The Temasek Timeline

Twenty thousand years ago, you could set out from where Singapore now stands and walk to Sumatra without wetting your feet.

Beneath today's busy straits lies a vanished continent. What did it look like? Who crossed it? And how quickly did the sea take it back?

Before Temasek. Before Singapura. Before anyone named this place at all, something had already decided its shape.

Strip away the towers, the cranes and the reclaimed shoreline, and what's left is rock: older and stranger than the city on top of it. Why has this island never trembled like its neighbours? And what did a hill, a river mouth and a slow-moving sea have to do with everything that came later?

Ask most people when Singapore's story begins and you'll hear one date: 1819. This welcome episode explains why that's only the last chapter, and what a thousand years of earlier history looks like when you go looking for it.

Start here for what the show is, how it works, and where the evidence ends and the legend begins. Then go back to the very beginning: before the lion, before the city, and before even the island.