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For those who found books like Stephen Oppenheimer's Eden in the East interesting and intriguing, or who favor the theories of Wilhelm Solheim and Carl Sauer on Southeast Asia and the Pacific, this book is for you!

Quests of the Dragon and Bird Clan explores the history of an ancient maritime trade thalassocracy founded by peoples called Nusantao. The latter seafaring people were mostly but not entirely speakers of Malayo-Polynesian and Austronesian languages. However, they interacted with other peoples included the Neolithic Yayoi who the author suggests used Nusantao trade routes in migrating to Japan.

Catastrophic events like sea flooding and volcanoes stimulated Nusantao exploration and migration further and further abroad. In the course of these wide-ranging travels, author Paul Kekai Manansala suggests that the maritime traders altered history in wide-ranging areas in ways never before explored.

For example, he claims that the legendary king Prester John of the Indies was an historical and not-so-legendary Nusantao king. Also he provides evidence that the Holy Grail, which most medieval texts claim came from, and returned to the Indies, was related to Nusantao spiritual culture.

Manansala shows how in the early medieval period, little known wares known as Rusun jars were traded at extravagant prices to merchants from Japan, Borneo and elsewhere as the last remnants of a long-forgotten Eden, a paradise that the author suggests was identical with the one found in the Old Testament.

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These ground-breaking books are based on Paul Kekai Manansala’s blog Quests of the Dragon and Bird Clan.  Click here to check out the current blog entries.