Vietnam - At the Carrefour of Peoples and Civilizations

Abstract

Professor Olov Jansé, a former honorable member of l'École Francaise d'Extrême Orient, Professor of the Université de Louvre and l'École pratique des hautes études, Sorbonne, Paris (France), a Swedish well-known archeologist, served as the Director of the Archeological Missions in Indochina between 1934 and 1939. Considered as the same generation of the well-known French scholars in Vietnamese Studies in the early decades of the twentieth century, Professor O. Jansé's researches have been highly appreciated by both Vietnamese and foreign scholars.

For a broader view of theory on wide space in the trend of the civilizations and peoples, Professor Janse's researches are regarded as one of the classic investigations, in which the author seeks to confirm the tendency of multiple changes, an acculturation, refraction and interaction of the culture among the human civilizations and the course of ethnic immigration and migration. In the Southeast Asian world, it is possible to consider it an independent entity, a starting-point or an origin of the human civilization? The fact that given new technological evidences concerning the departure of the civilizations, some of his points of view and other scholars are proposed to re-examine, even to refuse by trying to reverse it. Some other scholars, nevertheless, continue to argue for the correctness in certain angles. Surely, this is still an attractive issue for deeper academy in the coming time.

(First part)