Belitung
Belitung | |
---|---|
Waters | Karimata Street |
Geographical location | 2 ° 50 ′ S , 107 ° 55 ′ E |
surface | 4th 478 km² |
Highest elevation |
Tajam 500 m |
Residents | 160,000 36 inhabitants / km² |
main place | Tanjung Pandan |
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
- Andrea Hirata , writer
Individual evidence
- ↑ The German translation was published by Hanser Berlin in January 2013 .
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^ 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