Before the Lion

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?

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?