, in 1612. According to the annals, Bukit Seguntang in modern-day Palembang in South Sumatra is the place where Sang Sapurba came to the world and his descendants would scatter throughout the Malay world. His descendants such as Sang Mutiara would become king in Tanjungpura and Sang Nila Utama would become king in Bintan before finally moving to Singapura. Before the arrival of Islam to the archipelago, many parts of the Riau region were under the Srivijaya Empire between the 7th to the 14th century which was greatly influenced by the Hindu-Buddhist tradition. At that time Islam was already introduced to the region when the Maharaja of Srivijaya sent a letter to Caliph Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz of the Umayyad Caliphate in Egypt, which contained a request to send a messenger to introduce the Islamic law to him.
caption: Muara Takus temple in Kampar, believed to be the remnant of the Srivijaya empire.
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