Belitung

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Belitung
Waters Karimata Street
Geographical location 2 ° 50 ′  S , 107 ° 55 ′  E Coordinates: 2 ° 50 ′  S , 107 ° 55 ′  E
Location of Belitung
surface 4th 478  km²
Highest elevation Tajam
500  m
Residents 160,000
36 inhabitants / km²
main place Tanjung Pandan
Topographic map of the island
Topographic map of the island

Belitung (also Billiton ) is east of Sumatra in the karimata strait situated Indonesian island.

geography

Belitung is 4478 km² and reaches a height of around 500 m in the Tajam . To the west is the neighboring island of Bangka . Both islands form the Indonesian province of Bangka-Belitung . Belitung is inhabited by 160,000 people, the main town is Tanjung Pandan .

economy

The most important industry is the mining of tin ore . The mining company BHP Billiton is named after the island of Belitung (English Billiton).

Culture

literature

The Indonesian writer Andrea Hirata depicts life on the island at the end of the 20th century in his autobiographical novels "The Rainbow Troop", "The Dreamer", "Edensor" and "Maryamah Karpov".

Wreck finds

The island is known for two important wreck finds.

  • In 1999 the Tek Sing was recovered, which sank around 1800 with a load of almost 1,000,000 porcelain objects from the Qing dynasty as a commodity. This was the most extensive find of Chinese porcelain to date. Mike Hatcher decided during the recovery to destroy 600,000 of the objects in order not to endanger the retail price.
  • In the same year, an Arab dhow (Batu Hitam) was found, which sank around 830 with about 60,000 pieces of Tang porcelain. In addition to the sensational evidence of intensive Asian trade relations at the time of the European Early Middle Ages ( maritime Silk Road ), this find is also significant because the finder, Tilman Walterfang , prevented the pieces from being sold individually. The find was brought to the collection of the ArtScience Museum , Singapore as a closed find .

Sons and daughters of the island

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The German translation was published by Hanser Berlin in January 2013 .
  2. ^ The Belitung (Tang) Shipwreck (9th C.) , maritime-explorations.com;
    Treasure hunt in Sindbad's footsteps , documentation, Francis Smith, USA, 2009;
    → list of Chinese shipwrecks , s: Belitung shipwreck

Web links

Commons : Belitung  - collection of images, videos and audio files